Travel Blog Advice

Connecting with other travelers is essential if you want to expand your travel blog. Social networks give you the opportunity to get in touch with readers outside of your blog comments and as they (and hopefully you) are actively traveling. This article isn’t about any particular social network (if you’re interested in that check out the social networks every travel blogger should be using) but rather how to be someone worth connecting with.

You need to provide useful, topical, and some personal information to increase your online presence through social networks to directly and indirectly benefit your travel blog.

Establish Your Persona

Maintain the same identity across all of the social networks you belong to. Have the same name, similar profile pictures, and same voice across all of them. This helps to establish your personality with other travelers and across the Internet. Your personality is closely tied to your travel blog – that’s the reason people will continue to follow you.

People become attached to things they can identify with and social networks are where you can let your personality shine. Social networks are where you can show off a side of you that’s a bit more fun and real than you would on your travel blog.

Have A Purpose

Just like your travel blog needs direction, so do your social networking accounts. Travel bloggers need to Tweet, update their Facebook statuses, and Stumble generally travel-related material. Don’t let your social networks be the place where you rant about random events all the time or put vague messages like “blah today”.

Social networks are an extension of your travel blog and as such you need to stay on topic when possible. It’s important to not only maintain your identity across all of your social networking account but between your social network profiles and your travel blog. Think before you post and try to make everything count.

Make Them Part of Your Blogging Schedule

Hopefully you’ve established a travel blogging schedule for yourself and your posts. As soon as you join any social network however, you need to make time for it as well. Consider posting to your social networks as another regular blogging task. Update them on a consistent basis and don’t neglect any of the accounts you set up. Try and see what social networks work for you and get rid of the accounts that don’t.

If you’re constantly creating new profiles on different social networks but never updating them you’ll eventually lose the faith of your readers and the people that follow you there. It’s vital to establish some sort of flexible routine and some basic goals like ‘at least 2 tweets a day’.

Be Positive

Don’t trash talk anyone and rather than post negative things help highlight many of the good things that are going on in the travel industry, your travel blog, and in your personal life (that’s travel-related of course). Controversy is good to foster in your travel blog posts from time to time but you want to connect with other potential readers through the various social networks. The golden rule applies, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it.

Remember that it goes both ways – be positive about others and they won’t write bad things about you.

Connect, Don’t Over-Promote

While it’s important to establish a strong identity and inject your personality into your social networking presence don’t get consumed by yourself. Don’t always write about yourself – there are other people on those social networks who you should be connecting with. Don’t get obsessed with drawing hits to your travel blog. It may work at first to bombard people with links to your latest posts but to increase your credibility online you need others to promote your material in the long run.

Promote and talk about all of the great things that other travel bloggers are posting and writing about. Not only will they reciprocate but you’ll ultimately be helping your own travel blog by getting new ideas, finding out what your peers are writing about, and understanding that you aren’t the only travel blogger out there.

Basics Not To Forget

• Make it easy to contact you and reply to every personal message.
• Have a link to your travel blog – almost all social networking tools have a place for urls.
• Include a profile picture. The default picture won’t cut it and shows that you’re not serious about being social.

Take Your Time

Everything worth doing with your travel blog takes times and social networks are no different. Posting a flurry of updates only to realize your blog page views haven’t tripled and you don’t have a thousand followers shouldn’t discourage you and cause you to give up. In fact that’s the worst thing that you can do. Much like your travel blog people want to see that you’re in it for the long haul.

It will take time for people to see that you’re posting useful travel related material, talking about your peers, while getting to know a bit more about you at the same time. Plant the seeds of your travel blog in a few good places, be patient and persistent, and connect with as many like-minded people as you can and you’ll expand your travel blog for years to come.

[photo by: luc legay]

In Part 1 of The Basics of Building a Successful Travel Blog I talked about how important it is to find your voice and a travel niche that you can become an expert in. It’s important to establish yourself within a good collection of material that stays on topic and doesn’t divert from your main niche and direction. Keep your posting schedule, voice, and topic consistent and readers will keep coming back to read what you’ve written.

Don’t Waste Time

In every post get to the point and do it fast. Take a lesson from journalists and use the upside down pyramid to organize your writing. Your most important and interesting information should be at beginning of each post. Your first sentence should pretty much tell what your entire post is about and convey the point you’re trying to get across.

• If you’re writing more of a travelogue based on your personal trips, try not to spend more time than you need on any given aspect of a place you’ve visited.

Take a look at what you’ve written before posting anything and cut out 20% of it. You can usually find lots of added text that doesn’t quite fit or is more filler than anything else. You need to be as efficient and effective of a writer as you can for an Internet audience.

Use Pictures, Lots of Them

Don’t neglect the visual aspect of your blog and make sure to include at least one picture per post. If you’re traveling remember to take pictures that will be specifically for your blog. Like your writing though just post the best and most interesting ones.

• Worried about posting the pictures you’ve taken because you’re not a great photographer? Learn how to take decent travel photos and add a personal touch to them.

Posting pictures you’ve taken, some with you in them, will help your readers connect with you and add to the personal feel of your travel blog.

Travel With Your Blog In Mind

Most travel blogs are written by people who travel more often than not and since you’re one of them you’ll need to prepare yourself for when you’re not able to sit down and post. Make sure to have a rough idea of when and where you’ll have wireless access and learn how to bum a wi-fi signal on the road.

Before you leave for any trip make sure to prepare your mind and your travel blog.

1. Maintain a List of Ideas – You should always have a list of at least 20 things to blog about in a list somewhere. It can be pen and paper or in an email to yourself but don’t let yourself run out of topics (especially while you’re on the road!)
2. Use Series, Angles, and Elements – Take a single event or trip and break it down into a series of posts or look at the same subject from a number of different angles or voices. There are endless elements of any single event you can use to branch off into other posts. It just takes some dedicated time thinking about it.
3. If You Don’t Care, Nobody Else Will Either – When you post something that you’re not interested in or enthusiastic about none of your readers will be either. Find something interesting about the subject you want to write about or don’t post it at all.

Keep The Posts Coming

The most difficult aspect of travel blogging, and blogging in general, is to keep the posts going long after you’ve started. Most everyone starts out with energy and enthusiasm but it can be trying at times to keep it all going. Try and not force your writing and don’t be afraid to take a break from time to time if you need it. That’s where your idea lists come in handy. The longer the list the easier it will be to find something that gets your creative engine going on any given day.

A key to any successful blog is consistency. It’s simply unavoidable that you’ll need to write and continue to do so for a long time. It takes years of writing but pace yourself with a weekly posting goal. Set a schedule and make sure to blog according to that schedule as closely as you can. Whether it’s once a week, twice a month, or everyday pick a pace you can maintain for the long run.

More Work Than You Think

Travel blogging is harder than most people realize at first which is probably why so many stop doing it after awhile. It will take you years of writing and learning from your mistakes to establish trust and a connection with your readers. You can help yourself by organizing your thoughts and establishing a blogging routine.

Keep your own creativity and blogging passion alive by varying your content with pictures, some personality, and take breaks when you need them. Over time you’ll be able to build a loyal following and with luck reach your personal goals for a successful travel blog.

[photos by: mao_lini, Spencer Finnley, casasroger]

There are a number of benefits of maintaining a travel blog and you can add making money to the list by incorporating some of the following methods. The amount you can earn varies and is based on a number of factors but you can ensure even few extra dollars a month which you can use to save or spend on your upcoming travels.

It’s a matter of building useful links into a well thought out travel blog and considering turning some of your travel knowledge into services.

1. Focus On Your Content

Your primary focus should be the quality of the content you are posting on your travel blog. You can’t make every post perfect or great but you want to have a product that people will find useful and want to read. The more people you attract the better your ad revenue is likely to be, but more importantly you don’t want to turn away your audience in the pursuit of making a few bucks here and there.

• By maintaining a consistently and well written travel blog you’ll establish a trust with your readers. They’ll be more inclined check out the services and links you have on your site if you can show they’ll provide value.

2. Google Adsense

Probably the most popular and easiest way to monetize your blog is to join Google’s Adsense program. Set up an account and paste the code into your blog posts on in the sidebar and Google will custom tailor the adverts to match the content on the pages they are displayed. Each time someone clicks on an ad you’ll earn a small amount of money and Google will send you a check (or Paypal deposit) for every $100.

Adsense Tips:

• Configure the ads to match the background, color, and font of your travel blog.
• Place the ads in prominent positions across your blog but don’t ruin your design to do so. Here are Google’s recommendations for Adsense placement in blogs.
• Make sure not to ask people to click your ads or click them yourself since Google may suspend you account.  Read their terms of service carefully.

3. In-Text Advertising

There are several services that offer in-text advertising such as Infolinks and Kontera. Personally I’ve found Infolinks to be less obtrusive and offer higher payments per click. I’d recommend that you try both however and see which works for you. Set up is free and easy and both services allow you to customize how the links will look and the number that appear on each given page.

4. Affiliate Sales

You can sign up for programs like Amazon’s Associates or Commission Junction to develop banners and links for travel related products. Anytime someone follows one of these links and purchases a product or service you’ll get a little bit of money for it. Never advertise products you wouldn’t buy yourself (jeopardizing the relationship you have with your readers) and place a disclaimer (here’s the Travel Blog Advice disclaimer) somewhere visible on your blog letting people know you make use of affiliate links.

5. Blog Contests

Contest Beat and Contest Blogger post a number of free contests with cash and gift prizes everyday. Most are asking for essays or interesting photos, two things your travel blog is already filled with. Even if you don’t win a prize you’ll at least have a post or two for your travel blog. I also run a number of contests on my other travel blog foXnoMad and if you’d like to get the latest news about the next one consider subscribing to my bi-monthly newsletter.

6. Paid Reviews

Some travel bloggers have had some success writing paid reviews of products and services using Pay Per Post and Review Me. Based on the popularity of your blog you’ll get paid a few bucks for 100-400 word reviews you post on your travel blog. You can choose to disclosure whether or not a review is sponsored (which I strongly recommend) some services like Review Me don’t force you to always write positive reviews so be honest. Your readers will appreciate it.

7. Be An Expert Of A Destination or Travel Service

Being a frequent traveler or an expat can make your specific knowledge of a place or specific aspect of traveling a valuable tool for others. Consider offering your services by converting your knowledge into tours or setting up holiday arrangements for others. You can also try your hand doing some travel writing by offering your services on site like eLance or by submitting some travel posts to Matador.

Stay Focused and Realistic

I’ll emphasize again that it’s important to make quality content your primary focus but not be discouraged from making a little bit of side money from your travel blog as well. It’s just a matter of prioritizing them. For those of you who want to expand your travel blog into a network of sites you can leverage to increase your earnings and a more detailed account of how to increase your earnings, I’d recommend you check out Matt Kepnes’ eBook, How To Make Money With Your Travel Blog.

[photo by: on2wheelz]

A successful travel blog, in terms of readership, can help you expand your blog to other social networks, increase revenue, and open the doors to other writing outlets. There is no one way to build a successful travel blog and to do so you’ll need to leverage several angles with these beginner travel blog tips.

Define A Topic

Personal travelogues are difficult to maintain over the long run and it’s best to pick a specific topic within the travel genre that you can keep writing about as your travel slow down. That’s not to say that you can’t post about your own travels from time to time but find something specific. The more specific the better.

• You should be able to define your blog to a stranger in a sentence or two. If you can’t it’s time to narrow your scope.

It’s never too late to begin and narrow down your scope. If you do have an existing travel blog  take a look at your most popular posts and the ones that generated the most discussion for ideas for what to focus on.

Express Yourself

In the sea of travel blog every topic you can imagine is being covered. You can talk about those topics too but if you don’t establish yourself in your writing less people will care about what you have to say. People will find your blog through search engines, social networks like Twitter, and word of mouth but if you don’t let yourself shine you’re just another travel blog about Mexico. People don’t read travel blogs for photos, advice, and travel stories – they read travel blogs for YOUR photos, YOUR advice, and YOUR travel stories.

Don’t Neglect Your Voice

Make sure that you’ve created a strong blog persona. Preferably using your real name and keeping that name consistent across all the Internet when you leave comments and on any social networking accounts you’re a part of. Don’t mistake establishing a voice for ranting or just posting away whatever you happen to be thinking at the moment. Focus your travels and thoughts into coherent posts that will draw readers in and allow them to learn more about you.

Be Accessible

Most travel bloggers when they first start out try to mask themselves to a degree for various reasons. Remember that it’s your personality that people are ultimately drawn to and will make your blog posts stand out from the crowd. Make yourself easy to see and easy to find.

• Use your real name and have a picture of yourself that’s easy to find.
• Have a clearly visible and complete contact page. Include both a contact page (WP Contact Form is a good one for WordPress blogs) and list where you can be found on social networks.

Now that you’ve begun to establish your voice it’s time to turn your efforts into coherent, effective posts that can reach a wide audience. In Part 2 I’ll show you how to create posts that your readers can relate to and learn from while you keep it all going.

[photos by: House Photography, Saad.Akhtar, tanakawhow]

Writing an eBook in conjunction with your travel blog can be a great way to challenge you creatively, promote your travel blog, and encourage casual readers to become subscribers. Before you dive in though it’s good to set out a direction and plan to follow. eBooks take more time and thought than any old blog post so setting a few markers and milestones along the way will help you finish a complete product.

Have A Specific Topic

Having a well defined topic not only makes for a better book but allows your writing to flow without your book being all over the place. What is it you want to write about – How to Make Money with Your Travel Blog, or Overcoming the 7 Major Obstacles to Traveling the World are well defined subjects. “Traveling around the world” or “backpacking in Europe” can be good places to start but refine them so it’s easy to tell what exactly the eBook is about.

Add something to your title or subject that you can keep going back to in the eBook itself. “Traveling around the world on $20 a day” or “backpacking in Europe at 22” are good ways to personalize the title.

Build From Scratch Or Build Upon

Your travel blog is a wealth of information you can use to keep generating new content and your eBook is no different. Taking existing material and using it for your eBook can be successful, just make sure to add to what you’ve got and touch upon things that you can’t always get to in a short blog post. If you decide to build upon what you’ve got for your eBook make sure to provide new value in the book in addition to what you’ve got on your blog.

Starting From Scratch

Go in reverse and take the ideas you build in your eBook and find ways to incorporate them into blog posts and your other writing. Maybe there are a few posts on your travel blog you think revolve around the same topic and an eBook would be a good place to bring it all together.

• Consider a new angle – Perhaps you’re not very personal on your travel blog or stick with a single philosophy. Use your eBook to mix it up and show off another side of yourself.
• See what your peers are writing – You should have a big RSS reader full of feeds from travel blogs. If you don’t there are travel magazines, online journals, and plenty of other travel content out there. What are other people writing and what’s your take. Agree or go against the grain? It doesn’t have to be travel related – inspiration can come from anywhere. What’s on your mind right now?
• Collaborate – It can be scary opening up your writing projects to others but it’s a good idea to reach out to other travel bloggers and writers your familiar with from time to time. From asking for opinions to working together on some material for your eBook, talking with like minds will enhance your work. Embrace the community.

Set A Schedule

Don’t brood and spend an eternity on getting your eBook going. You don’t just get one shot – there are other opportunities to write about other topics and if your first book is terrible the worse that can happen is you’ll learn from your mistakes. Leave your insecurities behind and set a schedule that includes some basic milestones.

• Defining a Topic
• Completing the Introduction
• Section 1, 2, 3 (however you want to break it up)
• Finishing the Conclusion
• Sending Out Drafts
• Edits
• Finalizing the eBook and Getting It Ready For The World

Take The First Step

I won’t outline all of the details in this post on how to actually put together an eBook (that’s another post coming up) but the hardest step you’ll take is actually writing the first word. Open up whatever word editing program you like and start typing and let the words flow like water. Don’t worry about spell check, fixing grammar, or anything else.

Get something down on paper, in your computer, somewhere. Once you start it’s a lot easier than you think. You’ll be providing value to your readers both old and new. At the end of the process your eBook will be a great champion of your own blog and something you can consider selling or give away to your new subscribers.

For those of you wondering how to move your travel blog from Google Blogger to WordPress Digital Inspiration has a video that gives you the basic idea. It’s not a complicated process and WordPress makes the transition easy for those of you who aren’t comfortable with database and template files.

This video is a quick summary of the process, for a complete step-by-step you can read the entire post on Digital Inspiration. As always, before you make any changes to your blog make sure to back up your database and your WordPress template files just in case something doesn’t work right.

Keep your travel blog going even when you’re on the road by setting a weekly posting schedule. Creating a calendar of when your blog will have fresh posts will help keep your blog going even when you can’t be in front of your computer. Traveling can make travel blogging difficult, but only if you’re unprepared. Getting ready in advance and setting a realistic goal to have 1, 2, 3, posts a week will make it easy for your travel blog to keep working, even when you’re on vacation.

Set A Weekly Schedule

Unless you want your travel blog to be a vacation blog about a trip or two you took that will eventually die out, it’s important to be consistent. Both for yourself and your readers. If you really want to have a good travel blog that people will keep coming back to week after week, day after day, you need to blog on a regular, fairly predictable basis. It’s not quantity but consistency.

Find a realistic pace for yourself, whether it’s once every other week or 3 times a day. Once you’ve got a number of posts you’re comfortable writing per week, stick with it.

Work In Breaks

It’s not always possible to get a post up for some reason, whether you’re traveling or just need a break from the computer. Give yourself some slack – I’d say about 15% per month. So if you post once a week, after 6 posts you can miss a week. This works best if you post on a more frequent basis but don’t beat yourself up if you miss a post here and there.

How You Benefit From A Weekly Posting Schedule

1. Save time. Thinking about what to write can waste a lot of time so when you get a flurry of ideas write them down. If you’ve got 4 ideas and post twice a week, you’re now set for half a month. Whenever you get ideas write them down, no matter how stupid they sound. You can usually branch off into more posts.
2. Get in rhythm. You’ll find that some posts are longer than others and your tone will vary over the course of a few posts. Having a schedule will let be more aware of this rhythm, ultimately helping you generate ideas and improve your writing by mixing up the tone of your posts.
3. Less stress. When you sit down in front of the computer, you want to use as much of that time for writing as you can. Save time and stress by not wasting an hour trying to think of something to write. If you’ve got an idea of what you want to write in advance you’ll spend less time twiddling your thumbs.
4. Increase your focus. You can break down your blog posts into very specific topics deserving of their own posts. There are multiple aspects you can focus on in any given post. Having a weekly schedule you can write a series of posts out in advance so your blog keeps going while you take a rest.
5. Keep it fun. When I first started my travel blog foXnoMad, I had no direction and my posts were all over the place. It was difficult for casual readers (and myself) to understand what my travel blog was about. I forced my writing simply for the sake of writing which resulted in a lot of bad posts. Having a schedule helps you keep your creative energy going because if your posts are boring for you, they’ll be boring for your readers too.

No matter what your goals for your travel blog, if you want to keep the readers you have and gradually increase the number of them you have you need to keep your travel blog interesting and updated on a regular basis.

Traveling benefits your travel blog and shouldn’t take away from it. Just set a reasonable schedule you can work with when you’re traveling and use to prepare for when your travel schedule gets hectic. It’s a matter of planning and balancing the content and ideas you have to their full potential with a clear mind. A weekly posting schedule is an important step in that direction.

[photos by: Jayel Aheram, Joe Lanman]

This post originally appeared in foXnoMad.

Maintaining a travel blog requires experience traveling, making it difficult at times to keep writing new posts when you’re on the move. Yesterday I suddenly realized my December travel schedule is looking more hectic as I hop all over the US and in Asia. Balancing traveling with writing is a dilemma all travel writers and bloggers face from time to time.

Luckily there are a number of quick ways to post quick, good material, in advance, without jeopardizing your schedule.

Pictures You’ve Taken

The easy way out is to post some travel photos you find online or from other blogs. However it’s much more interesting for your readers to see photos that you’ve personally taken (here are mine) – even if you don’t feel they’re ‘good enough’.

• The pictures and posts that I don’t feel are ‘good enough’ are usually the ones that generate the most feedback. Don’t fret too much and hit “publish”!

• Include yourself in some of the pictures since most of the travel photos you post are likely to be of other people.

Chop It Down

Almost any written post can be cut down, even ones as short as 200 words. Make a short series of a post that you would normally run on one day. You can even incorporate pictures into the flow and potentially turn one regular post into a week’s worth when your traveling.

• Take a single topic and do the opposite, now you have two posts.

• Find out what other travelers blogging are saying about the place or topic your talking about write about what you plan to prove and disprove (two posts right there).

Get Connected

Spend some time getting in touch with other travelers, writers, and online tools that you think would be useful for travelers. Other bloggers appreciate links and companies love it when you write about their products or services.

• Next time you leave a comment on a travel-related blog check out the links associated with the other commenters. Find a few and feature your favorite links.

• Do a Google Blog Search on a destination you’ve never been to but have always wanted to see. Pick one or two of the best entries you find and write about them.

• Write a short summary of where you’re traveling and ask if anyone has any personal experiences, advice, or is traveling in the area and would like to meet up. You’ll get the best advice from helpful readers as I did before my recent trip to New Delhi.

• If you’re on Facebook as I am, you probably get various responses to your status updates. Pose a travel related question and then post the replies you get on Facebook (or Twitter, etc).

• Sign up to a new (preferably free) online travel service or tool like TripSay and use it during your trip. Jot down a few mental notes and write an informal review in a series. On the first day announce you’re using a new service see if any of your readers are on it as well.

Two Birds With One Stone

Make your blog a source of content. It’s easy to ignore your own blog in your writing, but remember, it is the primary medium which people use to read about your travels, see your pictures, and get in touch with you.

• Update one of your primary blog pages like your About Me page and post those changes in a blog entry. Hopefully you’ve now got a better about page and one less day to worry about writing.

• Introduce or explain a specific feature of your website or blog. Don’t assume that everyone understands or notices things like RSS feeds, comments, or search pages.

• Tweak, update, or recap an old post that may again be relevant (i.e. has the economy effected your travel plans?)

Some Others Ideas To Keep In Mind

• Tell others where your going and that you’ll be offline.
• Useful videos – this usually only works if you’ve got a good video on hand or in your inbox. Otherwise searching for a video can be a big time waster and leave you with nothing to show for it.
  
• Polls – Ask simple questions and do surveys. I’ve found it’s useful to limit the number of choices in a poll to only a few for the best response.
• Enter a travel contest and write about it – There are plenty of travel-related contests around the Internet and on blogs.
• Write about quick things to write about when traveling 😉

Quick content doesn’t mean cheap or uninteresting material. In fact, the traveling time crunch forces you to be a bit more creative to come up with quick and different things to share with your readers. Breaking up the normal routine is healthy for your travel blog and not something to stress about (enjoy your trip!).

Shorter posts can be a nice way to give yourself and readers a break, ultimately keeping your travel blogging passion alive and your readers coming back.

[photos by: KatieKrueger, ariehsinger, Essjay is happy in NZ]

This post originally appeared on foXnoMad.

So you’re going on a trip and have decided to create a Blogger account, Myspace blog, or personal web page so that your friends and family can keep up with your travels. You want them to read it don’t you?

Writing about traveling on a blog isn’t like writing an essay, but more of a newspaper article. Instead of making a 1 week trip to Cancun an epic novel, turn it into an eyewitness report so that anyone will want to read it.

1. The Upside Down Pyramid

Write about the most important and most interesting things first. Even your dear mother will stop reading after a few lines (and maybe that’s a good thing) so it’s good to get the highlights across quickly.

2. Get To The Point!

Blog writing doesn’t require a thesis or an introduction paragraph.. Just tell us what you want to say from line one and go with it.

3. Keep It Short

Pretty straightforward. Reread what you wrote before you post it and then chop off 20%. Then post it.

4. Break It Down Into Multiple Posts

You woke up and had mint tea, then talked to the rowdy Swedes rooming next door, before hailing a cab, then negotiating prices at the market…it all sounds very interesting, but it’s hard to digest all at once. Break up each noteworthy sight, event, funny story etc. into multiple posts. That way people can browse through them, focusing on the elements they find most interesting.

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