As ironic as it seems, traveling, and blogging about travel can be more difficult when you’re actually traveling. That’s a common sentiment anyway, but when it comes down to it traveling may be a bit harder on you but it’s great for your travel blog. There are of course quite a few quick things you can post on your travel blog when you’re traveling too much to write, but the road is still your blog’s best friend. Don’t dread or neglect your blog when you’re traveling, with just a slight amount of prior planning you can turn even the simplest trip into a content generator that will ease your blogging duties for weeks to come.
Write Ahead
Writing a single blog post that’s well edited, linked to other relevant posts on your site and elsewhere, with photos or video to compliment the article takes time. Writing a second blog post right after doesn’t take nearly as much time. You can even break up the single post, expand on one of the points, or run a poll after or before the article and use it as material. That takes off the primary pressure of writing when you don’t know where your next wi-fi signal, clean table, or power outlet will be. The best practice is to write as far in advance as you can to the next point where you know you’ll have the magic ingredients any blogger needs – a reliable Internet connection and electricity.
Everything Is A Potential Post
Once you’re not consuming your mind obsessing over what you have (or haven’t written) you can focus on the world around you and how to write about it. There are ideas within topics around ideas everywhere. Traveling is the source of your writing passion, the driving force behind your blog. Don’t pass over the opportunity to use your travels for your travel blog. It’s when you don’t plan ahead that you bump into problems, you’ve got to focus forward, not backwards.
Experiment
For those of you who’ve never made a travel video, interviewed a hostel owner, or done a photo essay, a trip is a good time to invest in some new mediums for your blog. The element that traveling takes away from your blog is time, once you resolve that issue you are free to move in new directions and generate content on top of new content in different ways.
Enjoy The Game
As I sit here typing this in a hostel in Berlin, among loud people enjoying a drink in a bar that’s filling up rapidly, I’m watching a number of stories unfold before me. The most difficult thing I, and you face when traveling and blogging is the physical act of writing and getting online. Don’t over-complicate the process of travel blogging and neglect the most important part – you. When you do find a good connection and a little bit of time, work and write so you can use the rest of the time to actually travel. It’s one of the best things you can do for your travel blog.
[photos by: mbowiersr, Tiago Daniel]
Great tips Anil. My blog actually went a whole week (last week) w/out a new entry because I was overthinking it all and not keeping up on it! Good reminders for sure, for sure 🙂
I was feeling like that as well, sometimes it gets a bit overwhelming on the road. Missed your posts last week btw, looking forward to the new stuff 🙂
I always try to keep a stash of 3-8 evergreen pieces (book reviews, how-to stuff) written, saved and scheduled just in case I need to leave at a moment’s notice or can’t get to my blog for a couple days. It takes the pressure off and the blog breathing.
I really like your suggestions about experimenting. Interviewing someone like that might be fun.
Interviews are some of my favorite posts to read on other sites and work on as well. Hostel owners, in my experience, tend to have an interesting story or two 🙂
Great post!
I agree with the interview idea. It’s not something I’ve done in the past but definitely would like to do in the future to mix things up a bit. I think it’s great for making the readers feel like they’re involved.
Thanks Shibby, I like the added voice interviews give to my sites. Doing a video or audio interview I think also does a good job of capturing attention, I love seeing them on other sites.
Travel has been fantastic for our blog. While we have dropped out of the social networking a bit (and looking forward to reconnecting this summer when we take a short break) our views, stats and Page Rank are climbing daily. We post every day while traveling. It helps that there are two of us. We sit down at an internet cafe for several hours every 10 days or so and schedule posts for the upcoming week. It gives us time to travel and enjoy, but our blog never misses a beat.
We have had trouble keeping up with video while traveling, but that will give us a lot of extra content when we get home!
You’ve done such a good job with the pace while being on the road and staying organized. Congrats on the continuing success 🙂