The Importance Of Finding A Niche For Your Travel Blog

When starting a travel blog it’s easy to come under the impression that “travel” is all the niche you need. Yet if you’re trying to reach a wide audience while managing a travel blog and at the same time generating post after post, a specific niche or angle can help keep you on the right track. The general travel blogsphere is a crowded one with many niches yet to be discovered or occupied. Without one your voice gets lost and leaves your screaming louder at deaf ears in a crowded room.

Covering It All

It’s tempting to try and cover every travel subject and topic for fear of missing out on any potential readers. Creating or falling into a niche doesn’t limit you from covering most any travel topic however, so long as you approach it from the angle you’ve developed on your site. If you don’t know where to start you can begin by asking yourself these questions:

1. What is my travel blog about?
2. How do people view my travel blog?
3. What do I enjoy writing about?
4. What posts seem to click or are more popular than others?

You don’t have to come up with something immediately, but the answers to these questions can help you get started thinking just what your travel blog is about. Figuring out a niche also helps you develop your voice and determine what it is you want out of your travel blog.

Your (Consistent) Voice Will Flow Like Water

When you have a niche your posts will begin to flow more like water, connected to each other by a common bond. It becomes easier for your readers to follow each post as opposed to having them bump down the road as you bounce around from topic to topic. Your posts should be like an open hand to any new readers and your voice is the path they’ll follow to keep hearing what it is you have to say.

• It’s Never Too Late – To refine your voice or focus in on a specific niche or angle to tackle the giant subject that is travel.
• Doesn’t Have To Be Dramatic – Take incremental steps to refining your voice. A niche isn’t some tangible place your blog is headed, but more of an outlook rather than a topic. Most people fall into their niche or voice and it’s a gradual process.

A good place to find or create your voice is to look at your tagline (or come up with one). What does that single line say about your travel blog to you? It says a lot to your readers and can be the spark to finding the niche for your site. On foXnoMad for example, my tagline “travel smarter” is what guides most of my posts. Whether it’s a tech post or one about how to bring your pets to the US, the approach is similar. Breaking down big travel tasks into smaller more manageable ones so that hopefully when you’re done reading you’ll be traveling smarter in one way or in a specific place. More than a niche it’s an approach but one that helps my determine how I want to take on a given topic.

Your Personality Is A Big Part Of Your Niche

The voice of your travel blog says a lot about who you are and your personality is one of the most important factors to building a successful travel blog. How you see the world and one aspect of how you travel can be your niche – your niche is inherently you. Do you like to travel luxury or perhaps are in love with China? Maybe trains are your thing but that doesn’t mean you can’t write about planes – the approach is just as important as the topic.

A niche for your travel blog, one that you can sum up in a sentence or two, not only focuses your travel blog but your writing as well. You’ll find it easier to write about travel with a path in mind rather than trying to approach it from a new angle every time.

[photos by: Joaquin Villaverde (shouting face), rogersmj (water flowing from tap)]