6 Things to Keep in Mind Before Starting a Travel Blog

Writing a travel blog is a great way to document your own adventures and what you’ve learned along the way. It’s also a topic that has a huge potential following, as almost everyone is interested in traveling and visiting new places and it’s a great opportunity for affiliate marketing as there are loads of travel products out there.

travel blogging

The only problem is, there are loads of other bloggers who have realized this and have set up their own travel blogs. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing because lots of blogs indicate lots of interest, but you will need to think about how you can write about travel in a way that is individual to you and sets your blog apart from the others out there.

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What Specific Type of Travel Should You Write About?

When you are deciding this, it’s best to think about the type of travel that you enjoy the most and the destinations that you find most interesting. You will be spending a lot of time researching and writing about it, so it must be a topic that you genuinely find interesting!

Some example of types of travel you could think about are:

Weekend getaways in the United States
Traveling in Europe by rail
Backpacking through Southeast Asia on a shoestring budget
Luxury cruises in the Caribbean
Travel to abandoned locations around the world
The best snowboarding holidays in Canada

Whatever topic you choose you must choose something that you have some experience in, as your blog will come into its own when you can add your personal experiences and anecdotes – otherwise, your audience could get the same information from a travel agent!

You’ll notice that the topics suggested here are all very specific. This is because a specific topic is more likely to engage your audience strongly. Yes, your audience will be smaller than if you had a blog about travel generally, but if you decided just to write about travel generally then there is no reason for someone to choose your blog over anyone else’s. Getting specific means that you can attract an interested audience who want to hear what you have to say.

For example, Rvcamptravel.com is a niche blog which creates content around travelling through small toy hauler.

This kind of niche are easy to rank and low competition. They write many informational articles and also some commercial articles such as best rv gps.

In addition, they also creating a specific audience to get some reviews of rv related products. For instance, this blog post, best water heater for rv is helping others to choose the right heater.

All I mean to say is, Use your blog as an opportunity to take the trips that you want to take and then write about them, as this will keep you motivated to keep going.

What Is Your Unique Experience?

Once you know what type of travel you want to write about, it’s time to get into research mode. Have a look at all of the blogs you can that already exist for the type of travel that you are interested in and see how the authors are approaching them, what you like and what you don’t like. All of this information will feed into your blog idea.

Next, think about a way that you could write about your chosen type of travel that is unique to you. This is where you bring in personal experience and create a connection with your audience. For example, if you chose to write about weekend getaways in the United States and you are a mother of two, then this could be your angle. You could write about the challenges of traveling with children and provide tips on how to navigate new cities with children in tow. You would then strongly connect with other mothers who enjoy weekend getaways in the United States. They will be able to see that you share similarities with them and will therefore be interested in what you have to say. They will know that the advice you offer is relevant to them, and so they are likely to keep coming back to your blog.

This is a small niche, but a small niche is still thousands of readers! A smaller audience that is strongly engaged with you and your topic is much better than a larger audience that occasionally skims your articles without really taking them in.

When you write about a small and specific niche, this also helps search engines to see what it is that your area of expertise is. Search engines will give results from your site within your area of expertise a higher ranking, which will help you to grow your audience.

Design Your Avatar

Once you know what type of travel you will be writing about, and your unique viewpoint on that type of travel, you can create your avatar.

Your avatar is a kind of character sketch of a specific person from within your target audience. You will then use this avatar as a touchpoint every time you create some content, and you can consider whether your avatar would find your content interesting and relevant and use this to help you decide what to write about.

Things to think about when you are designing your avatar:

How old are they? This will help you to understand what references they will and won’t understand.
What is their level of technical expertise? This will help you to design your blog – for example, someone with a lower level of technical expertise is likely to get along better with a blog that has a simple and easy to use design.
What is their financial status?
What are their hobbies?
Do they have a family, and if so, who is in that family?

So if you were writing about weekend getaways in the United States for women with children, your avatar could be a 45-year-old mother of two who has a pretty good understanding of digital life, who has a reasonable disposable income, and enjoys weekend getaways.

As they have a family, they are constrained by things like childcare, school holidays, and child-friendly destinations, and they probably don’t have loads of time to be doing independent research and reading reviews so would probably appreciate a snappy and concise writing style.

Start Travelling!

If you want to write an interesting and relevant travel blog, the most important thing you can do is travel! Personal anecdotes and experience are what will make your blog the most intriguing to your reader.

Draw up a shortlist of destinations based on what your avatar would be interesting in reading about, and of course based on where you actually want to go. These should be the same thing if you’ve designed your avatar well.

The image that is often portrayed about travel bloggers is that they just go anywhere they like at the drop of a hat. The reality is that to get the most out of a trip, you need to plan it. Before you get going, you must do these things:

Research your destination and work out what you want to do while you are there. This will feed into your hotel selection.
Draw up an itinerary and contact the businesses that you will be visiting to let them know. They may be able to talk with you and give you better content for your blog if they know you are coming.
Plan your travel so that you don’t have any unnecessary stress. Plan out how you are going to get to the airport and make sure you leave enough time to allow for any delays. It’s well worth booking airport parking in advance as availability isn’t guaranteed. Parkon offers parking near EWR airport and in other locations around the country all within one app! You should also plan how you are going to get from the airport to your hotel once you arrive at your destination.
Make a packing list so that you ensure you don’t forget anything. You don’t want to make it all the way to your destination and find out that you’ve forgotten your laptop charger!

Be sure to make lots of notes and take lots of photos while you are there, you can never have too many, and once you’ve left, you won’t be able to get more.

Think About ‘Evergreen’ Content

Evergreen content is content that remains relevant and useful for your readers for a long time, as opposed to content that is talking specifically about an event in time. If your blog content remains relevant for a long period, it allows for your readership to grow over time.

Some ideas for the types of evergreen content that you can create are:

Listicles. For our avatar, you might list the top 10 US destinations for a family with young children to travel to.
Tips. For example, tips on how to keep children calm when traveling.
How-to guide. Our avatar might be interested in a guide on how to pack for a family of four in a small suitcase.
Product reviews. You could talk about the best sunscreen for children, for example.

Note that all of these ideas both address a problem that our avatar might have, and that they will continue to be relevant over time.

By filling your blog with evergreen content that is relevant to your avatar, you will establish yourself as a trusted expert. This will not only make people want to come back to your blog, but it will also improve your rating with Google, which means that they will return your articles higher up in the search rankings.

Review Your Content

Once you have your content, don’t just push it out there and forget about it. Be sure to make use of an analytics tool so that you can see which ideas are working and which aren’t and pay attention to the comments from your readers.

Finally, engaging with potential members of your audience is a valuable tool when you are designing content, listen to what they are saying and design your content around that. You can also make use of social media to speak to members of your audience and gauge their interest. Starting a blog on travel experiences could be a strenuous task but if you will follow the above tips, it will definitely help you to kickstart your journey.

I hope you liked this article, now it’s your turn to comment below about your blogging obstacles. I would really like to answer your questions. Also, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well.