Working in the travel industry means you'll often find yourself in fantastic, far-off places.
Whether you're exploring the world from the cabin of a Boeing or being whisked away on a travel agent famil, a career in travel opens up endless opportunities to roam far and wide – and no doubt you're going to want to share the experience!
We asked travel and fashion blogger Brooke to share her expert tips on how to start a travel blog so you can keep track of your adventures (and make your friends insanely jealous!).
Starting a blog is one of the best things I’ve ever done – it’s brought some of the coolest people I know into my life and is an amazing record of my adventures and experiences (the good, the bad, and the funny).
But where do you begin?
When I started my blog four years ago, all I had was my travel bucket list, a four-year-old laptop, a point-and-shoot camera and a need to start writing again.
These days, I’ve upgraded to an SLR camera and a MacBook Pro, my bucket list has quadrupled, I still don’t understand coding, and I now have followers from around the world.
Here’s a quick guide to help budding travel bloggers get started...
Before you create a travel blog, it’s good to know what you’re hoping to achieve. This will help with the look and feel of your site, whether it will be a personal travel diary or a blog filled with first-hand travel tips.
If you’re thinking long-term – maybe with high hopes of making money – you’ll want to develop your site with flexibility in mind. This will save you from moving platforms down the track and running the risk of losing content and/or readers.
From my experience, Wordpress is a great place to start because you can migrate from their low-cost, hosted platform to a self-hosted blog where you can make money through advertising, affiliate links and selling products.
Once you have a name in mind, a quick Google and domain search should show if your name is already being used and if the URL is available. You’ll also want to check the name’s availability on your preferred social media accounts.
All of the major blogging platforms offer a variety of themes, free or at a one-off cost, to help you achieve your ideal blog look. This is especially handy if you’re like me and don’t know a thing about coding!
Most themes can be modified with images, colours, fonts, menus and backgrounds, and you can add widgets or plug-ins like feeds from your social media accounts, email sign up etc.
It’s always good to have an ‘about me’ page including basic contact details for people or businesses who might want to work with you.
It can be hard to blog while you’re travelling for a number of reasons, so don’t beat yourself up if your posting schedule changes. Besides, you don’t want to miss an amazing experience because you’re too busy blogging!
Make social media your best friend and use it to tell anyone and everyone about your blog. When it comes to social media, I prefer to regularly post content on just a couple of key platforms.
Running multiple accounts (if you want to do it well) takes up time that could be better spent exploring a new city. The fewer accounts you have, the easier it will be to build and engage your audience.
The app ITTT (If This Then That) is a great way to quickly and easily share content between accounts.
It’s easy to get caught up sharing your experiences and inspiring others, but don’t spend so much time looking through the camera lens or taking notes that you forget to enjoy the moment.