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. Want a quick one to enter – take a look at the Inspire Me Africa Photo Contest I’m currently hosting.
- 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]
Hey Anil,
It looks like this post is custom written for me… lol. I am exactly in the same spot that you describe. Thanks 🙂
What do you think about queueing up posts and scheduling them for publishing in your absence? Personally I think its cheating and very impersonal 😛 If I am offline, let my blog be offline too.
cheers, Priyank.
@ Priyank:
It all depends on what you want from your blog – but unless you want to just reach a few family members and some friends, I think it’s best to keep to a regular schedule.
Here I tend to write about more general travel and travel writing topics and I do queue up so there is something new most every week day.
I don’t think it’s cheating, even if you’re primarily writing about your travels – since even a single day’s worth of traveling can inspire several posts!
By queuing you save maintain consistency as well as make it easy for your readers to digest and give them something to look forward to 🙂
SOme good ideas though I think it does depend on your style of blog.
@ Mark:
I suppose, but I think for the majority of travel blogs most of these are applicable – even when you do have time to write 😉
Writing while traveling is a drag – especially when writing isn’t something you feel you do all that well. Practice makes perfect, but is difficult when there’s less motivation to write than, say, explore a new city or hang out with other travelers at the hostel. Even dealing with photos in a timely manner can get lost in the shuffle.
Good to see some recommendations on how to maintain some line of communication with blog readers. Have some ideas already.
thanks!
-T
Glad this post helped – it’s the ironic conundrum of travel blogging. Travel more, less computer time 🙂