I’m a full time travel blogger behind the pin the map project which was voted a top 100 travel blog of 2015 I started the pin the map project two years ago and since then have been on assignment in various countries from Colombia to France worked with various brands and bloggers and I’m soon headed to Morocco and Vietnam for aspiring travel bloggers out there the following tips will help get you started with your very own blog the first step is choosing your passion it seems pretty obvious but you’d be surprised to know that before I started in the map project I had a fashion blog a restaurant blog and a postgraduate book to just kind of talk about life after college and all three blogs are gone why because although I enjoyed writing about those things and I did enjoy you know the world of fashion world and just have to document life after college it wasn’t enough to keep my interest and vlogging has to keep your interest
step two so you know what to blog about but now the next step is where do you begin well there’s a couple of different blogging platforms so you have WordPress you have a blogger you have Squarespace those are the main players I like to use WordPress I think it’s an amazing blogging platform wordpress.com is the free version and wordpress.org is the more complicated kind of elevated version of WordPress I started out on board cast command my URL used to be the pin the mat project wordpress.com once I started my blog I just started writing and decided to give myself three to four months to see if I would really stick to the project I knew I had kind of started and stopped blogs in the past
so before I invested in it I decided to just give it time I waited three months and every day I broke and every day my passion for the project just flared and I decided I was going to invest so I purchased my domain I hired a website designer who is responsible for the beautiful layout I’m obsessed with today on the pin the met project and she also helped me transfer my blog from WordPress calm to wordpress.org which allows for a lot more customization and just freedom to kind of tweet your site and make it however you envision it being step 3 also known as one of the trickier steps is building your problem there’s going to be a whole separate video dedicated to building your blog following and it’s going to look at organic ways to build it from social media to word of mouth to ways that are kind of not organic but you know paying for advertising in other ways to drive traffic to your blog I used to work in advertising for some major clients so this is going to be a really good follow-up video on how to build your blog
but for the purpose of today let’s look at building your social media following so you start at the blog you know what you’re blogging your bow and you invested in it and you want to get people to read your content of course so what do you do you start building yourself up on social media social media is key Twitter Facebook Instagram YouTube get all the social media channels you can and pour your time into it if you’re going into travel blogging Instagram is so important because Travel blogging is all about transporting your readers to a different destination and photos and videos are credible for that so definitely embrace Instagram it’s one of the easiest ways to gain a following quickly and to drive people to your website and definitely look at Twitter and Facebook as well to share your posts whenever you post something and to engage your audience the rule here is that think of social media like a dinner party if you’re at dinner with your friends and they’re only talking about themselves and not asking you about your life and the latest girl or guy you’re dating the conversation is kind of boring but if it’s a dialogue and they’re asking you questions just like you’re asking them all of a sudden you’re interested that’s what social media should be like
number four is by far the most important tip which is put yourself out there and don’t be afraid of rejection if I had an approach top-deck travel in hopes of partnering with them I wouldn’t be going rocking with my legs if I had an approach Contiki I wouldn’t be going to Vietnam and September if I had an approached mode media I wouldn’t be part of their blogger network in Tunisia which reaches four hundred six million readers worldwide if I hadn’t pitched the story device I wouldn’t have been on assignment in Colombia the list goes on but the only reason I have gotten many of the opportunities I’ve gotten booked in the map project and my travel writing is because I dare to ask for it the final step is being consistent in your blogging and evolving your blog pretty straightforward but if you want to keep your readers you have to turn out new content every day preferably or at least degree times a week think about it this way if a reader discovers your vlog and loves what they see and they check your blog on Monday made a brand new story they check it back on Tuesday and nothing’s new and then check back the next 7 days and nothing is new you might lose that reader and you can’t fault them there’s a whole world of talented bloggers some of them traveling at this very minute sharing amazing posts and stories and fresh content and if you’re not turning out anything new you’re losing those readers so always oh is post and if you run out of ideas because let’s be honest we’re not vending machines of stories look to profess some of your old content ideas, for example, I had a post on where to eat in New York City that I wrote a year ago I updated the photos added a few more places and then reran it as a fresh post and there we go that was a new post on a new day and I didn’t have to come think of brand new ideas but sometimes the inspiration isn’t there especially if you’re in between trip
the other thing is to keep evolving your blog it’s a great way to discover other bloggers that are successful in the field and to take note of what they’re doing for their sites that work for them if you notice they’re using a widget that is really great at capturing newsletter subscriptions you can download it if you notice they have a travel shop and you love the way its design and love the concept create a travel shop and make it your own on your own blog look at what other bloggers are doing and look at ideas that work for them and you’ll start to learn and create those ideas for yourself.
