I’ve been rolling an idea around in my head for a few months, this idea that there seems to be a shift in the landscape of blogging about travel. Rather than define this for you now, I’m asking you to help me confirm or invalidate my sense of how things are going. I’d love to have you answer a question that’s both simple and kind of complex.
Why did you start your travel blog? Why are you blogging about travel now?
In case you’re nervous, know that I don’t think there’s a right answer. I’m not looking for the complicated back story or your personal history of blogging, I’m looking for that iconic elevator pitch, that bare bones one or two lines that explains what’s at the heart of your motivation. I’m tempted to throw in more guidelines, but I don’t want to front load the answers.
So, if you blog about travel, a little help? Keep it super short, two or three lines, as minimal as you can. In the comments, please? And thanks.
I started in the classic “keep family informed of what is going on while being lazy and only sending it out once” sense. Easier than emailing the same info. The first blog posts on my site will bore you to tears.
But I kept going because of parts two and three of my personal motto: Explore, Inspire, Educate.
I like to think the blog accomplishes those last two items and I like to be useful, giving people information that will help them in some way.
My new motto is educate, inspire, and engage. Our Venn Diagrams have crossover 🙂
When I started artist-at-large.com there weren’t that many travel writing sites out there (compared to today anyway). The idea of artist-at-large.com came from my days of working at Lonely Planet, where I found that my ideas and submissions about focusing on cultural travel were met with blank stares. Back then, pre-internet, my idea was a print publication company, then the internet opened up and I jumped on the paperless bandwagon. That’s why I started.
Right now, while I still love writing about my sojourns short and long, I find the “travel blog” genre full of detritus that I have no interest in reading. It’s hard to slog through it all to find the gems – I do know the gems are out there. But I see a lot of “look at me” blog post links flying by on twitter. It’s pretty boring, actually, watching everyone fight, no matter how subconsciously, for attention.
Now I’m focusing more on the cultural and social networking aspects of the site, which, in hindsight, has made me glad that I had more than one niche, so the site can evolve and morph.
Someone left a comment on a post on artist-at-large yesterday that sums up my observations: “It is so refreshing to see like minded individuals being able to come together and share their travel experiences with particular attention paid to important areas such as arts and culture. An avid traveller myself, I find it often difficult to source handy tips on what experiences I should partake in to help me get the most out of my travels.”
Well said Kimba. I too find most “travel” blogs to be very boring, and think the general quality out there to be very poor. We took an around-the-world trip two years ago and we started a blog with the intent of keeping our family informed of what we were up to. It didn’t really serve that purpose since we also posted updates to Facebook. People came to depend our Facebook status updates to know what was happening and even if we posted links to the blog we got very little traffic or interest in our posts. In the end, it became a way to document our trip and I’m glad I updated the blog fairly regularly, even if there were very few readers. If I were starting over, I think I’d create an email list that I’d send updates to and post other updates on Google+ only. I’d would NOT update Facebook at all because it’s too exclusionary (there ARE people not on Facebook) and once there’s one update on Facebook people expect all updates to go there. For example, trying to get people to look at our pictures in Picasa was a battle. People would only seem to find the Facebook ones and see surprised there were more pictures somewhere else. I’m rambling now, but I feel like the ease of sites like Facebook has made blogs obsolete. We expect all information to get pushed to us and reading individual blogs has become a chore. Additionally, Google killed Reader when it failed to integrate sharing with Google+. When we got back from our trip I updated the blog for a while with small trips and hikes we took in the area, but eventually lost interest in it. I still enjoy writing about my travels, but I find the blog format to be dated and not fresh anymore.
I was already doing a lot of writing but decided to start a travel blog when I retired because I love travel and I love telling everyone about my travels in excruciating detail. With a blog, I can do just that and some people might actually find it helpful. I am still doing it because it has opened up other writing opportunities and travel opportunities which has been surprising and wonderful. There is nothing better than someone telling you they love something you wrote. I never could have imagined the travel opportunities that have come my way because of the blog and I am very grateful.
I’m not a travel blogger, so I don’t know if my 2 cents are helpful to you, but I’ll give them anyway.
Why do I blog? For the love of writing and being read by other people. That’s it. It’s become more distilled as I’ve gone on, in that I want to write better, and I want people to read that writing and to enjoy reading it, but that’s what’s at the heart of it for me. The writing.
I’ve been writing for 3 years now. The blog began as a notebook, to remember what I was learning about traveling with our new dog (my husband is a geek, so he reaches for a blog, not a Moleskine, and this time he convinced me), but people began reading it, and commenting, and commenting on each other’s comments, and writing to me. I’m not a particularly sociable person, but without expecting to, I created a community — and without expecting to, I really enjoy being part of it.
I worked for about a dozen years as a freelance writer, mostly writing about businesses for newspapers, magazines and Chamber of Commerce organizations. I’d always been interested in writing about regional travel (occasionally getting a travel story assignment for my local newspapers and occasionally pitching travel stories to other pubs), so when the bottom dropped out of freelancing in print around metro Detroit about 3-4 years ago, I eventually began to see it as an opportunity to go online and become the regional travel writer I always wanted to be.
I’ve never really had a sustained travel blog of my own. In 2007 I applied for a blogging position at World Hum because I wanted to write features for World Hum. Yep. Nearly five years and a couple thousand posts later, here I am.
To overcome literary stage fright.
Kathryn, I love this statement. I feel the same way!
My blog started as a personal blog and morphed into a travel blog, because travel is something I’ve always liked. I keep blogging because I still love travel, because I want to keep improving my writing and storytelling, and because I want to provide people with the motivation and knowledge that can help them travel if they want to.
Like Katja, I can’t really say my blog is much of a travel blog as most of my posts are about my couch and all. But, for what it’s worth, I started my blog when I first moved to Japan over 5 years ago so I could write funny stories about the weird stuff I was eating for lunch and hopefully provide some entertainment to my friends and family back home.
I kept at it because I love writing, and I love entertaining people. And, while my blog has gone through quite a metamorphosis from its early days, I have to say my original goal is the same: to entertain people. I can’t say I have any grand desire to educate or inform or inspire others to travel or live abroad. In fact, my target audience is my mom. My mom doesn’t travel and has no desire to travel. But if I can write a story about living or traveling abroad that even someone like my mom can read and relate to and find funny, than I feel I’ve accomplished something.
I also used it initially to keep in touch. But also as a place for me to put rough drafts of stories and ideas that I knew I wanted to include in my book–I was already working on a very specific book project when I started the blog. I figured that if I was writing for an audience, even a small one, I’d have to write at least halfway decently (not just scribbled, meandering thoughts and half-sentences like my notebooks). That said, I ended up keeping the best scenes and arguments OFF the blog, because I wanted those key moments to be 100 percent fresh to book readers.
But now that the book project is over, I find it hard to get motivated to post on the blog. I don’t want to post simply for the sake of doing it; I want to have something specific to say, a story to tell.
It seems I may be an exception here. I started my blog on solo travel out of loss. Due to circumstances, I found myself traveling alone again and Google’s #1 site on solo travel was trashy. I wanted to fix that. (I haven’t but that’s ok. Maybe one day.) As a writer, someone who traveled since I was 15 and a person with a history of taking on projects, I started Solo Traveler. I continue because a community has grown. A community with diverse interests but also a shared appreciation of the value of traveling alone. I also continue because I am entrepreneurial and I would like to make this my life rather than being a hired pen. Again, we’ll see.
Here’s an arranged marriage metaphor which may or may not work. I began blogging out of necessity, from an emotion-less business standpoint. I wanted a travel writing platform to serve as an extension of my freelance work.
Now I love my blog like it’s a member of my family.
I started almost 7 yrs ago bec. I wanted to make myself practice, to be a better writer.
I keep it going because I have so many stories to tell, so many places and people and things that I want to write about, and no publication is ever going to buy them. Dorky as it sounds, I get joy from sharing that stuff.
And yeah, at this point it’s my calling card and a marketing tool.
In the case of The Spain Scoop, Nancy and I were both freelancer writers living in Barcelona. We love Barcelona, and wanted to share the love while also creating an online portfolio for editors.
Then it grew and we wanted to cover all of Spain. But the two of us aren’t experts on all of Spain, so we needed help (we wanted to give expert tips on travel and living in Spain – that’s the idea. A local voice.) So we now work with super talented writers all over Spain! This has been FUN! We’ve met other people in our field in Spain, but also have learned so much more about our adopted country.
I think some blogs are about the blogger, and that’s great. In the case of The Scoop it’s about us, but also we want to provide useful travel tips to people who might travel to Spain, and hopefully inspire them to discover new places in Spain they may not have thought to visit. It’s personal, it’s useful, it’s fun…and it’s for profit (though we’re not rolling in the dough yet).
Hope this helps!
Regina
To inspire people to live life on their own terms, follow their passion, and define their own idea of success, whether through travel or in some other capacity.
I launched “What a Trip” in Feb. 2007 as an extension of my Contra Costa Times newspaper column. I continue the blog as an online resource for “Things to See and Do” from Northern California and beyond, and as a platform to showcase my freelance writing.
I started “Writing Horseback” as a niche blog for equestrians and horse lovers to locate horseback riding vacations and guest ranch reviews. The blog has allowed me to combine my professional writing career with my passion for horses.
After 20 years of traveling the world, camera and notebook in tow, I decided that I had finally found the right forum to share my experiences: The Travel Blog. It’s the most streamlined form of travel writing: straight from you to the readers. And, because its mine, I can include (almost) whatever I want. I am the writer, photographer, editor, and publisher–for better or worse!
~ Anabela
I started a travel blog to share with family and friends and to develop and experiment with writing styles other than those required by my job as a finance journo. Said family and friends looked at it politely once or twice and instead I discovered a fab community of travel bloggers, many of whom I’d be happy to bump into on the road and have a cup of coffee with.
I started writing about travel when my husband and I did a trip around the world in 1998. I had come across a few personal travel web sites when I was researching for our trip and I became obsessed with them and the idea of doing my own, so I did. Fourteen years later, the web site is still going and has evolved into a “blog”. The way I write about travel has evolved as well, from a daily diary of each trip to more focused on individual experiences with an emphasis on photography.
I keep it up for many of the same reasons others do, mostly for my own personal history and to share with people. I long ago accepted that my friends and family don’t read it, but I do get satisfaction when I get comments from people I don’t know who say I’ve inspired or informed them.
Because I wanted to help other new parents travel with their babies. Because I wanted to create what I was looking for on The Internets and couldn’t find.
I started writing a blog the first time I studied abroad, because I didn’t want to waste time email eleventy thousand friends and family members. I kept it up because (at the time) there wasn’t much on the Czech Republic. But now that I’m not traveling (as much) and my site has transitioned over to my photography, I find myself missing it. Not just the adventures, but sharing my love and joy of Prague, the Czech Republic, and Europe with other people.
I use my blog to publish my own articles and stuff. I don’t use it to update my family and friends on what I saw and what I ate; I reckon they can get all that on my Facebook and via my text messages.
Started: For inspiration for an upcoming trip, to connect with other travelers, provide helpful tips for other travelers, and make a few dollars.
Continue: To continue to provide insight to others and stay connected to the travel blogger community. And It’s an income.
Now? I write web stuff because it’s my job (& most of it isn’t even really blogging). But when I started my first blog, in something like 2003-2004? It wasn’t about travel. I blogged because I liked writing & having a venue for it. I honestly wish I had more time these days to write on my still-almost-entirely-unread & much-neglected personal blog, because I do have topics swimming around in my head that aren’t travel-related at all. Plus, it would give my mother something else to worry about. I mean “read.”
Then: to improve as a writer by experimenting to see what suited me, which turned into improving as a web-writer by experimenting to see what gets traffic.
Now: obsession, meeting people, opening doors for professional writing work, and because I see a lot of fine, fine writing in travel blogs – and since I love good travel writing and love blogging as a platform for sharing ideas, it thrills me when the two come together on someone’s site.
I started my travel blog as part of a requirement for a sponsored road trip I won; I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a travel blogging community at the time. I continue to write it because I’m not a quitter and, quite frankly, writing for it has become a natural part of my life. I’d feel a bit naked without it, even if I don’t always want to post. It’s like those last two pounds I can’t get rid of but actually sort of hold on to like a safety blanket.
I started writing because I loved to travel and saw an opportunity online. From there, I wrote more about travel news with some of my travel stories. Then it evolved into my own travel blog. While I have a direction, I am still figuring things out as I go. Honestly, travel is my passion and I hope my writing helps others.
I started blogging about travel, because I love travelling around the world and want to share many attractions that I have known and visited.
Because of that I established a company about traveling. It proves that I love traveling so much.
Similar to many people who’ve already posted, I started my travel blog because I wanted an outlet that would allow me to improve my writing and give me a chance to work on my storytelling techniques. If it resonates with people and we can connect/share stories about our travels, then all the better.
Ditched the kids and “doing” Europe with my husband for 9 months. Blogging instead of keeping a travel diary for myself, and to keep interested parties up todate with our adventures. Surprisingly, friends and family read it, comment on it, and several have seriously said I should publish a book because my writing is funny and enjoyable to read. Personally, I think they enjoy it, and are entertained by it so much because they know me well, and understand my sense of humour and way of seeing the world. In a weird way, their positive feedback has made me more self conscious as I write, and I feel more pressured now to entertain them than when I first started out and my goals were a bit less lofty…..