Travel Blog tips - How to use your travel blog as a professional tool
Travel Blog Tips - How to use your travel blog
as a professional tool
- Resume booster and interview enhancer
- Display of organizational creative skills
- Get paid blogging gigs by showing off your writing
Let me preface this post by saying you won't get rich instantly from paid blogging gigs, or from starting a travel blog - but this could help you to keep traveling further or even help you pocket some extra travel cash. People ask me all the time 'What are you doing out here while traveling..?' well I'm not just out here snapping photos and updating our Instagram feed - it's much more than that. For me this has been an opportunity to build something unique that I hope other curious people could use as guide to preparing for world travel - the Meet You There travel blog. This travel blog has been my piece of work along the way, something to show for all the traveling we have done and something to keep me and my busy mind occupied on countless trains, planes and bus rides. I did a significant amount of research on travel blogging before leaving for this adventure and fully understood that it takes a couple of years of operating, writing and building content for some money to start flowing behind a travel blog. I never intended on making money through meetyouthere.me but it kept me motivated and gave me something to work on while we traveled the world. I did however have strong intentions of using my world travel blog as a resume booster and as a professional tool to prove I haven't just been aimlessly wandering the world for the past 8 months.
So how do you go about using a travel blog as a professional tool? While first things first make sure you have a solid blog with: quality content, decent following/audience (statistics are all people care about especially google analytics), consistent posting and a niche. I strive for all these things all the time, I spend lots of time spreading our articles across the web on Twitter, Google + and other blog oriented sites. I use Instagram as a tool to drive people to our blog posts by catching their interests with adventurous imagery. Once you have a decent following, tons of uniquely creative content and a niche picked out then you can begin to use your travel blog in a number of ways. Pitch companies - send them a proposal for an Instagram take over using your statistics as a powerful part of your pitch, explain how you will help them gain a larger following and different audiences will become interested in their products/hotels/tours and more. I've made numerous attempts to pitch brands/travel companies to allow us to collaborate with them - be prepared the majority of your requests will be met with a 'No thank you' but I assure you keep pitching and keep trying there are plenty of brands/travel companies that need creative bloggers just like you. Plus it's good practice to write emails approaching brands, travel companies learning to pitch your blog as a professional tool.
Not only can it be used as a tool to pitch companies but your travel blog could end up being the center piece for your next resume or job application. When searching for a job after your travels you must stay competitive against other applicants - your travel blog could prove to your next employer how hard you really did work while out on the road. Your travel blog is a fantastic display of organizational creative skills and could be the reason your able to get right back into the work force when that time comes.
Looking for paid blogging opportunities? We're here to help.. Here's an example of a post I did for paid-blogging work www.myitchytravelfeet.com which can be found here: Exploring Spain's Spectacular San Sebastian
But how do you search for paid blogging? Check out this site I've used called: contena.co which can be an excellent website to search for all types of blogging positions (not just in the travel genre - ALL categories of blogging). Construct a powerful cover letter and build your resume with google analytics stats from your blog's buzzing traffic and pitch some topics to a variety of paid travel blogging opportunities. Just as I said above about pitching travel sponsors/brands it's going to take some work before you land a position as a paid travel blogger but be patient. Who knows it could turn into a weekly or daily thing for your making between $5 a post and $300 each time your write/publish an article. This is a reason why the contena.co website is super useful it will list how much money each job is paying based on a rate per word rating, and also a direct link to apply for that position. Don't forget to keep working on your own blog site in addition to your paid opportunities - once you grow your site from small to something big top brands/travel companies may want a shot to advertise exclusively on your site or even have you operate their social media which could turn into a well paying job all on its own (example - social media takeovers by Meet You There). Cheers, hope this information was helpful, if you have any questions feel free to drop us a comment below! We would love to hear from you... Travel company? Adventure Brand? Looking to team up with Meet You There - contact us at f.spontelli22@gmail.com CC: m33tyouthere@gmail.com
