Most people go on holidays because they want some time away from home, rather than for any other reason. Travel bloggers tend to go on trips because they want content. Both are totally fine, of course, but for a travel blogger, I’ll be treating a trip very differently to how I would a holiday. Honestly, I don’t really do holidays (relaxing by the pool or on a beach isn’t for me) and I class ‘a trip’ as one destination, usually a city, where I’m on the go at least two thirds of my time, cramming in museums, attractions, excursions and taking lots of photos. I would class ‘travel’ as a trip with at least two destinations, usually different countries, so for me a week in Marrakesh was a trip, a week in a hotel mostly relaxing and not having many things I’ve planned to see and do is a holiday, spending 17 nights in the Balkans was travel.
I was really lucky that my first ever date with J was a week together across two countries (he flew to meet me in Bratislava, we spent an afternoon wandering around, chatting and seeing a little bit of the city before getting a train on to Budapest) so from the start he saw my style of travel. Granted, that first week with him was totally different to how I travelled solo, and how I travel with him now is different again.
When I travelled solo, I’d write a list of all the things I wanted to do or see, plot them on a map, and choose a chunk that were near each other to do in the same day. I’d try to allow time to get distracted and just wander, time to walk down a street that looked interesting and see what I could find. I’d often, usually even, find I didn’t have time for everything I’d planned and I’d rush around for the first two days of a trip, and then crash on day three.
On that first trip with J, we had a lot of down time, sitting and drinking coffee together chatting. I really enjoyed it, but it does mean we didn’t do Budapest justice. Now, I note down things I want to do and so does J. He then puts them into sensible walking routes that actually allow enough time, and I ask for chunks of just wandering time to be slotted in. It’s a real happy medium for me.
Naturally, because of this blog, most of my trips become content. J is understanding of that and I’m sensible about how much time I need to spend on a trip working, so that it doesn’t ruin the trip for him, and it works well. On longer trips he often needs to do some work (he’s a freelancer) so that’s a natural window of opportunity for me to work too.
Before planning a trip, I look at how much content is already out there about the destination. Often we chose places where there’s not a lot of content (Pristina in Kosovo and Podgorica in Montenegro are two good examples) and that’s for two reasons; one because I like visiting the less busy cities and two because it means my content will rank high in searches and therefore be read. That might sound bad, but if you have a website and you don’t want your work to be read, why are you bothering? Content from more unusual destinations brings in traffic to my site, and I hope that people then click around to see what else I’ve covered and read the posts on more popular places too. My medium term goal of 50,000 visitors a month depends on people landing on my site in the first place, so the chance of higher traffic is a huge motivator for me.
Once I’m set on a destination, which is at a point when I’ve agreed somewhere with J and we’ve actually booked the trip, I’ll start working on ideas of the sort of content I’d like to write. Sometimes I know I can write a complete guide to a city, because we’re there for a longer period and I can explore and research more. Sometimes we just have a day so I need a short and snappy post. Szczecin, in Poland, was a city we booked quite close to the trip, because it was cheap and we knew nothing about it, so that leant itself well to a post discussing whether Szczecin is worth visiting. Cities that are full of colour and more unusual sights, like Hong Kong and Marrakech, work well as a photo diary post. I aim to do a ‘spending 48 hours in’ post for each city I go to, as long as I have enough information to do that justice, as those are the sort of posts I read from other bloggers before trips. I’m also always looking for a unique angle, where possible, to be able to cover something new from a city. This isn’t always successful, but I’ll keep doing this.
Sometimes I’ll pitch to brands, hotels or tourism boards for a trip, which is how I ended up working with Visit Berlin on my post talking about travelling around Berlin on public transport. I have a collaboration with another tourism board I’m trying to make work, too-this trip was planned but cancelled due to weather, and whilst it’s not my fault I don’t want to lose the work.
If I’m smart, before the trip I’ll start the blog posts I want to write, and make notes on them. I’ll put in questions I want to answer (for example, how easy is leaving the airport, what is public transport like, did I need cash?) as well as little prompts for myself when writing. Going forward, I am going to do this for every city, so that I can write the content as I go and make it as informative and interesting as possible for readers. I’ll also be planning Instagram content, and I’d like to work on my Tiktok this year too, so I’ll be filming short clips where I believe these will add value. As part of this planning, I work out whether I need to pack a notebook, my DSLR camera, my Olympus Pen or whether I can make do with my phone for photos.
I then look at other people’s content on the destination, if it exists, to find anything they’ve not covered, so I can make sure I do. I’ll check that the things I’ve planned to do should give a good overview of the city, and then, once I’m satisfied with my prep, I’ll revert to a non blogger and think about the sensible things, like what clothes to pack!
This post was written to give a little peek behind the curtain, so to speak, of the travel blogging world, and I hope it’s been interesting. I love to hear about other people’s jobs and how they work, so I hope this had the same appeal. If this is well received, I’ll do some more behind the scenes style posts in the future.
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