When I made the decision, about ten years ago, to pivot Inside Laura’s Head from the beauty content I was writing (a great decision, lets be honest-I am NOT a beauty blog sort of person!) to travel content I knew I had two options.
Option one is to be the sort of person who has a minute by minute itinerary for every trip, who gets up at 5am to take beautiful shots with no one else in sight, who has the most stunning Instagram feed you’ve ever seen and who produces the absolute best, most detailed travel guides you can find. We all know of those sorts of bloggers, and I love seeing their feed and reading their work. But, it is very clear that content consumes their trips. Every time they go somewhere, it is all work, all of the time. No shade, that’s an impressive level of commitment, but it is not ME.
Option two is to be someone who chooses the content I’m going to write, carefully. Sometimes that’s before I go on a trip (when I returned to Wroclaw I knew I wanted to write my complete guide to Wroclaw, so I planned parts of my trip with that in mind) and sometimes it’s when I’m home (my post about two bars you must visit in Tirana, Albania, was written once I was back in the UK, when I was thinking about what I wanted to share about the city) Option two is more my style.
I’ve seen some successful travel bloggers-that is, those who are making respectable amounts of money from their sites-talk about only writing content they know will rank. Paris, for example, is a city everyone has written about, so you’d need an absolutely amazing post for that to rank. Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, is not nearly as popular. I wrote a post about why I didn’t love Paris, which was a quick, easy to write opinion post, and I’ll never get traffic to that. I do however get quite a lot of traffic on my spending 48 hours in Podgorica post, as I rank top for that search term on Google.
If you asked me about the places I’ve been to that I’ve not yet written about, the list is long. Bruges. Cyprus. Sofia. Havana. Cologne. Bonn. That’s just the first six that pop into my head. There are at least fifty places I’ve visited that I’ve not written about, and that’s normal. I will be writing about some of them, I have a part written Sofia post and I’m going to do a photo heavy colours of Cologne post, but some I just don’t know enough about to write decent content. If it’s not going to be an interesting read (like my opinion pieces) or a helpful read (like my complete guides) I don’t know why anyone would read it. If no one will read it, there’s not a lot of point in me writing it.
I’d rather spend time on informative posts that bring a lot of value to readers, posts you find when you’re searching for things to do in a city you’ve just booked a flight to, or are considering going to. I want those posts to be packed full of hints, tips and recommendations to help you to have the best trip there. I want to influence you to fall in love with a city I enjoyed visiting. If I write mediocre content about places I didn’t really love, that will not inspire you to go there, and I’d rather you read content from someone who did love that city, if you’re interested in going.
Honestly, if I’m not writing about somewhere I’ve been, it’s for one of four reasons. It’s on my to do list, I didn’t like the city, the city is too popular, or I don’t have an interesting enough reason to write about it. These are all, for me, good reasons not to write about a trip.
The most important thing for me, now, is that I travel with J, rather than solo. I want my trips with him to be quality time together, enjoying exploring somewhere new or revisiting somewhere we love, with time for leisurely coffees, relaxed cocktails, strolls down pretty streets and time to rest. I don’t want to drag him around a city insisting on spending 30 minutes to get the perfect shot of me with a fountain, or to spend money on a museum neither of us are interested in because it would make good blog content. On trips I am his partner first and a travel blogger second, and I like it that way.
Will I ever write about every trip I’ve taken? No, and that’s perfectly okay with me!
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