About the author: The guest post is that of a now experienced travel blogger. Brett (and his friend Darren) spent nearly a year travelling the world, all the while posting news, tips and photos on each leg of the jorney. In his first guest post, he talks about the best ways to go about blogging one's travels. You can find the Mlungu Trek blog, and see for yourself how it's done, at www.offexploring.com/mlungutrek.
Travel Blogging
The first
step in any working class hero’s multi-month travel plans is to get off your
behind and have that awkward conversation with your boss that you’re thinking
of taking leave...for 9 months! You may not be so lucky as to be awarded this
leave request and if it goes this way, and if you’re taking this seriously,
then you’ll most likely follow this conversation with a less awkward one that
is started and concluded very quickly with a crisp white envelope and contained
letter that is slipped onto your boss's desk informing your boss of the start
of your notice period and due resignation.
Once that’s
out the way, you’re in for an exciting ride of excessive money spending on
plane tickets, travel equipment, travel accessories, visas, accommodation and
lots of farewell drinks. While you’re sipping on these drinks with all your
envious family and friends many of them will most likely ask how they can keep
in touch. In today’s connected world of email, Facebook and Twitter, the medium
that is farthest reaching, most informative and very simple to use is a travel
blog (take into account the less-technology-geared-with-no-Facebook-account
people in your lives that you’ll want to update on your travels...generally
parents and grandparents).
The travel
blog exceeds the simple use of telling people where you are and what you’re
doing. It’s a memory bank that you can look back on to remind yourself of your
travels, to document any little travel tips that you have for specific places
and to look back on when people inevitably come and ask you for help about
specific places that they’re travelling to. It also gives you a place to post
pictures, videos and thoughts.
- Use an existing free travel blog provider (sites like: www.offexploring.com; www.travelblog.org; www.travelpod.com)
- Use an existing free blog provider (sites like: www.blogger.com; www.wordpress.com; www.weebly.com)
- Create your own website
Using a
travel blog provider is the easiest route as they provide a format for your
blog and it usually has the quickest and simplest interface for both uploading
and viewing. The other advantages are that you become part of a travel
community where you can probably interact with other bloggers using the site,
quickly see what other bloggers that are in/have been to the same places as you
have to say, upload as many photos and videos as you want, get a nice
interactive map showing where you’ve been and where you’re going and you can possibly
even book accommodation or other things for your trip. Remember they have a
captive audience of like minded people to advertise to and offer services to,
so they’re probably going to be relevant and helpful to your trip. And at the
end of your trip, they’ll probably offer you an opportunity (for a fee of
course) to print your blog and pictures and messages into a nice journal. The
disadvantages of the travel blog provider is that there is probably little room
for customisation and uniqueness as all the blogs follow the same pattern,
format and layout. Our particular blog provider had no tracker to show how many
people had been visiting the site and had no way of adding Google Analytics to
perform this function. Connectivity to Facebook and Twitter were available but
not great.
The general
blog provider will swap the travel specific attention to the blog for a more
customisable user interface that allows the blogger to create something unique
and specific to their needs. Another nice thing here is that you can probably
add entries that either have nothing to do with your travels or nothing to do
with any place in particular – something that we found lacking in our travel
blog and that would have been useful. One of the downsides is that you may not
have the ability to create photo/video albums on the blog site and might have
to link to another provider, say www.picasa.com or www.flickr.com, for this.
The website
route provides the most space for customisation and you can literally create
whatever you want here. This is your domain and you are in full control of how
it looks and works. The biggest downsides here are: cost of hosting the site;
cost of how much you can place on the site if you want to store your pictures
and videos on the site; and you need to know how to build the website.
Just
remember, the main reason for your travel blog is most likely to let people
know and see what you’re doing, where you’ve been and where you’re going. It is
also your memory bank that you’ll look back on when you need to remind yourself
of what you’ve accomplished or you’re asked to help others that are going to
places that you visited. The balance of customisation and features you need
while keeping this in mind is probably what’s going to determine which of the
above routes you will take.
So, get out
there, experience the world and let everyone you know and meet travel
vicariously through you by following your travel blog.
