The travel blogging space is more crowded than ever. Many people are falling in love with the idea of capturing their journeys through writing and pictures, so if you want any hope of building a substantial following, you’ll need to show your audience why you’re not like other travel bloggers.
This is where personal branding comes in. Building a clear, distinct brand allows you to separate yourself from other travel bloggers and gives people a reason to follow you. Thankfully, there are some easy personal branding tips that anyone can follow, whether you’re new to the blogging space or have been doing it for years. Read on to learn what these tips are.
Develop a Unique Artistic Style
Blogging is just as much an art as it is a science. The best way to stand out from the crowd is to develop an artistic style that matches your personality and apply this style both to your images and your writing.
In terms of the visual side of blogging, you can differentiate your travel pictures from the thousands of others out there by editing them in a unique way. Consider using an AI art generator to help finetune the aesthetics of your travel blog and supplement the real-life pictures you’ve taken. You can also use traditional graphic design software to edit your pictures by hand – both the ones you’ve snapped as well as the ones you’ve generated, if you’d like to make them feel a little more like your own. Some elements you can tweak to add a personal touch include contrast, lighting and texture.
It’s also vital to write in your own personal style. While you’ll want to apply some basic SEO principles like keyword usage and proper structuring, you should also add a touch of flair to your writing. If you’d like to present yourself as more fun and casual, use plenty of modern vocabulary, and don’t spare the exclamation points. On the other hand, if you’re a luxury blogger, you should probably write in a more understated way. Let your personality shine through in both your travel photos and writing, and you’ll build a loyal following in no time.
Use Instagram to Drive Visibility on Google
Instagram has always been a favourite among travel bloggers thanks to its emphasis on sharing photos and quick, snappy captions. Now, Instagram has evolved into more than that: thanks to a recent update that allows individual posts to be indexed by Google, it’s now also a way for travel bloggers to build visibility on search engines.
Many of the same SEO principles you’d use to rank a website apply to Instagram posts. Use keyword-filled captions, add descriptive alt text to your images and update your bio to include the primary keyword(s) you’re trying to rank for. We also recommend using a keyword research tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to find travel-related keywords that have significant search volume and reasonable keyword difficulty.
The fact that Instagram posts are now indexable on Google is a massive development both for SEO and social media marketing. Promote your travel blog on Instagram to build your personal brand both on the platform itself and on Google, helping boost your online visibility across multiple facets and to a wider, more diverse audience.
Set Up a Website
While social media and search engines are becoming increasingly integrated, it’s still important for travel bloggers to have their own websites in order to boost organic discoverability. As a blogger, you should naturally put the blog section of your site at the front and centre. Publish posts at a regular cadence, and include both SEO-rich copy and attractive pictures.
Besides your blog section, you should also include an ‘About Me’ page and a contact page for anyone who wants to reach out for sponsorships and other purposes. And if your travel website hits a certain level of organic traffic, you can start partnering with businesses for affiliate marketing, backlinking or other paid promotions. If you do decide to go the sponsored route, however, make sure you keep your paid partnerships as relevant and organic as possible so as not to fatigue your audience. A good rule of thumb is to only promote products and services that your audience would be most likely to use themselves – like a good accommodation booking website, for instance.
When filling out your website, make sure to use as many branded elements as possible. These include a palette of brand colours, logos/brand visuals and meaningful slogans. Adding plenty of branding to your travel blog helps catch the attention of visitors and makes it more likely that they’ll remember your website.
Build a Personal Narrative
Lastly, make sure to make your travel blog as personal as possible. People who read travel blogs don’t just do so to learn more about a specific destination: they can use Wikipedia for that. Rather, those who read blogs like yours do it in large part to get a first-hand account of someone else’s adventures.
Make sure to fill your blog posts with little stories and anecdotes that took place during your journeys. Also, don’t be afraid to share your opinion on controversial matters, so long as you don’t offend anybody. You can even include selfies and other pictures where you’re the subject in your blog posts. Remember, your audience wants to get to know who you are as a person, and not simply read a boring travel guide.
Perfect your Personal Branding as a Travel Blogger with these Top Tips
Travel bloggers are a dime a dozen in the modern world, which means that it’s more important than ever to build a blog that stands out. To do this, you’ll need to utilise several key personal branding principles.
In this guide to personal branding for travel bloggers, we’ve gone over just some of the most simple and accessible personal branding strategies that you can incorporate into your own content to help you stand out from the thousands of other travel blogs out there. Implement what you’ve learned today, and your travel blog will surely explode in popularity and build up its very own cult following.
