Travel Writing Tips

Being an prolific and effective travel writer can be overwhelming, so I’ve put together this series of A-Z Travel Writing Tips.

Each article provides a concise list of prompts from A to Z, which provides your travel writing the TLC it needs. We cycle through all letters in the alphabet in turn, and provide links to additional resources and examples of how to implements each tip.

See the grid at the bottom of this post to view other letters in the series.

In this edition of A to Z we’re looking at goals, guest blogging, and genre.

is for Goals

Your time is a precious commodity, so set some goals before you start writing a new piece of content. Ask yourself: “what do I want to achieve with this piece of writing?” Do you want to inform, inspire, entertain, educate…? Knowing what you want to convey to your reader will help you determine what to include and what to leave out of your travel writing. But actually, let’s take a step back, should you even be writing this piece at all?

When I started my travel blog I wrote to please myself, but that wasn’t going to help me build my audience. I had to switch my perspective and think how my content was going to help my reader. If my story didn’t have a purpose, maybe I shouldn’t be wasting my time writing it in the first place! My goal in this scenario was to build my audience, and in order to do that I needed to identify what they wanted and give it to them.

I often find myself writing for the pure love of writing, when I actually have freelance assignments to complete and blog posts to write. That’s ok—to a point. But if you’re short on time, and have deadlines looming, you need to set your writing goals, and a goal for each piece of writing, to make sure you’re making the best use of that precious commodity called time.

is for Guest Blogging

Guest blogging helps you connect to a wider audience, and I find it also makes you up your writing game. I take a little bit more attention on my guest blog posts than I do on my own. Why’s this? I can edit my own blog posts as many times as I like, but once I’ve sent my guest blog post off to a host blog I know that I’ve relinquished control of the editing process.

Guest blogging takes work. You need to:

1. Source a list of potential host blogs to reach out to and find their contact information or locate their contact form
2. Read their guest blogging guidelines
3. Familiarize yourself with the host blog’s content, writing style, audience and content gaps
4. Create a personalized and compelling guest blogging pitch
5. Create your guest blog post
6. Promote the post after it’s been published

Yes you can try to short-cut the process, but then you’ll be no better than the person who sent me this blog pitch today. Obviously they meant to paste in my website name into their pitch, and failed twice, but they also pitched irrelevant topic ideas.

Email blog pitches like this are a waste of time, and when I receive them I report them as spam. So think twice before you start sending out sloppy blog pitches.

I’ve curated a couple of lists of travel blogs looking for guest bloggers, so this will help to streamline your sourcing efforts:

1. 150+ Travel Blogs Accepting Guest Posts – maintained on this blog
2. 100+ Travel Blogs Accepting Guest Posts – featured on my personal travel blog

If there’s one bit of core advice I’d give, it’s to focus on quality rather than quantity. When you blog for somebody else, you’re doing more that sharing content with them. You’re leveraging their audience, and opening up a door for future collaboration. You never know where your words may lead you. So don’t squander these guest blogging opportunities.

Also, to loop back to Goals – before you reach out to host blogs, know what you want to achieve. Do you have a product to promote? A mailing list to build? Do you want to showcase your subject matter expertise for a specific travel niche? Set this goal before you start your guest blogging activities.

is for Genre

Travel writing is a genre of writing, but not all travel writing is created equal. When you’re looking at building your travel writing brand, it’s important to look at the travel writing genre you want to focus on.

One of the most well known travel writing genre’s is the good old travel guide. When it comes to writing a travel guide, there are multiple content niches you can choose from, and here’s a list of some of the primary ones:

1. Destination Travel Guide
2. Side Trip Travel Guide
3. Journey Travel Guide
4. Special Interest Travel Guide
5. Event Specific Travel Guide
6. Expat Travel Guide
7. Culinary Travel Guide
8. Advice Travel Guide
9. Reporting Travel Guide

Another travel writing genre is narrative nonfiction, also sometimes referred to as creative nonfiction. Although this genre is also firmly rooted in fact, it follows a content structure of fiction. With a story arc and many of the style elements that make fiction so compelling, but borrowed and reworked for your travel essay. You’ll recognize this content structure in a well written travel memoir, but there are plenty of poorly written travel memoirs that read more like travel diaries (yet another travel writing genre).

Not all travel writing is factual though. There are authors who specialize in travel fiction, where travel plays an integral role within the book’s story. Listen to my podcast episode #12 to hear about Publishing a Fictional Travel Memoir.

Discover an alphabet’s worth of Travel Writing Tips

Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast
Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast
K	L	M	N	O
P	Q	R	S	T
U	W	X	X	Y
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