Day 10 – Writing Challenge – Write about a friend who never left your side

Welcome to the Day 10 of the Writing Challenge. While you write for today’s challenge and share about a friend who never left your side, you can also check out the below topic, which will help you along the way as you plan to be a successful travel blogger.

Another topic of the day – How to become a successful travel blogger?

Write about a friend who never left your side

Friends play a crucial role in our life whether be it the mischief-makings, gossiping, irritating each other, but always being there for one another. We make friends at each stage of our life, some are there with us for a long time and some leave soon but every bond is close to us. For me, my friends have helped me overcome a lot of difficult phases which would have been difficult to handle alone.

Cactus thrives in the desert where everything looks barren. Similarly, our friends compliment our individuality. Interpretation of a friend is up to you but one that helps you grow and thrive is a true friend indeed. A true friend is not jealous. They too grow along with you.

We all have different interpretations for a friend. A diary can also be our friend, our mother or father, our neighbor’s dog, our life partner, our brother or sister, and anyone with whom you can be yourself and share your thoughts and life.

Today I want to share about my school friend who is still there in my contact and who has never left my side even though we do not talk every day and do not stay in the same city, but our bond has never lost its warmth and importance.

Even if I call her after a long time, it does not feel like so and we share and annoy each other in the same way as we did in school. Its been many years, almost 15 years since we have become friends and I can always count on her and have any conversation without judging each other. We all need such friends in our life. I am glad to have one.

With this, today’s challenge comes to an end and we shall move ahead to another day with a new challenge. Share about that friend who never left your side and let her know too that you appreciate everything they have ever done for you.

Now we will move on to the next topic for today.

How to become a successful travel blogger?

Travel the lanes, travel the heights, till you find the point where you can leave behind boundaries that limit your escape. As a travel blogger, it is of utmost importance that you are showing those details that tourist eyes often ignore or cannot notice. Being a successful blogger means your insights resonate with a lot of people and they all want to know what new they can find once they see the same places with your eyes.

1. Find your Niche

It is the most important step towards starting a travel blog. Travel blogging is vast and you need to focus on any one of the aspects you are deeply interested in and also have experience and knowledge about it. Find a niche that you can write about for a long time and are genuinely interested to explore and help your readers. Brainstorming can help you find your niche. You can also create mindmaps and explore to get your niche.

2. Know your audience

You need to know who are your target readers. Research your niche and create some personas related to it. Personas are ideal users created based on the research data. You can create survey forms, create some basic questions and check the survey results to draw out some insights. Questions that can be included are: Age range, location, do they like to travel, how many trips they make in a month, which kind of place they like to go, problems they face, personality traits like introvert or extrovert, what motivates them to take a trip, and many more.

3. Plan your itinerary

The set of information or guidelines to travel is pretty similar. For example – we all search for the best places to visit, food to try, and activities to try, but the USP is going to make it different for you.

Why they should come to your blog? What is that extra special you are serving that other bloggers do not?

We are unique individuals and have unique travel experiences, so we need to find the uniqueness that stands out in our blog.

Plan your itinerary in a way that gives you enough time to explore a single place in depth. Download the template to plan an itinerary.

What to include in your travel itinerary?

• Places – Define historical and cultural importance, why did you choose that place? Why should readers visit that place? Observe the place and find out intriguing patterns and textures to capture in photographs. Every place has an old-age important place that might not be available online and you can capture that off-beat information and use it for your blog.

• How to Reach – Give valid and current information on how readers can reach that place. Things change with time and so do the travel paths. Show a comparative study on which path will be better based on cost, time, safety, and comfort.

• Food – Every place has a unique taste. For example – If you are traveling to India, you will notice every place has its unique flavor or “Zaika”. From Pani-puri to Chole Bhature, Pizza to Chaats, Biryani to Thaal, Chai to Lassi, Dosa to Muri, you get the taste of the place through the food that place offers. There will be something specific to that place that adds flavor to its richness. Be open to new things and try to explore the local food. Capture the experience through smell, pictures, taste, and the love people have for that food around you in that city.

• When to visit – This is very crucial as this makes the experiences of the people good or bad or even worse. Research and try to understand the place. Read books, ask from locals, do desk research, read other blogs and if you have visited, write down the experience. Give the readers the options and let them choose. If the reader’s goal is to experience snowfall, they will search for it and if readers’ goal is to enjoy rafting, then their search will be different. Your goal is to provide the needed information and let the users decide.

• Activities – This is the fun part and caters to most travelers. The reasons for traveling are to take a break from our daily chores, enjoy some adventure or just lay down on beaches to relax. You need to explore the activities and list them out to the readers. What does that place have to offer to the travelers? You have to observe and research that and come up with unique experiences that can complement the user’s needs.

• Checklists – Offer checklists to your readers with every destination you write about. It will help ease the work of the readers and they can include that in their preparation. I have added a checklist below which you can use or create your own:
  • Accommodation
  • Tickets (flights, trains, buses, others)
  • Backpack
  • Valid ID proofs
  • Camera
  • Extra slippers
  • Sunscreen
  • First Aid
  • Power bank
  • Scarf
  • Water bottle
  • Map of the place
  • Torch
  • Journal
  • Book (if you like to read)

• Safety Guidelines for that place – Providing a safety guideline is also very important. When we visit a place for the first time, we may not know about the problems we may face there so if a reader knows it beforehand, then it is a good advantage. For example, if you are creating a travel blog for solo female travelers, then putting up a guideline is bliss.

Once you have prepared the itinerary, let us move on to the next point on how to become a successful blogger.

4. Before you start writing for a travel blog, explore your area of niche deeply and study it thoroughly

Plan and then start your travel blogging. If you have finalized the niche, give time to understand the niche in which you will be writing for a long time. There is no doubt you will learn as you keep writing and exploring places, but you need to create a knowledge and experience base for the initial part too. Once you have finalized the niche, plan out a few trips, and notice all that you want your readers to know. Write it in a journal and write insights based on your observation.

5. Read books to get more ideas and keep learning

Reading is an inevitable part of our life and if we want to keep learning, we need to keep reading. Read whatever you can about the place, about other bloggers, the economy of the place, problems of that place, current affairs to keep yourself aware and feed your mind with valuable information that shall help you create worthy content. Content is everything that matters at the end for the readers and there is a lot of work behind creating that content.

6. Brainstorm content ideas

Focus on the queries that readers search regarding the travel niche you are going to write about in your blog. When you adhere to reader queries and solve their problems, you are providing useful content for the readers and they will want to read more of your blog posts. You can ideas from the search results. You can type in your idea, check the search results at the bottom and get to know what readers are searching for and this will help you create relevant content.

7. Set up your blog

Once you have decided to become a travel blogger and have your niche ready, buy a domain and set up your website with a hosting plan. I use the Bluehost website hosting provider and that works fine for me. Keep the domain name unique and intriguing, not too long, not starting with numbers, should give the gist of your website’s purpose, go for .com, and once you are done, congratulations, you have taken the first step towards your goal.

8. Quality content

Content is important and as you gradually build your blog, the content will be the driving source of your blog in the long run. You need to be passionate about the niche you are writing about, which will help you create intriguing posts. Check the following in your posts:

• SEO
• Grammar
• Spelling
• Simple understandable paragraphs
• Useful and informative
• What is the biggest takeaway you are providing

You can use tools available to check grammar and spelling and there is a Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress that will help you handle the SEO part. Explore more about it on Google or you can take Udemy courses also if you want to have detailed knowledge about them. I have added a blog post on top editing tools. You can read that here.

9. Post regularly

Write and publish your posts regularly. When you start posting every alternate day. Later you can decrease the frequency to one post per week but do not do this initially. Plan your posts weekly and adhere to the routine you create. You can schedule your posts on WordPress and publish them on whichever date you want.

10. Share it on social media

Once you have published the content, now comes another crucial part, that is, social media marketing. There are many social media platforms where you can share your work like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Medium. You need to share the blog posts daily so that you can get good traffic from social media.

You can get the complete list of the 30-Day Challenge – Know yourself in the below link:

30-day Writing Challenge