by emspace » Thu Jun 06, 2013 5:37 pm
Hi Julie,
I’m not a blogger (yet), but I’m also trying to kickstart a regular blogging habit in travel writing.
Here’s what I know: whatever you want to blog about, get ready to have a long slog for the first year or so before you get any traction. You have to do it for free and work on getting eyeballs first. Only after you have a sizeable following can you expect to make deals with companies for free stuff or commissioned articles. Most places want to know how many unique visitors your blog is drawing before they give you the time of day. This includes your social media pages.
I would start with the advice I was given regarding the travel industry: follow the manufacturers’ Facebook and Twitter feeds (and any other social media sites they’re active on). Retweet, repost, like their posts, make useful comments, hashtag/refer back to them when you’re writing articles related to their products. Get them to notice you, get them to follow you. Keep it up with consistently useful info, tweets, links, and live chats. Make sure you’re involved with them and they will reach out to you eventually.
Yesterday, I started “stalking” a company I was hoping to get work with as a travel photographer, and on the first day of commenting, retweeting, tagging them, they started following me. They only follow 5% of those who follow them, but this is still an immense number. So even with them following me, I still have to tweet great/funny/eye-opening content back for them to really notice me out of the crowd of people they follow.
It’s a process and it’s not happening overnight. Still, it’s about baby steps. In the meantime, review things for free, work on getting more readers and followers on social media. Cross post as much as you can. Find other people in the community. Or outside the community where you might have some crossover interests.
Good luck! It’s where I’m at, too.