So you’ve picked a domain name and chose a hosting service for your blog. Next, comes the hard part which is producing engaging content that will attract an audience.

The key to producing appealing blog content is recognizing what your audience wants along with producing unique high quality posts, photography, and video. As a full time professional travel blogger, I’d thought I’d share my ideas on the many forms of content you can create for your own personal travel blog.

You need to decide for yourself what the aim is for your own travel blog whether that is simply sharing your own personal travel stories as a hobby blog or to structure your blog in such a manner that it can become a source of income and possible full-time career.

If you’re looking to monetize your travel blog, the first crucial step is to gain a large audience which will then start to get you noticed by businesses. Grow a big enough following and you can start gaining affiliate and advertising money, press trips, and travel products to review.

There are many ways to make money from a travel blog, but it again all comes down to producing quality content. To help you get on the right path to creating engaging content, here are my top 5 content ideas you should be implementing as a travel blogger.

Top 5 Content Ideas for Your Travel Blog

What Exactly is Blog Content?

First of all, let’s define what content is. You may think of content as simply referring to writing online articles, but content is much broader than this.

Yes there’s textual content which includes your written posts, reviews, and comments, but then there’s also audio and video content which may include podcasts, recorded interviews, videos, webinars, photos, and infographics.

A successful travel blog will often be one that incorporates a nice mix of all these content forms. The key is to make sure whatever type of content you’re putting up is quality.

This means proofreading written posts to catch grammatical errors and punctuation mistakes and editing videos using video editing software where you can then also add effects, subtitles, titles, and descriptions to better attract an audience.

Top 5 Travel Content Ideas

So now we know that travel blogs usually include a mix of writing texts, impressive photography, and creating videos using high-end video or photo editing software.

There are sadly no set ready-made solutions for specific travel blog content ideas. Each travel blog will have their own unique audience and the goal is to know what your audience is and to keep them happy with content so they want to keep coming back.

You’ll also need to utilize keyword research and learn SEO techniques so your travel blog ranks highly in search engine results which will allow your targeted audience the ability to find your content.

While I can’t offer you specific ideas for posts, videos, or photos you should be producing (once again, every travel blog is different), there are general types of content you can produce. As follows.

List Style Posts ie “Top 10” or “Best Of”

While writing long in-depth articles is great, often readers simply want something quicker and easier to read. That is where producing “Top 10 lists” or “Best Things to Do In…” can come into play.

These posts not only attract a large number of readers, but they are also very quick and easy to write. But this type of content idea isn’t restricted to just blog posts.

You can also create videos which cover “Top 10 lists” or “Best of” destination posts. Of course you’ll need to know how to edit a video but once you get the hang of things, these types of videos become just as quick and easy as the written format versions.

Effective “Top 10 lists” and “Best of” posts also usually contain striking images that catch readers’ eyes. If you’re taking your own photography for your travel blog, be sure to invest in proven photo editing software (check this tool) which will allow you to create captivating images that enhance your posts.

Also falling into this category are “Facts About” posts. Everyone loves learning fun trivia about destinations and these types of posts can also be easily written and rank well in online search results.

Quick and easy posts such as these will allow you to produce more frequent content which again is key to keeping your readers and followers coming back for more.

Travel Product or Service Reviews

People don’t always trust claims made by companies about their products or services, but they will tend to believe real life testimonials.

Once you’ve built trust with your audience by being open and honest about various travel products you use or have tried, your past hotel stays, and experiences with airlines, they will keep coming back to get your trusted advice.

As your audience grows, no doubt travel companies will begin to take notice and reach out to you to ask whether you would be interested in sampling their products or services in exchange for posting a review about that product or service.

This means you can feature posts on your blog that cover things like hotel stay reviews and reviews on products like luggage or travel towels (click here for my review of the Sumoii beach towel pictured above). Quality review posts or videos should be honest and be well crafted.

This means knowing all the specs of a product or service so you can write an insightful post. It also means using photo or video editing software (check here) where you can not only edit videos but also convert media, or incorporate capture screens when producing something like an online tutorial.

Travel News

Even as a full-time professional travel blogger, there will be times when you aren’t traveling. It may seem like you need to keep traveling in order to keep producing content for your travel blog, but this isn’t necessarily the case.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen both the tourism sector and full time travelers affected greatly. Because travel bloggers worldwide have largely been restricted from traveling freely, they have been forced to find different ways to stay engaged with their audience.

For those times when you aren’t able to travel, consider writing posts that are more news related. Many notable travel-related news stories go unnoticed because nobody is writing about them.

The best part is there are many ways to incorporate travel news into written blog posts or videos. You can cover interesting developments in the tourism sector, upcoming events in various destinations, travel promotions being offered by companies, and current tourism campaigns.

For instance, Tasmania is currently offering free long johns to travelers, European beachside destinations are offering free beach chair and umbrella rentals, and multiple countries are offering free travel vouchers to entice visitors.

You can edit videos to include news reports segments using this tool or arrange your own interviews with people from the tourism industry such as hotel managers and tourism executives. Here’s an example of an interview with the world’s most well traveled woman.

Travel Guides

While Top 10 lists offer small tidbits of information to readers, travel guides should include more in-depth research and personal experience of a destination.

You may have a “Top 10 things to do in Barcelona” to lure in readers for instance but then link to another post you’ve created which offers a more extensive guide to Barcelona for those travelers that may be looking to take the next step and actually plan a trip.

You can create a long or brief guide, but the information should be precise, useful, and up to date. You may have to revisit posts or videos you’ve created earlier to make edits as new updated information becomes available.

As travel guides often take more time to create, it’s important to take the time to really research what people are looking for. Seek to produce content that features trending destinations or destinations that are likely to really start taking off, as this will offer a better chance of attracting more readers.

In addition to creating travel guides for your own travel blog, in-depth guides are often welcomed as guest posts by other fellow travel bloggers for countries they may have not yet visited and don’t have content for.

Guest posting on popular blogs with large audiences will hopefully attract their readers to you via links within your post that direct them to your website.

Call to Action Posts

To maintain the valuable relationship that exists between you and your followers, you need to interact with them and make them feel like they’re important and you value their opinions.

Call to action posts work well as blog posts but truly excel as social media posts. They may include asking your readers questions such as what their favorite experiences of a destination were. They can also be polls such as what hotel brands or airlines they most like to choose, their bucket list destinations, or ways they travel.

You can create a poll via social media to get engagement and then create a blog post with the poll results which will gain further engagement on another platform as a way to diversify your content.

You can also promote contests such as travel products or trip giveaways. Once again, content can be created both via social media and via blog posts to promote the contest and share contest results.

You can also use call to action posts as a way of doing good or giving back to communities around the world such as when natural disaster or other tragedy impacts a destination. You can try to raise money for a charity or be a voice for change that may even create a movement.

As you can see, there are many different content ideas you can incorporate into your travel blog. It’s good to include a healthy mix of these ideas and monitor what seems to work best with your audience.

You will attract people if you put the time and effort into creating unique and quality content, making sure to edit both your written work and using video and photo editing software for your visual content.

You’ll also want to use a content planner (check here) to be able to effectively schedule your monthly content and keep it on track and on trend. Knowing what you’re going to post and when saves time, limits stress, and ensures your readers will remain loyal and happy.