What is a travel blog?
The term ‘blog’ is short for web log and is also known as an online journal or diary. Posts on a blog are listed in chronological order and categories are assigned to make it easier for readers to read posts on a specific topic.
Why create a travel blog?
Creating a travel blog allows you to share photos, videos and your holiday experiences with family and friends back home. They can also keep in contact with you by leaving comments on the blog.
Sending a postcard for it to arrive two weeks after you have returned is a thing of the past. With a blog you can write as much as you want and instantly share the link privately with family and friends. Most travellers keep their blog live forever, so that they can visit and reminisce about their trip, but you have the option of deleting the blog if you wish to.
Free travel blog services
They are a number of free blog services which allow you to create your blog, and upload photos and videos. My favourite is Travellerspoint which has over has over 140,000 members and manages over 6958 travel blogs worldwide.
What I like is that you can create a trip map on which you then plot your journey allowing readers to keep up to date with your travels. You can submit your blog entries by email and you receive your own easy-to-remember blog address.
Other free travel blog services:
TravbuddyBoots n AllTravelpodReal Travel
The advantage of a free blog service is that you do not need any technical knowledge to set it up, plus they are backed by a massive community of travellers who be very helpful, not only in helping you create your blog, but also to answer any travel questions that you may have.
Preparing for your trip
If you do not already own a digital camera, I would certainly recommend buying one prior to your trip. Make sure the camera comes with a memory card and buy yourself a USB memory card reader – you can plug this into any PC and download photos and videos from your camera to the computer.
Adding images to your blog breaks up text, adds colour and will make it much more interesting and entertaining for your readers.
Another tip is to find local internet cafés near to your hotel or holiday accommodation. A good site for finding internet cafés is Google Local, which will also give you directions and a map to print out and take with you on holiday.
Photograph sharing
Rather than paying to host your photographs on the internet, a free option is Flickr which allows you to upload your photos so that family and friends can view them. If there's a photograph that they like, they can order a printed copy online.
What I like about Flickr is that you can create photo albums for each destination you visit and also add the photos on to a map, so visitors can scroll around the world and view the relevant images. It makes photo sharing that little bit more interesting.
Other Photograph sharing services:
PhotobucketSmileboxSmugmug
Uploading travel videos
With today’s technology you don’t need any technical experience take decent videos using your mobile phone, camera or video camera and upload them to sites like Travelistic and You Tube. This allows you to embed the videos into your travel blog, and share them with family and friends.
Internet cafe safety tips
Try and find a large internet café brand like Easy Internet Café (part of the EasyJet group) or other reputable venues for using the internet. Trust your gut instincts, if the café looks full of young teens, or the owners look a bit dodgy, try somewhere else.
Ask the cafe owner if they clear your internet history so that your passwords for email, blog account etc are kept secure – make sure you do not click on the 'password' reminder button when logging on to your blog or emails because if your internet history is not cleared someone can log into your accounts.
Under no circumstances log into your internet banking account whilst in an internet café. This is just asking for trouble and could cause you a lot of stress. There is a way you can clean your own internet data, by following the menu at the top of the browser:
Tools > Internet options > and then clear history, delete cookies.
Generally internet cafes are cheap but check the rates before you sign on the internet as you'll be expected to pay whatever their rates are, no matter how extortionate they may seem.
Reader participation
Once you create your free blog it automatically goes public, but you can make it private so only family and friends can read it.
Readers can leave comments on your blog by completing the comment form, and it’s a great feeling when people are replying and giving their opinions on your blog posts. You can also visit other travel blogs within the community and leave a response with your opinion on the topic being discussed.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my beginners guide to travel blogs. Feel free to contact me via the Travel Rants blog should you require any advice or have any questions.
Darren Cronian is an experienced blogger and editor of www.travel-rants.com, recently shortlisted as the Best UK travel blog category on the Travolution Awards 2008 (part of the Travel Weekly Group). The site was also featured in the Guardian as ‘an essential travel site’ along with Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet.