Travel blogging is a great way to remember and share your trips with family, friends, and other travel enthusiasts.
If you want to get more out of your blog, grow your blog’s online presence, and be a part of the travel blogging community social media is a great way to reach those goals.
But, just like you create a plan of what you’re going to blog about, you should also have a plan for your channels as well as learn some social media best practices for bloggers. Social media is tons of fun and the travel blogging community is very welcoming, making mastering social media marketing for your blog super easy.
If you’re ready to use social media to promote your travel blog, check out our top 10 tips!
10 social media tips for travel bloggers
1. Be social
It seems kind of obvious that you should be social on social media but not all accounts engage as much as they should. If people take the time to comment on your post, like the comment and say thanks or write out a full reply.
You should also be investing time in liking and commenting on others’ posts to build your blog’s reputation and awareness in the community. I also spend some time each week finding new accounts to follow, even if they don’t follow us back.
2. Post at the right time
If you’ve set up your Instagram account as a business account and have a Facebook Page, Twitter account, and Pinterest for business, you can access analytics regarding your posts, followers, and engagement.
Use this data to your advantage!
Dive deep into the data to discover who your followers are, and when they’re active online so you can get in front of them right when they check their feed.
3. Follow the 80/20 rule
I follow the 80/20 rule with my professional social media accounts, meaning 80% of the content I share is educational, fun, and generally curated from other blogs or brands. The other 20% is promotional and sharing our blogs.
Some people like to use the rule of thirds where ⅓ is promotional, ⅓ is content from influencers or partners, and ⅓ is personal stories or fun stuff like memes.
4. Collaborate
Collaboration with other bloggers, whether doing a social media campaign or a guest blog with social media coverage, is a great way to get your blog in front of new audiences who are more likely to follow your account.
You may want to collaborate on a giveaway or social media contest to boost your blog’s exposure with an added incentive. Just be prepared that this type of collaboration is a pay to play.
5. Optimize your travel blog for social
You’ve spent a lot of time crafting your post and putting a lot of love into your writing and photo editing, so make sure it looks good when shared online!
Do a test run with the Twitter card validator and Facebook debugger to make sure your link has the right Open Graph attributes so it grabs the right image, headline, and description when shared on these channels. There are WordPress plugins you can add to your blog to automate this process.
You should also add social share buttons to each post to make it easy for readers to share on their preferred network.
6. Optimize your social posts
Just like you optimize your travel blog posts with SEO, you should be optimizing your social media posts with keywords and hashtags where appropriate.
On Twitter, work your hashtags into the text itself and on Instagram add your hashtags at the end of your post. Try to use five to nine hashtags per post as more than that could look spammy and come off as irrelevant content for that searcher.
You should also create your own branded hashtag for your blog, like ours is #backtothepassport.
7. Have a mix of feed posts and stories
Just like the 80/20 rule, try and mix up your content types. Post to your feed and share Stories for real-time and engaging posts. Use Stories for polling or sharing a behind-the-scenes look at an upcoming post or adventure you’re planning.
8. Share links to your social media profiles
Make it super easy for your blog subscribers or readers to find you on social media. Have links on each page of your website and even cross-promote your channels, like telling your Twitter users to find you on Instagram to watch your Stories.
If you send email subscribers when you have new posts or you share a monthly newsletter or the like, include links to your channels in that as well or even highlight your top performing posts to encourage people to check out your profiles.
9. Test content ideas
Have an idea for a new blog post or vlog? Share similar content with your followers and see how they react to and engage with the post. If they like it, great, create your own post and continue to conversation on the topic. If not, you tried it and learned something new about your followers.
10. Measure results
At the end of each month, take the time to analyze your channels’ performance to see what’s working well and what can be improved.
Common metrics to look at include:
- Impressions: The number of times your posts were displayed
- Reach: The number of people who saw your post
- Followers: How many people follow your account
- Profile visits: How many people visited your profile
- Engagement rate: A percentage that shows how many people react to, comment, or share your post
- Clicks: How many people clicked on your post
- Website clicks: How many people visited your website
- Traffic from social referral: In Google Analytics, this metric will show you how much of your website came from social media channels
Want Instagram-specific advice? Check out our other post on Instagram for travel bloggers!
Be sure to share your travel blogging social media tips in the comments below or on Twitter!
