3 Things You Must Know About Travel Journalism
Bringing Journalism to your fingertips.
When people speak about travel journalism, you think of people flying off on business class trips around the world, eating nice food and staying at 5* hotels right?
Well, not to crush your dreams but being a travel journalist has a lot more to it than that…
I will be telling you everything that you need not know about the industry in order for you to be prepared for your career as a travel journalist!
Freelance Journalism
As a freelance, you may think that you can just jet off to any place you want at any time. Yes, I suppose you get a bit more freedom to travel as you wish but you may find yourself at home more often than you’d expect.
You must take time to plan posts, pitch ideas, build connections and get your voice out there.
My 3 Top Tips of the Trade
Writing on the go isn’t always the best approach
For digital nomads there is a great sense of freedom being able to work and write from anywhere you want.
Nevertheless, you mustn’t always count on doing this because sometimes you can underestimate your time and you don’t want to be posting inconsistently and out of schedule.
Jonathan Choi stated in his blog:
“It doesn’t matter if we can estimate correctly, but if we can’t estimate correctly we won’t be able to plan realistically and that would make achieving our goals more difficult”
Don’t just think about the money
Look, obviously we all want to make a decent wage… but remember that when you are in these nice places around the world, you are gaining something more valuable than money. You are gaining new experiences, new connections and new perspectives.
One post from the NYU Dispatch highlighted the importance of the travel experience for journalists and bloggers.
“Traveling fosters a medium to build human connections with one another by learning about culture, food, new sites, music, and the way people live their day to day lives in different parts of the world. It’s the best on-site learning a person can get.”
So, make the money but make the experiences also.
The Importance of Connections
Lastly, DO NOT underestimate the need for connections. Get yourself out there, speak to people, connect with brands discover the benefits.
One way of doing this is by attending travel industry conferences such as the Travel Tech Show and the World Travel Market Conference where you can connect with marketing organisations and media companies. Furthermore, many of these events are online so you don’t need to spend money commuting from each one.
Now, although these things aren’t free of charge, you can make so many great connections and learn so much in order to bolster your career as travel journalists!
Summary
Well.. I hope that these tips were useful. If you want to learn more about the practical elements of posting in a multimodal environment then check out my blog posts entitled ‘Multimodality: The Art of Storytelling’.
Now is the time to do your homework, discover and connect with people and enjoy your life as an inspiring, captivating travel journalist!
