I was going to drop down to posting once a week from now on, but I figure I might as well squeeze one more of these “my blogging journey” posts in before I do! This one is all about social media for your travel blog. My first post in this series has been my most popular blog post so far, so I hope that this one is just as helpful! You can read that first post by clicking here.
Let’s talk about Social Media. It’s such a big part of all of our lives now and it’s a vital part in promoting your blog. Honestly, this is probably a bad time for me to be writing about my blog’s social media because I’m a bit over the whole thing! I’m not sure if anyone else feels this way but I find it rather stressful to run and maintain my blog accounts (specifically Instagram).
Currently, I use three different social media platforms to promote my blog: Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. I’m going to talk about each of these below, explaining why I like or don’t like them, as well as my tips for getting them up and running and somewhat successful.
Facebook (my favourite social media platform)
Out of the three social medias I have for my blog, Facebook is my favourite. Even though it’s pretty old-school and I have only 56 likes on my page. Almost all of those likes are from people I know as well!! So I suppose it’s not ideal in that the audience is rather limited.
The reason I like Facebook so much is because there’s a direct link between my page and my blog. Almost all of my readers come via Facebook link (thanks, by the way)! Each time I make a new blog post, I copy the link, share it on Facebook with a lame, ramble-y caption and a picture or two. The only downside to my Facebook is that the average post only reaches about 25 people. That’s only half of the people that like my page! I suppose if I had the money to promote my posts I’d be more successful. But I don’t really care that much!
Facebook was also very easy to set up, in my opinion. Admittedly (and this is pretty embarrassing) I used to do a lot of Facebook admining back in the day for Hunger Games fan pages. I’ve even still got access to a few of them. So I am already familiar with how it works. Even so, I think it’s fairly user-friendly. Posting on your page is not dissimilar to posting on your own personal timeline! I also like that you can schedule posts. So if I’m out one Sunday, I can schedule my blog here and also schedule it to share to Facebook!
Instagram (my least favourite social media platform)
I loved Instagram until I created an account for my blog. Now it just give me a headache. Having a blogger account is a whole other ball game compared to just posting cute animal pictures on my personal account.
Instagram is hard because there’s SO many travel bloggers out there, whether they have an actual blog or just the Instagram. Also, there is little to no link between my Instagram and my blog. I think in the entire 3-4 months I’ve had this blog I’ve had people click on my Instagram profile link about 5 times. As much as I don’t love Instagram, though, I have met some pretty awesome bloggers over there so I can’t complain too much!
In terms of running my Instagram, I’m kind of just copying what other people do! Here are all of the things I’ve learnt (and try to do).
Making your Instagram look pretty
Instagram is all about aesthetics. Of course it’s important that each individual photo looks great, but you also need to think about things like your theme and your stories.
Deciding on a theme
Even before I started my travel blog I knew about Instagram themes. You know when you go to an account and see all of their posts flow beautifully from one to the other and have a similar colour scheme? Yeah that’s a theme. Apparently you need one because it attracts people to your feed initially, even if later on they won’t look at your profile anymore but rather see your individual posts in their timeline.
I love making things look pretty so I put a lot of thought into which posts sit next to one another. I use an app called ‘Preview’ to pre-plan my feed. This is probably embarrassing to admit but when I post content on my blog depends on whether the pictures for that destination look good in my Instagram theme. I’m super indecisive, though, so having something to dictate that isn’t a bad thing for me! This post fits into that as well. I don’t have a picture for it so I’m posting it between destinations and while finishing off my Brisbane photos!
Editing your posts
Most people use Lightroom to edit their posts but I’m too poor to buy Adobe for my computer. I also tried the free app but I couldn’t work out how to make the photos look how I wanted. So for now, I’m just sticking with the editor within Instagram itself. Over the years, I’ve gotten quite good at editing the photos so they look nice but not fake, if I do say so myself!
I suppose the benefit of Lightroom is that you can put the same pre-sets over each photo so they all match your theme. But that’s not really my style. I like to bring out different colours depending on the photo. For example, for all my Africa photos, I really upped the warmth, but for a picture of a rainforest I’d rather focus on saturation. Instead, my “theme” places pictures of similar colour schemes together and then transitions to a different scheme. In hindsight, I’m not sure I can classify that as a theme… Maybe don’t take my advice, then!
Highlight Covers
On Instagram, you can also have “highlights” where you save stories on your profile for people to look at whenever they want. Each of these highlights has a cover and a title. I am personally pretty proud of my highlight covers! I make them all in Microsoft Paint, believe it or not! Essentially, I choose a picture that I think matches the location, find a black and white outline on Google, then colour it in. It’s pretty basic but I think it looks kind of nice.
Stories
When it comes to the stories themselves, I use an app called StoryArt to style multiple photos in a scrapbook-like layout. This is as opposed to just chucking up one photo at a time. There’s also a bigger range of fonts in StoryArt. I have the free version but you can pay more for a greater range of templates. As much as it’s annoying that they advertise the paid version EVERY TIME I open the app, the stories come out looking really pretty!
Followers and Engagement
EDIT 07/06/20: I no longer do any loops or engagement activities on my blog. If you’re looking to grow your Instagram, they do work. But for me, the stress wasn’t worth it anymore, because, as I mentioned above, there’s very little link between my blog and my Instagram. Anyway, if you’re interested, read on!
This is the stuff that absolutely does my head in. It’s so easy to get caught up checking for people that unfollow you after you’ve followed them back or that don’t follow the rules in engagement events. But I’ve decided it’s just not worth stressing over. So long as I have a handful of people who enjoy my content and I enjoy my OWN content, I should be happy. I hope that if you take nothing else home from this post, it’s this.
Of course, if you have an Instagram account for your blog, you have to care to an extent because the more followers you have, the more reach. Same goes with engagement; the more likes, comments and saves a post has, the more likely it will be seen by other people. I think that’s how it works, anyway. I haven’t really studied the Instagram algorithm. Anyway, for my Instagram, I take part in Follow Loops and Engagement posts and groups.
Follow Loops
Something I saw very early on was other bloggers doing “follow loops”. I wasn’t sure whether to join at first because it didn’t really seem genuine. But now I’ve done them, I choose to see them more as networking. It’s really a way to find other travel accounts. As an added bonus, they have no choice but to follow you back (so long as they actually follow the rules…). I was really sceptical but actually follow loops really work. Currently I have 1,167 followers and the vast majority have come from loops. So overall, I’d definitely recommend loops to set yourself up OR if you’re one of those people who dreams of having thousands of thousands of followers!
There is a type of follow loop that occurs via message, however, which I do not recommend. They just don’t work. All that happened when I tried one was I got blocked from messaging!
Now that I’m at 1000 followers, I won’t be doing loops as often. I would rather take things slowly now that I’m set up and get genuine followers rather than people that will just unfollow later or don’t engage. But that’s just a personal choice.
Engagement posts and groups
Most of the follow loop pages also do engagement posts. It’s usually a like for like and it always works. What engagement you have to do depends on the post, but here’ an example. First, you’ll have to like 5 posts from the page admin(s), then 5 from commenters above you, and then you return anyone who does it for you. Of course there are plenty of people who don’t like back but most people are great. These posts are also a fun way to get to know new people as sometimes you can do follow for follows as well!
There are also groups on an app called Telegram for engagement. Telegram is like Whatsapp but not run by Facebook. Basically, you join a chat group via a link which is full of other travel bloggers. You engage with a certain amount of posts before you then post your link. Theoretically, you should get the same number of engagements on that post as you gave out as your post works its way up the list. Does that make sense?
Anyway, I’m not convinced these engagement groups work. I have posts that have really taken off after I’ve put them in the group, and other posts that have just done as expected. Like the posts, I wonder whether some people don’t engage or like then unlike or whatever. I have stayed in my groups thus far but I don’t think I’d recommend you join.
Pinterest (my newest social media)
I don’t really feel like I can write much about Pinterest yet because I only started my account two days ago! But I have heard it’s the must-have for bloggers. I can actually see why: there is a direct link between anything you pin and your blog. So that’s cool! Before starting my Pinterest I read this post by Goats on the Road and I have found it super helpful so far.
The only thing I really feel like I can provide insight into is making pins. Unfortunately my Photoshop free trial has expired (lame), so I had to find something else to make my pins with! In this case, I also wanted something a little fancier than Microsoft Paint… So I decided to go with Canva (as suggested in the above post). It’s completely free and so far I’m impressed. There are templates for Pinterest pins so all you have to do is add your own photo and text and you’re good to go!
Ok that’s all I have for today. I hope this helps some of you to set up social media accounts for your own blogs! Here I am assuming you actually HAVE blogs but my first blogging post must have been popular for a reason… Please follow me on all the above social medias (where applicable I follow back!) and comment below or get in touch if you have any more questions. Or suggestions. Especially for Pinterest!
Keep an eye out on Sunday for my new series: Canada Exchange!
Hi there! I was actually looking forward to this post…I wanted to see if I was not the only one overwhelmed by social media HAHA Just like you, I enjoyed Instagram until I started the blog account. I feel like I am just going in circles. I do get some traffic from my personal Instagram account whenever I share a new blog, but that’s because these are people who know me well and genuinely want to read what I am writing. The problem is that I am facing another dilemma; I don’t think it’s fair to be posting about my blog all the time on my personal account… and that’s why I started a different one. Honestly, I will just continue to post to build my feed but I am not going to stress about it. Personally, I will focus on Pinterest, which seems to be a more appropriate platform for my goals. I am also completely new to it, but I believe it could be more powerful than Instagram. On a different note, you’re inspiring me to write about my “blogging journey” as well. Love these posts, looking forward to the next one! 🙂
Hey! I’m so glad to hear it’s not just me (again) hahaha! Fair enough with the personal account – I was the same with both my personal Facebook and Instagram at first but I don’t want to spam everyone all the time!! I’m trying now to just share once a month or something, or when I start posting about a new destination. I need to try put some more effort into Pinterest I think… I worked hard on it the first day but I haven’t done anything since! Maybe today I’ll have some more motivation… It’s so interesting to see how much people like these posts! Might have to post them more often! It’d be so cool to read about your journey as well – looking forward to it!! 🙂
Hey! I feel the same about Instagram. It’s a whole other thing. I wasn’t sure about those ‘follow loops’ either that I started to come across often, should probably do them more. And don’t get me started on Pinterest XD, I haven’t checked or updated in a while and still have maybe only a couple of followers including you, haha. As for Facebook I don’t even have a page yet as I don’t use a personal account anymore, Facebook seems quite different than it what it used to be when I actually used it during my teenage years.
I should do a blog post about social media too, explaining my presence (or lack of). Thanks for this good post!
Hey Nandita! I’m glad you found it helpful! 🙂 I don’t do the follow loops anymore because I find them much too stressful. They do work, though, if you want to grow your following. I don’t have many followers on Pinterest but I am getting a fair few views and a handful of link clicks so it’s better than Instagram in that regard. I guess I’ll see how I go at the 90 day mark. Most of my friends like my Facebook page so that’s the only reason why I get so many views from there – it’s literally all people I know! You probably don’t need a Facebook page to be honest, though it is good that you can put your post links with your photos. Let me know if you do do a post – I’d love to read it and hear someone else’s perspective! ~ Caitlin.