How I Plan Content While Traveling

You know I live for my days of traveling. After being home for about three weeks, I’m usually getting ancy to get out of town. While travel is my favorite past time, it’s also work for me. Many people think the travel is all fun, but in reality it’s a mix of business and pleasure. I’m getting much better at striking a balance between getting work done and truly enjoying time off. The reality for me, however, is that my blog and Instagram continue running regardless of my current city or country (except those two weeks I take off in December/January). So how do I plan content for my trips and how to do I keep my business running while I’m traveling? There are a few things in my travel blogging strategy…

Peach Open Front Cardigan (similar by NIC + ZOE) | BumpStart Long Sleeve Tee
AG Black Maternity Jeans (regular) | AGL Mules
Givenchy Sunnies | APC Crossbody | LAGOS Stacking Ring

How do You Schedule Posts?

In the world of blogging, it’s important to know that nearly everything can be scheduled to “go live” on any given day or time. In fact, I do this with every single blog post. My posts go live at 3:30amPST and I’m certainly not sitting there hitting the publish button. At this point, even every social media post can be scheduled. My Pinterest is almost entirely scheduled out, but I still manually post to Instagram. I share my trip on my Instagram feed and in my stories as we’re on the trip, so scheduling isn’t really part of my M.O.

How do You Plan + Create Content When You’re Traveling?

So the tricky part comes with having all the content ready for your trip. Trips of just a few days don’t take much extra work as I tend to be a couple of days ahead anyway. The tricky times come, however, when I’m planning to be away for a longer period of time and don’t want to work on my site during travel. For the last few years, I’ve traveled for about three weeks in the spring (like I am now). These trips take A LOT of prep work because I don’t want to have to stress about my site and social only to miss out on the travel experiences.

I shared my content calendar planning on Instagram Stories a few weeks ago. This includes mini post it notes and a big desk calendar. I usually know what I’m going to post for the month – every month – even if I don’t write a post until the day before. OBVIOUSLY this is crucial for creating content for a few weeks at a time. The next part is actually making those weeks of blog posts come to fruition. Each post needs images, a write up, scheduling, etc… 

My Travel Blogging Strategy

I tend to get my photos ready for  a post before I ever start writing, but that isn’t always the case. And truthfully, I don’t really get going to getting my site all ready to go until 1-2 weeks before our departure date. I’m planning it out before that, but I just can’t kick it into high gear too far in advance. And then I just do what I can each day.

You might be surprised to learn that for the 20 blog posts I scheduled for our trip, for example, I do them in no specific order except what sounds good. The only caveat to that is that posts with photos ready and an easier topic on which to write usually come first. This time around, I did all the recipes first. Then I worked on some of the outfits and pregnancy posts – but neither entirely. Some afternoons I have little energy left, so writing a shoe roundup is all I can do. Other times, writing is altogether out of the picture, so I edit photos.

Planning My Newsletters

The last part to all this are my weekly newsletters, which still go out every single week I’m away. Just like everything else, these are all scheduled beforehand – so incredibly helpful in any successful travel blogging strategy. As I finish a blog post, I put the image, write up, and link into the correct place. Once I finish a week, I schedule it to go out on the right day. Then I cross it off my to do list!

At the end of the day, the traveling is so wonderful. The few weeks and especially days beforehand are anything but calm, however. Truthfully if I didn’t take any time away from creating content for my site and social each day, I’d likely burnout before long. This way, I can get a little break without anybody missing out on their daily morsel musings!