Why Travel Bloggers Need Holidays Too (& How To Take One!)

If you’re not a travel blogger (or any kind of blogger really) I can hear you laughing inside. You need a holiday, from full time travel… jog on love! 

But blogging of any kind is exhausting both mentally and physically. Whether you’re a travel blogger, fashion blogger, lifestyle blogger, beauty blogger, or business blogger… I’m willing to bet the intensity of it all sometimes gets you down.

The photo above was taken on my last proper non-working-holiday in 2013. When was yours? I love travel blogging. But last week I crashed and burned and here’s why:

Why Travel Bloggers Need Holidays Too

1. Writing and producing content first requires experiencing the content. Sometimes this can be fortunately popping in to a coffee shop tucked away in a Berlin side street for an hour and just having to tell the world about it.

Other times the experience can take a whole day or even week. Add to that the time spent taking pictures and notes, all of which you will have to edit and compile in to an effective article in your own time later.

2. Experiencing the content requires being somewhere specific. Travel bloggers don’t just travel wherever they want to go on a whim. Often, much of what we do requires working with specific companies and brands who need us to be in a certain city, country, or continent.

For the majority of the time (and the majority of bloggers), the cost of transport to the destination isn’t covered, which means we really need to schedule our transport and experiences effectively. Often this means a lot of running around, long distance-travel, and confusing connections.

3. Working with brands requires us to be our own boss, receptionist, accountant, photographer, writer, editor, social media executive, and web developer. Ever worked in an office and handed your part of a project over to someone more specialised on another team? Yeah, you can’t do that.

Finding time to fit all of this in around the  experiences and writing means we often work far longer hours than would be the case for normal shift work if we were employed by someone else. Of course, we can often see the rewards of our hard work first hand more than most.

Oh and if we don’t know how to do one of the above? We make even more time in the diary to find out how.

How To Take A Holiday From Travel Blogging

As I mentioned, last week I crashed and just couldn’t face my laptop. I was running around alot from one spot to another with more luggage than I like to carry, and I had a million and one things to do outside of the blog.

So when I got to Paris and found out there were more than just a few friends in town I wanted to spend time with, I let it happen. There was still a lot of running around, but this time it was all on my terms. I left my laptop and camera in my locker, drank too much wine, ate too much cheese, and left my scarf in a bar where all the waiters were naked.

This was necessary, but a mistake.

Why was it a mistake? Because I didn’t plan ahead. Yes okay, it definitely pays off to be spontaneous for a while. But I was spontaneous for a good five days which meant I made a few crucial errors. I hadn’t scheduled any posts or social media and I wasn’t keeping up to date with emails or future brand relations.

So here’s a few tips to help you guys learn from my mistakes!

1. Set an email auto-responder

If you’re not going to be checking your emails regularly, make sure you set an email-responder letting people know you will be ‘out of the office’ until a certain date.

2. Let your readers know!

This is crucial. Blogging is personal, and like most this blog is my baby, but the community of readers I now have subscribing and commenting makes the blog so much more than it ever could have been without you all!

If you’re not going to be blogging as often as you like, or as easily available on social media, make sure to write a simple post just letting them know. Another great idea is to send your subscribers a newsletter with a quick explanation as to why you won’t be as active for the time you are ‘on holiday’!

3. Schedule your posts & social media

Scheduling social media takes time but is made so much easier with apps such as Buffer and Hootsuite. Personally, I love Hootsuite, but I have many blogger friends who swear by Buffer!

If you blog with WordPress, it’s also really easy to schedule your draft posts to be published at a future date. At one time I had a few problems with my posts missing schedule, but since I installed the WP Missed Schedule plugin I haven’t had a single problem so I would highly suggest it!

So hopefully those tips will help you both accept that it’s okay to take a break, and how to do it the sensible way (unlike me…!).

Lots of love,