Millions of people love the idea of becoming a travel blogger or influencer. At least on the surface, it seems like a sweet gig; you get to travel the world, post about your adventures, and make a ton of money doing it. But the reality is, it’s incredibly hard to make money as a travel influencer, in part because of how much competition you’re going to face.
How do you make your voice stand out in this crowded niche?
Maximizing Share of Voice
On some level, what you’re trying to achieve is greater share of voice. Share of voice is a measure of how powerful your brand is, compared to your competitors. It’s designed to loosely measure brand awareness across various channels, comparing mentions of various brands to mentions of their closest rivals.
Accomplishing this can be quite difficult, as many travel influencers are already entrenched and have massive fan bases. However, with the right strategies, you can contend with some of the most visible travel influencers in the industry or potentially carve out a separate niche for yourself where you don’t have much direct competition.
The Research Phase
First, you need to spend some time researching. The better you understand your environment, the better you’ll be able to plan your takeover.
· Competition. Take a look at your competition first. If you’re still developing your brand, you’ll need to look at travel influencers at a high level. However, your effort will be much more effective if you start researching travel influencers within your specific niche. In other words, it’s better to study close competitors than distant ones.
· Niche. You won’t have to worry about competition as much if you choose a sufficiently narrow niche to target. If you only travel to Southeastern Asian countries, you travel on a strict budget, and your content is mostly focused on humor, you won’t have to worry about competitors who travel all over the world, disregard money, or take the subject matter too seriously. Examine a large number of niches and see if you can find any that are relatively unoccupied.
· Audience. Finally, think about your audience. Who is going to be consuming your content? What do they want to see? How do they think? How do they see the world and what can you do to cater to that viewpoint?
How to Stand Out in the World of Travel Influencers
Now that you have this information, you can apply the following strategies to stand out in the world of travel influencers:
· Highlight the uniqueness of your personal brand. Focus on everything that makes your personal brand unique. Yes, you travel. Yes, you make content. But what do you do that no one else does? Put these unique qualities front and center in your content, as well as all your promotional materials.
· Avoid copying or mimicking others’ strategies. If you’re relatively new to this field, you’ll likely be tempted to copy or mimic strategies of travel influencers who have already found success. Intuitively, this makes sense. They probably know something you don’t and have demonstrably used these strategies to achieve great ends. However, mimicry is going to make you less unique and it’s going to encourage unfavorable comparisons. You’re better off doing your own thing.
· Find original angles. In line with this idea, try to find original angles for territory that’s already been explored. Lots of people have already visited and blogged about Tokyo, so what can you do to make your trip to Tokyo more original, more informative, more entertaining, or more creatively stimulating?
· Provide meaningful value. Additionally, you should strive to provide some kind of meaningful value to your viewers. Many of your fans will appreciate simply seeing new locations through your eyes, but your audience will grow many times over if there are practical advantages to consuming your content. For example, you can give tips to save money, avoid danger, or get more value out of a given trip.
· Connect directly with your followers. Travel influencers are much more successful when they connect directly with their followers. That means engaging with them, asking questions, replying to comments, and taking their feedback very seriously.
· Collaborate with other influencers. Consider collaborating with other influencers in your niche. They may be your rivals and competitors, but these types of content collaborations are often mutually beneficial. It’s a way to cross-pollinate your audiences and grow bigger together.
· Build a community. There’s significant potential to build trust and growth through community marketing. Make sure all of your fans and content consumers are connected to each other, and encourage them to regularly interact. Live streams and private communities are a great way to facilitate this.
· Invest in your growth. Finally, be willing to invest in your own growth. In the early days, your revenue generation isn’t going to be more than a trickle, but you should take that money and invest it more in marketing, PR, and other forms of promotion. If you believe in your content, it will eventually pay off.
Travel influencers are all over the internet, but that doesn’t mean there’s no chance for you to stand out on your own. Armed with superior research and strategic planning, you can promote your brand and ultimately earn a much greater share of voice in this niche.
