Launch Your Travel Writing Career

Local Travel Writing

Heading out for the open road, on assignment.

Heading out for the open road, on assignment.

Hit the road and showcase your home base

Let’s talk about one of the under-the-radar tricks of the travel writing trade. Local travel writing is a key skill for writers looking to expand their clips and earning opportunities.

Local travel writing just makes sense. You know your area best, it’s the cheapest place to explore and you can raid the fridge when you get back home after a research trip.

From my home in the San Francisco Bay Area, I can pursue travel activities in several directions. I can:

By covering local travel, you can quickly build a collection of clips including articles in parallel topics, like food, shopping, outdoor activities, the arts.

In the early 2000’s I started writing articles for magazines and newspapers about offbeat travel attractions in San Francisco and California. I covered a range of topics:

  • Mission District Bookstores
  • Travels Along the San Andreas Fault
  • Rooftop Gardens of San Francisco
  • L.A. Metroart

I accumulated travel clips, and also discovered an interest in stories about cities and neighborhoods, which became an area of focus that helped lead to additional jobs and opportunities.

Through local travel writing, you can discover your beats, gain industry inroads, hone writing skills, strengthen your travel expertise and find your editorial voice.

A number of travel bloggers have created robust sites focused on travel in a specific area, such as Weekend Sherpa and Happy Vermont.

With blogging, eBooks, YouTube and social media, writers today have the tools they need to take control of their published output, and to distribute content at will.

For all the allure of heading out for foreign lands, sometimes its more strategic – and lucrative – to cover your own backyard.

The One-Trip-A-Month Plan

Here’s a step-by-step blueprint for building a portfolio of local travel writing clips.

  • Plan one local trip each month dedicated to a specific travel experience
  • Go!
  • Write four pieces per trip for your travel site.

If you do this for just 12 months, you’ll have a collection of at least 48 local travel clips with many dedicated to topics of parallel interest.

Double your efforts, and take two trips a month, and you’ll have nearly 100 articles on your site in your first year.

That’s all it takes!

By following the One-Trip-A-Month plan, and sticking to your steady content output, you’ll build a solid foundation of local travel articles that showcase your interests and travel expertise.

Commit to this content plan and after a year you’ll have a robust, targeted travel site.

Planning Trips

No matter where you live, there are tons of story ideas within a day trip radius.

Set aside one weekend each month for exploring area attractions and activities. Pick the same weekend for consistency’s sake, eg every third Saturday.

Brainstorm a list of area activities and attractions to explore in the coming months (such as examples for Bay Area local trips, below)

Think about *how* you’ll travel, not just where you’ll go, too. Be spontaneous, but travel with a goal in mind.

For each monthly trip, plan to create four separate posts to your blog:

  • Destination narrative piece, 400-1000 words
  • Roundup article, 200-500 words
  • Resource blog post, 200-800 words
  • Follow-up shout out to a cool secondary attraction/experience, 150-300 words

So for example, here in the San Francisco Bay Area I could take a trip to the Nature Friends Tourist Club, a hike-in biergarten in Marin, and write the following

  • A narrative describing the coastal trails, interwoven with information on club history and heritage
  • A roundup of Top 5 Marin Trailheads or Vista Points
  • A post linking to an article from a local authority like SF Chronicle Outdoors author Tom Stiestra about the best lake hikes in the Bay Area, or linking to several articles about different cool hikes in Northern California
  • A shoutout piece on a Marin attraction worth checking out, like Point Bonita Lighthouse, Mount Tamalpais State Park or Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael

For each trip you take, stick to a schedule for writing your four travel posts.

Writing it Up

Let’s use another example of a local travel experience I can have in the Bay Area — attending an Off the Grid food truck weekly market – and explore four ways I could write these pieces.

Article one: Destination narrative feature

For your first post write a 400-1000 word feature about your specific trip. Tell a story about your experience mountain biking, tasting wine, exploring roadside antique shops or hanging at a food truck festival.

Focus your lead on a scene or episode that symbolizes or crystallizes the essence of your experience: The coastal views from atop the trail, a winemaker cracking into a reserve bottle, stumbling across mid-century modern furniture and vintage California travel posters at a random road-side stop.

Avoid overly-linear narratives that read like “I went there, I did this.” This structure can be too predictable and boring for your readers.

Instead, think about dividing your article in three parts:

  • A scene-setting lead, which may pause on a bit of a cliffhanger
  • A second section providing background, history or details about the travel experience
  • A third section, which resumes from where the narrative originally paused before you added background, but with the reader more fully informed

For example, a story about food trucks in San Francisco may start by arriving at Off the Grid, then discuss the social media roots of the modern food truck movement, before concluding the piece at the picnic tables digging into tasty dishes, describing the scene for an audience that has a deeper understanding of your topic.

Break up content into easily navigable chunks, using subheads, bold, italics and lists. Look to include a few outbound contextual links, which appeal to readers and help your SEO efforts.

Engage users in comments and be quick and responsive with your thanks and feedback. Look to spur engagement with readers by providing a Call to Action at the end of your postings. Ask a direct question:

  • What’s your favorite food truck festival?
  • Plan a menu of your favorite global dishes
  • Where else can you find great street food?

Tweet out links to your pieces when published.

Article Two: “Top 5” Type Roundup: 

Next write a roundup article, 200-500 words, in a “Top 5” type format, with an introductory paragraph followed by a list of content blocks.

Roundups are a great way to deliver a lot of information succinctly.

Use roundups as a chance to establish a naming convention that you can use on your site, to help establish a connection with the reader and build your brand. Find a title you like and use it for your monthly roundups:

  • “Eight Great.. (Bay Area Campsites)
  • “Five Other… (Ways to Catch San Giants games)
  • “Best Bay Area…  (Bakeries)

For a second post after attending Off the Grid at the Presidio, I could write a roundup that has a fairly direct connection to Off the Grid

  • “Eight Great SF Food Trucks”
  • “Five Other Outdoor Food Festivals”
  • “Best Bay Area Public Markets”

Or I could stretch the idea by focusing on a favorite Off the Grid food truck (like 510 Burger) and having that lead a post like

  • ‘”Eight Great Bay Area Burger Joints”

Between your narrative feature and the “Top 5” style roundup, you’ll provide readers two content offerings for them to engage with your topic.

With the next two posts, focus on sharing resources with your readers for helping them plan their own adventures, and providing suggestions for parallel activities and experiences they can have in the same general area.

Post Three: How-to/Info Resource Post:

Once readers get excited about a travel experience, they’ll appreciate further information, especially on how to do it themselves.

For your third post, create a resources article with links to a third-party articles and sites related to your trips. Use links to provide added context and offer readers a blueprint for planning their own trips.

A resources piece coinciding with Off the Grid may include links to pages like:

  • A readers’ choice list of best Bay Area food truck gatherings,
  • A news feature piece about fierce competition for high-profile food truck spots
  • A link to a planning resource for someone looking to start their own truck

Curate your links and make the selections shine. Resources pieces with outbound links to quality sites help with your SEO efforts.

You can use these links to to build relationships with other sites and bloggers in the travel space, and help boost each others’ traffic by cross-promoting and commenting on your sites.

Through resources posts, you shine a brighter light on your travel topic, and deepen your relationship with readers by providing them beneficial information.

Post 4: Followup Shoutout to Nearby Site/Activity/Attraction

For your fourth post, pick a specific secondary place or activity from your trip and give it a standalone word of endorsement.

Make this a short, 150-300 word piece. Think of this as a final aside to the reader about the destination, but with a nod to the spirit of discovery.

This could be someplace you discovered along the way, like an amazing seaside cafe or an art museum in wine country. Or spotlight a unexpected detail of your destination itself, like the Presidio Pet Cemetery.

Give this a naming convention too – something that adds a message to stay alert, like “Don’t Miss” or “Along the Way.”

At the end of 12 months of monthly local travel writing, you’ll have have accumulated multiple posts using these titles, showing a great track record of well-curated content.

After You Post

Tweet, blog, share on Facebook, ask your mom to tell her friends. Promoting new posts to your friends, fans and followers is key.to helping them get the right exposure, Just like you want to give your planet sun and water, you so too do you want to nurture your posts.