Blogging from Abroad: How to Write Relevant Travel Blogs for a Wide Audience

Moving abroad presents a great opportunity to establish a travel blog. As a long-term resident, you have a serious advantage over bloggers who're just passing by. You'll be able to steep yourself in the local culture and gain insight that the itinerant traveler simply doesn't have time to absorb. But if you want your readership to extend beyond your friends and family, you'll have to do your homework, branch out and cover a broad range of topics. In the past, I've blogged about budget travel for eurocheapo.com and, more recently, have been issuing dispatches from Ho Chi Minh City on 9000 Hours in Saigon. In that time, I've quickly picked up some tips on what to do and what practices to avoid. Here's a short list.

Set Your Limits and Stick to Them. When my friend Alex Robertson Textor was blog editor at eurocheapo, he set a 250 word maximum on blog posts. At that time, eurocheapo was posting about 5 dispatches a day. Clearly, some stories will run longer than others, but people are willing to read less on the Internet. Blogs are typically brief. Also, if a reader can anticipate how long it will take to read your latest post, he or she will be more likely to keep dropping in. For longer pieces, especially those service round ups -- something like The Top 5 vegetarian restaurants in Rome -- consider using bullets to cut the fat.

That said, I sometimes write longer, more thoughtful pieces. On 9000 Hours, I usually categorize these with tags like Stories or Ideas. But for the newsier pieces, keep it short and sweet. A good way to do this is to insert links so that readers who want to delve deeper can do so, while those who want the bullet points can get them and vamos.

Find a Niche. Become an Expert. I have a strange predilection for public transportation in developing nations. My aforementioned friend Alex can recite budget airline routes backwards. My friend Suzanne Russo sniffs out cheap cultural activities in New York City like a police dog. Whatever your travel fetish is, follow it. People will come to rely on you as an expert, whether your thing is scenic ferry trips or strange micro-brews. And when they visit your site, they may check out your other stories and travel tips.

Look to the Skies. Follow the Rails. Budget air travel has been huge in Europe for some time, and it's catching on in other regions. Travelers always want to know about new flight routes, insider tips and fare deals. When I contacted Alex for advice on covering cheap flights, his advice was simple: contact the airline and ask to receive press releases.

In many areas, there are fewer developments happening in rail transit, but it's worth cluing your readers in on tried and true ways to save money and get around by train. A good example is a blog I wrote for eurocheapo about taking the night train from Venice to Vienna.

Listings: Dig for Details. Blogs are supposed to be up to date and convenient. If you blog about hotels, restaurants, bars, museums -- any place you want to send your readers -- go the extra mile. Include the address, phone number, email and website. Also, cover the costs. If you describe a meal, include the price. If you plug a museum, give the ticket price. It's great to inform you readers about a restaurant, but your post is much less useful if they have to go to a second source to find an online menu or estimate the cost.

Don't Reinvent the Box. Aggregate. There are times, like when you're reporting on a dry press release, when it makes sense to recast a story in your own words. However, there's nothing wrong with sending your readers to other sources. Chances are you'll seek out news about your new town and collect quite a few sources. You'll be doing your readers a service if you regularly post links to articles about the city, country or region you regularly blog report on.

If you do read a story related to your location and decide you want to give it a different hook, be sure to cite the original source. An easy way to do this is to intro your post with something like, "Budget Travel Magazine recently reported on affordable resorts in Nice...". Include a link to the original article and then get on with your take on the article as a resident of Nice (if you are indeed that lucky).

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words. So is Streaming Video. Don't let your literary ambition stifle your blog. Some stories are best told in pictures or video. A great way to keep your blog updated while you craft a more thoughtful reflection on a recent trip is to preview it with a collection of 5-7 photos. No matter how well you evoke the sights, sounds and scent of a place, many of your readers will still want to see the real deal.

The same goes for video. You could certainly describe how manic motorbike traffic is in Vietnam, but a 15-second video captured during rush hour might capture the experience more completely (and certainly more succinctly). When you're brainstorming how to cover a story or destination, think about how you want your readers to feel. Some stories are best conveyed with a streaming sucker punch -- Internet-users are hard-wired for it in the age of YouTube.

These are just a few ideas to kick start your travel blog. Your blog's tone will set itself as you discover your new surroundings. Good luck!