Years ago, when travels were not that affordable, sharing your experience on Instagram or any other similar platform would automatically mean thousands of followers. People were seeking new insights and emotions. They were interested in other cultures and looked for answers about how other nations lived.
However, with the competition among travel bloggers becoming tougher, the entire concept of travel blogging has changed. Today, it is all about beautiful pictures and unique locations rather than storytelling. People can travel themselves; they only look for useful hints about where to go in every new country.
The experts from EssayPro analyzed posts of several early travel bloggers and contrasted them with the current travel bloggers on Instagram. They concluded that the pioneers of travel blogging were more authentic and sounded natural. Today’s bloggers strive to please a wide audience by making their content look standardized.
That is why we decided to discuss several key difficulties that travel bloggers experience on Instagram.
Entering the Market
Travel blogging is highly competitive. Today, no blogger can just create an account and become popular. Since followers are getting more spoiled and even more demanding, a beautiful story and a nice photo are not enough to catch their attention.
Every new blogger on Instagram should offer something unconventional to their readers. Be it a specific manner of speech or some content tricks, it is important to make your blog memorable and catchy to gain the audience. Otherwise, no matter how good your content is, no one is going to subscribe to your account.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Traveling has always been perceived as a privilege. Even though cheap airfares have changed that perspective a bit, not many people can spend a large percentage of their income on a one-week Europe trip. The good thing is that bloggers do that and broaden our horizons.
Yet, only large travel blogs make enough money to dictate their own rules. Lots of travel bloggers are forced to jump into sponsorship relations forcing them to advertise products and services, which they would not recommend under any other circumstances.
Unfortunately, the ugly truth about travel blogging on Instagram is that 9 of 10 travel bloggers go to places and try things that they would not want if they had no binding agreements. In other words, more than 50% of their recommendations are not sincere but money-based.
Extreme Travels, Unique Places
For the audience in Switzerland, Europe trips are routine. For US-based followers, crossing several states is also not a big deal. People can easily experience these things on their own.
What the audience really wants is uniqueness. Subscribers do not want to see another blogger visiting Coliseum and talking about its history. They want to see how this blogger bungee jumps from its top.
Pardon the exaggeration, but the truth is that people expect bloggers to do things other than just exploring the new country. The place has to be unconventional with a few tourists, the information has to be unique and exclusive, and the activity has to be extreme.
The Epidemic of Fake
Fake news is not the only digital pandemic. Many travel bloggers touch history and other subjects in their posts, having little knowledge of them. Thus, the content that is supposed to be educative, informative, and interesting becomes fake and often just made-up.
At the same time, the biggest irony is that unrealistic and unverified facts draw the attention of the Instagram community. Other bloggers, who insist on telling the truth, lose this battle.
Beautiful Pictures and Nothing More
People evaluate blogs mostly based on visual experience. Many bloggers also admit that taking pictures and editing them takes much of their time. They say that no matter how good you are at storytelling: if you fail to provide visuals, all your efforts may be in vain.
Thus, it forces bloggers to invest in expensive devices and software as well as pay SMM managers who are more competent in managing the Instagram account. It is getting much more difficult to lead a blog and manage it at the same time.
Online 24/7
Unlike any other platform for bloggers, Instagram demands influencers to create an illusion of 24/7 presence. For example, Stories as an instrument was created for bloggers to share engaging content that exists only 24 hours. This can be short stories, impressions, experiences, and so on. In general, the idea is that bloggers can have a moment with their audience as if they were friends.
However, it puts an enormous burden on travel bloggers who do not travel every day. They have their own families and commitments they have to attend to. Yet, they have to come up with the content that has an expiration date to please the audience all the time.
Final Words
Modern blogging is about competition. You have to keep up with all new trends and tricks to grow your audience and make it entertained. In the travel niche, it is especially hard to do. Many projects fail before they reach 100,000 followers because people cannot maintain such a lifestyle. Yet, those who succeed indeed earn enough to support their families and employ other people.
If you are interested, I highly recommend visiting the Instagram Category!
