In order to become a travel influencer you need to know the strategic steps on how to become a travel influencer so that destinations want to work with you.

IE 135: How to Become a Travel Influencer as a Blogger or Micro Influencer

Today we are going to be talking about how to become a traveling influencer. 

If you want to be a traveling influencer, one of the things you will have to be willing to do is adjust to the schedule of the place you are traveling to. 

Before we dive into this episode, I want to make sure you’ve downloaded my pitch cheat sheet. 

The steps for pitching for travel are the same as if you were pitching to work with a food brand or a home decor brand. 

Pitching is very strategic, so if you don’t have my pitch cheat sheet yet, get on it. 

You Have to Have Influence 

The first thing we need to think about when it comes to being a traveling influencer is that you have to have some kind of influence. 

Whether you have a social media presence or a blog that goes along with it, you have to have that influence. Your pitch needs to align with your brand. 

If you are a home decor blogger trying to pitch being a traveling influencer, the audience that you may already have isn’t necessarily going to translate into a traveling influencer audience, unless they’ve previously told you they are interested in that as well. 

You need to listen to my episode, “Social Media Influencers: The Complete Guide” 

In that episode, I walk you through exactly what you need to be doing as an influencer in order to really be able to leverage the audience that you have with the ability to travel. 

If you don’t have an audience that’s interested in travel content, they won’t be able to support you being paid to travel or to have it compensated. 

Create Content That Pleases The Brand and Your Audience 

As a traveling influencer, you will have to be creating content that your audience wants and needs.

If you are a mom blogger and you create 5 Easy Tips on How to Travel to Destin, Florida, for example, then one of those tips should drive me back to the hotel you stayed at or one of the beaches you loved. 

• You can reach out to the city you are staying in and talk about the options they have for travel.
• You can go to the hotel’s website, and use the same steps you would for any brand. You will be creating content in exchange for your stay or in order to be compensated. 

This means you will be working while you travel, so you have to make sure that you are willing to do that. If you are, you will need to make sure you have your camera, to get the photos you will need. 

You’ll have to get videos, especially if you are using Instagram to pitch. You will want to tag the hotel in every video, also tagging the city you are in. 

Find out what hashtags they use so you know that your content will be coming up whenever someone is planning a trip to that city. 

The easier it is for your audience to find out about the city and the place you stayed, the happier it will make the city or the company you are working with. 

Put Together a Proposal 

When you are looking to travel, you have to put together a proposal for the influence. 

In my pitch cheat sheet, I lay out exactly how to plan a proposal. 

For me, I would offer a blog post, specific social media shares, and I will throw in something extra. I have a price in mind for that package. Find out exactly how I pitch brands and come up with pricing in my courses, Pitch Perfect Pro. 

I will then look at the price of what it would cost me to travel to that specific spot and I’m going to make sure that what I will be delivering to them will cover the cost of them having me there, as well as the paid work I’m going to be doing. 

You want your proposal for traveling to be in line with what you would normally charge. 

Traveling should be compensated, obviously, but you want it to be comparable to what you would charge if you were working with a home decor brand or any other brand. 

Keep Connecting to Your Audience 

When you are sharing about traveling, you can use all different social media platforms to connect to your audience. 

We see a lot of weight put on Instagram right now, not just in the feed but in stories as well. Use these features to tag the places you’re visiting. 

While you are traveling, make sure you are visiting places that continue to line up with what your audience wants to see. 

If you are a home decor blogger, you can visit home decor or antique shops, and tag them in your posts. If you are a food blogger you will be doing the same with the restaurants you eat at. 

You always want to be connecting to what your audience wants. You want to be solving problems for your audience. 

If you are a mom blogger, you want to connect it to traveling with kids. Give your content a spin that fits your audience.

What Size Following You Need as a Travel Influencer

It’s the same question I get about all types of influencers: how many followers do I need?

And again, it’s not about the numbers. It’s all about engagement. 

If you’re wondering if a certain place would be a good fit with your audience for you to travel to, ask your audience! Do a poll on IG stories and ask them what they want to know about that place. 

Or ask, “Have you ever traveled to San Diego?”

If you don’t get very much engagement on these types of polls, then maybe your audience isn’t interested in travel content. 

Action Tip-

• Look at where other influencers have traveled and figure out where you want to go. 
• Create your proposal and reach out to hotels and other businesses in the city. 

Again, all of this is laid out in my pitch cheat sheet. 

And remember, just because a post or an IG story says “sponsored” doesn’t mean that the blogger or influencer was paid to take that trip. Perhaps they got one free night in a hotel or a free meal.

Do the background work to find out if traveling would work for your audience and then reach out to the places your audience would like to see you go! And be sure to come back and let me know if you do sponsored travel and how you’ve made it work with your audience. 

Action Steps:

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