Drive Traffic to your Travel Blog for Free using Instagram

With 1000’s of travel blogs out there, how do you stand out against the competition? It all starts with how you brand yourself and drive traffic to your site. Instagram is a powerful tool to help hone in on your niche and increase exposure if executed properly. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself wasting countless hours without the return on time you expected. Beautiful photography and catchy captions are definitely important, but they aren’t everything. You need to have a definitive strategy to see the growth you desire. Here are 10 tips for using Instagram to drive traffic to your travel blog without spending any money.

I blog about other topics than just travel so this information can really be used across any niche. 

1. Choose a specific travel niche and stick to it.

The first question on anyone’s mind when starting a travel blog should be “how do I differentiate myself?” Whether you start your blog or Instagram account first, this is the #1 most important step to growing a loyal following. You need to choose a specific niche that speaks a clear message. Instagram users are looking to follow people with similar interests who can portray a consistent voice and aesthetic. This can be executed in a number of ways from color palettes to photography style to IG layouts.

If you love trying local cuisines throughout your travels, focus your Instagram and blog on that. If you have a passion for hiking, focus your accounts on that. My passion is finding or bringing color into any city, which is reflected in my Instagram photos and bio. When you have that burning desire to post a really great picture you took, you always have to first ask yourself whether it fits into your brand and style.

If you have more than one passion, that’s great! You can definitely combine multiple nichesinto your brand as long as it’s executed in a clean and focus-driven manner. For example, fellow nomad @kiyokosophia, is also a digital marketer. She is the ultimate exotic destination explorer and keeps with the cyan color palette in her digital marketing advice posts scattered throughout.

2. Choose a catchy travel username

You should definitely choose the same IG and blog names. You need to stand out as your own brand and be memorable in order to drive traffic to your travel blog from Instagram. People won’t remember to connect the dots if your blog and Instagram names are vastly different. If your blog is focused on traveling on a budget, choosing a name like “Frugal Flyer” will easily alert your audience to what kind of content you produce.

3. Just because you aren’t currently traveling, doesn’t mean you should go MIA.

One of the questions I get all the time is “how can you have a travel blog if you aren’t traveling right now?” Here are three options: 

• Write about past travels. If you took lots of pictures and have vivid memories of your past trips, there’s no reason you shouldn’t write about them, even if it’s a few years late. Just make sure that all the information you’re providing is still relevent. I create itineraries for a lot of my bigger trips so that I can keep a list of all the attractions, restaurants, and sights I want to see. This helps me with writing blog posts after the fact.
• Be the expert of your city. Go out and explore all that your city has to offer (in your niche). If you like hiking, go hike all the mountains around you and write about them. If you don’t have mountains near you, go hike 100 floors of stairs and write about how to get the best workout in your metropolitan city.  Then, continue posting pictures to Instagram. Chances are high that someone will be visiting your city looking for advice in your niche.
• Interview other travelers. Let other travelers do all the work for you! You come up with questions that meet your niche and interview others who are traveling to destinations you have on your list.

4. Research and use hashtags strategically.

Some people may tell you that hashtags are not as important as they used to be. I highly beg to differ. With the new “hashtag follow” setting, this provides more opportunity for you to get found on Instagram and drive traffic to your travel blog. Make sure to use hashtags in your Stories because these can be featured in that hashtag’s story as well.

Research is key! I have my core hashtags based on my niche that I use on almost every post (e.g. #theworldincolor #behuetiful #prettycities #travelincolor). Besides a select few, I do my research on which travel related hashtags best fit each post. When you’re traveling to a new city, you should use hashtags affiliated with that city or culture. Don’t waste your hashtags on words like #travel or #wander as those have millions of uses and you’ll NEVER get found. Instead, look for phrases that have between 10,000 and 100,000 uses for more visibility. Apps like Smarthash use data analysis to help you find the best hashtags for your target demo, instead of just looking at what’s trending at that time.

I am still a firm believer that more hashtags is better than less to increase visibility. Do not to use the same 30 hashtags on every post. This will get you red flagged by IG. And, post them in the caption, NOT in the first comment. Also red flag. Use this free Caption Formatter to get cleaner, no “…” captions.

5. Join in on a vacation giveaway.

Search the hashtag #travelgiveaway. There are a lot of smaller travel companies partnering with multiple influencers at the same time for a vacation giveaway. You will automatically get a huge amount of new IG followers which will increase visibility and hopefully drive traffic to your travel blog. See the example below from my favorite traveling couple @happynomadsouls. Reach out to the company or influencer who is a part of each campaign and find out how they got involved or who you can contact about participating next time.

6. Reach out to travel-oriented companies to collaborate.

Micro-influencers are the real deal in today’s growing digital economy. It’s never too early to start reaching out to brands to collab for a sponsorship or affiliate marketing. Companies are realizing that social media talent with smaller followings but more engagement are sometimes more important to brand awareness than influencers will 100,000’s of followers but little engagement.

Do your research to find companies that best fit your niche with products/services you would use yourself. When reaching out to brands via IG, you need to have a pitch strategy in place. You need to show how you differentiate yourself and prove why you are the best partner to increase their ROI. For example, I look to partner with brands that sell colorful travel-related products or hotels/restaurants with colorful atmosphere. It will feel much more authentic if you’re trying to sell something you’re genuinely interested in.

7. Promote your latest blog post in the Story feature & Bio.

Anytime I write a new blog post, I make sure to promote it as much as possible across my Instagram: bio, new feed picture and story. First, add the new link directly into your bio. I’ve used Linktree, which a great feature if you have multiple target destinations for your audience. However, I believe posting your direct post link into the bio section is more efficient. The faster you can get visitors to the page, the better. 

Next, use some bold, eye-catching graphics in Instagram Story to direct people to your bio in order to drive traffic to your travel blog. Studies are showing a huge shift in impression from newsfeed images to stories, so it is essential that you also use this feature for promotion.

8. Connect with other travel bloggers to do mutual shout-outs.

If content is king, engagement is the queen. One of the fastest ways to gain exposure and drive traffic to your travel blog is to support others who are in your same niche. Reach out to other travel bloggers via IG or FB (join an IG pod on Facebook) to see if they’d be interested in doing a mutual shoutout. Creating a community of like-minded individuals is an easy way to connect with your target demo.

9. Pose questions instead of writing lengthy captions.

I see a lot of travel bloggers writing full essays on their Instagram pictures. This storytelling strategy definitely works for some, but frankly, most Instagram users don’t take the time to read full captions these days. Alternatively, I would recommend using a short, clever line to describe what is happening followed by posing a travel-related question to your audience. This is a great tactic to improve engagement and help drive traffic to your travel blog. Don’t forget to respond to all comments no matter how short or long they are.

10. Reach out to travel influencers and ask them for their advice and feedback.

You may get turned down 10 times, but all it takes it one person to mentor you and help you get in the right direction. Start by genuinely complimenting them on why they stand out to you instead of just saying that they have pretty photos. Once you feel that you’ve gained that mutual respect, ask them to share a couple tips on how they’ve found success in blogging and Instagram. 

Hopefully this compilation of 10 Instagram strategies will help you drive traffic to your travel blog and see continued success in the digital space.