How Important Is Blogging For Your Career As A Travel-Writer?

To blog or not to blog, that is the question (sorry for the awful rendition of a cliche). The upsurge and success of blogs in the online travel-publishing industry, has posed a hot question in the minds of accomplished and aspiring writers alike: what importance do we need to give to blogging (be it general blogging or travel-blogging) in building our writing careers, and why. So I thought I’d throw the question out to the experts for their opinion.

It was interesting to see the variation in responses, all of which can be broadly put into three categories: 1) Blogging is critical for building your career as a writer 2) Blogging can play an important role, but you can’t do it at the expense of traditional writing 3) It is unclear exactly how a blog can help your career, it would depend on what you blog about and how relevant it is to what you are aiming for in your career.

[*NB: This article is long. I was going to edit down the responses to give you a short, informative piece; but then I thought that everything these people are saying is varied, making it hard to generalize their opinions without losing snippets of their wisdom, so I’m going to put all of it out there*]

How can blogging be critical for your career as a travel-writer? According to Chris Mohney, former editor of urban travel guide Gridskipper, and currently at a position with Black Book Magazine, says:”The blogging format naturally suits travel writing — casual, descriptive, narrative, and easily updated and posted from anywhere. In addition to teaching you how to write about travel by letting you do so at your own pace and in your own voice, blogging provides a readily accessible “clip file” of sorts for the aspiring novice. And it also teaches one of the most important lessons for anyone seriously attempting this kind of career: write constantly, about everything.”

Michael Yessis, co-founder and editor at World Hum gives us his take from the perspective of an editor who assigns/buys stories: “If you’re blogging about travel, I’d emphasize that you’re writing about travel. That’s just the form your writing has taken. So if your blogging is your writing, it’s therefore a big part of your travel-writing career. You shouldn’t be sloppy because it’s just blogging. Editors you pitch can see everything you write online, and many will look to your blog as a representation of what kind of work they’ll get from you.