The Life of a Travel Blogger

Welcome to final part of the 'Life of a Blogger' series where I look at the different cultures in the blogging communities. All week I have been looking at areas such as fashion, beauty, books, pop culture and interiors. Yesterday I looked at interiors blogging and today will be devoted to the exciting world of travel blogging. Ola Fagbohun is the editor and founder of Diverse Traveller which is aimed at women who travel and write about their experiences. Alongside thats she also has a blog called Ola's World which documents her own personal experiences. She tells us all what it is like to be a travel blogger.

Why did you start blogging?
I used to write a letter from the edditor in the Diverse Traveller newsletter, sharing with readers what I had been doing over the previous month. I mentioned highs and lows and things I was planning to do. Interesting I received emails from Diverse Travellers telling me that was their favourite part of the newsletter as they liked getting to know me.  I started to think about keeping a blog but worried about the time committment, so I started in 2006 sharing my life in the North of England but struggled with how much to share plus I wasn't convinced I was that interesting. After a few erractic months I stopped. Then in 2008 I resurrected the Diverse Traveller blog writing about all things travel. It was still a struggle in terms of time and hoping that my content was interesting.  In 2009 i changed platform to Typepad and changed the name of the blog from Diverse Traveller to Ola's World and now I tend to write about my travels, my interest in culture e.g theatre, events, my views on travel news and trends, as well as infequently guest posts on the same subjects. My current  blog is more for myself, acting as a journal enabling me to express my creatvity in various ways. My view is others read my blog that is great but I would keep going even if no one read it.

Why did you choose to write about travel?

As mentioned above I write about travel because of my website Diverse Traveller. Also because as a black woman I want to inspire other black women in particular to share their travel experiences. I am passionate about all things travel, i.e travelling uk & abroad, a day away to longer, reading about travel, travel research, trends, etc. I try and learn as much about the subject as I can. I am also passionate about encouraging women to share their travel experiences through travel writing, that's why I set up Diverse Traveller.

Are you a member of any bloggers groups?

I'm a member of the Travel Exchange but not an active member I comment on posts once in a while. I am hoping to get more engaged by devoting specific time each week

Do you attend any blogger meet ups?
I wanted to attend the last London bloggers meet up but the meetup clshed with somthing else. I would be interested in dong so to find out what makes a successful blog

How do you find the travel blogging community? 
I don't think there is a travel blogging community. There are so many people blogging about travel who are not connected to a 'group'. I could be wrong but only one i know of specifically for travel bloggers is travel blogger exchange. Unlike many other topics travel has always been 'blogging' but back then they were called 'travel journals' and this is what most current travel blogs are. Some use just to share experiences with friends and family while others are looking for a way to make travel pay. Most travel social networking websites e.g bootnall, matador etc encourage their users to keep their journals / blogs on their websites. I don't think this is any different from any other popular topic. One thing I have found interesting is that most of the frequent and 'popular' travel bloggers are based in the USA. When i have interacted with other travel bloggers they have been friendly and helpful. Travel blogging is not seen as glamourous, whereas travel writing is. Basically because the travel writing industry doesn't see blogging as the same as travel writing - issue quality of writing. But travel is not alone in this as I have heard similar comments from journalists who rant about the lack of writing quality of blogging posts.

Are there any community blogging activities that you are involved in?
As I mentioned there is no one travel blogging community. I do exchange links with both travel bloggers and websites on a random basis, when i joined the travel blogger exchange I posted my links and got a few back. I tend to use various social media marketing tools to find and exchange links. Twitter is particulary good.

You can read Ola's blog here and read Diverse Traveller here.

You can follow her for Twitter.

Click here to read the rest of the posts from 'The Life of a Blogger' series. I hope you have enjoyed the series, I have certainly had a great time interviewing so many interesting and wonderful bloggers.