Steps to Become a Travel Influencer

15 Steps to Become a Travel Influencer in 2024

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Although some travel influencers have managed to make it appear so, just becoming a travel influencer on Instagram has never been simple. In actuality, especially as we approach 2023, it takes a lot of hustle to become a travel influencer on Instagram, TikTok, or other social networks.

New travellers and producers have flooded the field of travel bloggers in recent years; this number seemed to increase amid the 2020 travel bans. Increasing numbers of people are creating digital vacation scrapbooks or journals utilizing social media sites like Instagram, Tik Tok, and personal blogs.

I’m integrating my knowledge from working on Instagram influencer accounts in this article’s travel and creative areas. Here is what I’ve learned about becoming an Instagram travel influencer that you can use on your own travel-related social media platforms, with 140,000 followers on one account and a modest 16k followers on FlyoutTrip Instagram:

1. Don’t wait to start your Instagram

It’s growing harder and harder to become a travel influencer on Instagram. But here’s the thing: if you don’t start, you’ll never attain your target of 1000, 10,000, or even 100,000 followers. Some individuals see that obstacle and quit before they ever begin.

Do your own thing and try to ignore the herd. Keep moving and moving forward. The early posts are crucial to kickstart the growth of your trip Instagram, but you can always archive them as you learn, develop, and establish your style.

2. Find a niche- a.k.a. what makes you and your travel different

People that have a distinctive perspective on travel make for the finest travel influencers—the ones that followers truly engage with. Finding that one thing that sets your travel apart from most other people’s travel—whether it be married couples driving across the United States in a van, budget travel while a digital nomad in your early years or a family slowly travelling through Europe—is actually a powerful way to engage viewers.

Travellers who post relatable or even moderately aspirational content on social media may find it simpler to grow a following on their travel Instagram than influencers who project an unattainable look or lifestyle. It can be difficult to identify with or feel connected to travel influencers who post generic travel photos.

3. Post, archive, rinse, repeat

It’s important to be consistent and publish a lot of posts, especially when building a travel Instagram following.

Make at least two posts every day over the first several months. You may plan ahead and schedule these regular Instagram posts by using a site like Later.com. Regular posting will increase your exposure. Even though you could rapidly run out of content, as your Instagram following increases, you can archive older posts and repost them as fresh content since all of your new followers since the last time you posted them will see them as fresh.

4. Identify a mission

Finding a mission is somewhat different than locating a niche. What do you want to use me for?

Understanding your motivations may improve your productivity and help you convey your objective to others. A mission may help you develop and can help you convert casual followers into ardent supporters if it’s something that others can relate to.

Do you believe that travelling is essential for personal growth? Do you follow the zero-waste principle when you travel? Do you travel to raise awareness of a problem? Centring these elements in a specific area of your Instagram pictures may make your travel account stand out from the competition and become one that people will actually want to follow.

5. Make 20% of your posts share-focused

We all hope that the calibre of our images and the greatness of our experiences will inspire others to share our trip Instagram posts widely, catapulting us into the ranks of wildly prosperous travel influencers. In actuality, a large number of our vacation pictures resemble thousands of other passengers who stood in the same locations and snapped identical pictures.

You will start seeing some reposting and sharing of your travel-related material right away. Increase this by coming up with ideas on how to make your content more shareable.

Generally speaking, the postings that are shared the most frequently are those that evoke an emotion in individuals (whether positive or negative) or give them the impression that by sharing, their followers could learn something significant about them. Sharing is motivated by emotions, so pause and consider how to produce more moving images and words.

6. Connect with other travel influencers

Choose three to six active, 20 to 40 percent larger than your own Instagram accounts that are dedicated to travel, and start purposefully engaging with their material on a regular basis.

Engage with their accounts, provide insightful comments, and share their posts on your stories. This encourages natural ties between people while also connecting your account to these bigger accounts in the algorithm. People who follow them may be encouraged by the app to follow you if your accounts are even distantly related. You could also get shoutouts or partnership chances with these bigger travel influencer accounts as human-to-human connections develop.

7. Unfollow major travel influencers and celebrities

Unfollowing hugely popular accounts will lessen the number of spam messages, comments, and bogus interactions on your own material, while it’s unclear whether doing so genuinely boosts an account’s ranking in the Instagram algorithm (these are often created by bots that target users following major accounts).

8. Always use Instagram filters on your travel posts

The Instagram artist community noticed around a year or so ago that when an Instagram filter is placed on a photo at a strength of 23% or higher, the post receives more views. In testing this theory, I have observed that posts with filters continue to have a greater reach than images edited outside of Instagram, even as 2023 gets underway. No one seems to be able to explain why posts with Instagram filters receive a boost in the algorithm and are more likely to be shared on explore.

If you’re finicky about the filters you apply to your photos, you might want to pre-adjust the colours before uploading so that you can undo the filter after you’ve already applied it.

9. Pick a great username and register the domain name

Although great usernames appear to be in high demand in the 2020s, there are still some hidden treasures available. The benefit of beginning as a travel influencer on Instagram rather than with your own domain name is that you may change your username and try out several ones until you find one that works.

I strongly suggest that you make sure the domain name is available and buy it before deciding on a username. Any new travel influencer beginning their career on Instagram should have the ultimate goal of creating a brand that extends well beyond the platform. To achieve this, you should have a domain name that accurately represents your brand or even establish a travel blog.

Here are my rules for picking a good username, handle, and domain name:

  • Make it easy to remember,
  • Make it hard to misspell,
  • Make sure that when people hear the username, they can spell it without needing special instructions.
  • Avoid dashes, dots, and unusual spelling in your Instagram username, and handle.

10. Use hashtags judiciously

Many nascent travel influencers will overuse hashtags in a post’s caption. Instagram posts can contain up to 30 hashtags, but social media experts have found that posts with fewer hashtags (between 5 and 7) actually tend to reach more people than ones with a lot of hashtags. To get the most exposure, choose a few relevant hashtags connected to travel and rotate them.

11. Find and use niche travel hashtags

Yes, it would be great if #travelinfluencer or #solotravel hit the popular tab, but until you have 300k followers to help you get there, using a hot hashtag like this is a waste of a hashtag. Instead, look for smaller, more specific hashtags, such as #onebagtravel, #plussizetravel, or #slowfamilytravel, that actually fit your material.

The ranking for these niche hashtags is simpler. Additionally, if you use hashtags that are relevant to your content, the individuals who search for them are also seeking your material. They have a higher likelihood of gaining supporters, admirers, and followers.

It is more successful to start out as a travel influencer by narrowing your audience and creating content for that area. It is more effective than making an effort to win over everyone who desires to travel. Keep in mind that you may always change your priorities and expand your travel interests later.

12. Make your followers feel like they matter

While some of the most well-known luxury travel influencers attract a substantial portion of their fan base from those who wish to worship them from a distance, it’s far simpler to gain a following when you are approachable and active.

Make sure your followers know how important they are to you. Tell them you appreciate them. Motivate them to complete their own travel objectives. By doing this, you increase your chances of gaining followers who will stick around for a while, share your content, and buy anything from you.

It’s preferable to spend 5 to 10 minutes, once or twice a day, commenting on, texting, and participating in the stuff that your followers publish.

13. Identify a Monetization Model & Goals Immediately

One thing to want to “be an influencer,” but what will you do with your platform once you get it? Many people have squandered their 15 minutes of fame because their objectives were limited to fame for its own sake.

Early on, you should decide on your monetization strategy (such as getting paid for sponsored articles, having advertisements on your website, charging Patreon subscribers, etc.) and focus on achieving that objective. It will ensure that you may achieve little milestones along the route to being a full-time travel influencer and earning an income.

Whatever monetization strategy you decide on, I highly advise content producers to launch a Patreon right away and cross-post their work. Why? Patreon complements other monetization strategies while assisting you in selling yourself more successfully.

With Patreon, you can turn followers into fans, create a community, and increase your monthly revenue without having to continually create new content, haul around items, or travel. (Hint: When you support a cause that other people can relate to, your Patreons appear to expand more quickly.)

14. Get the word out

Once you get 5,000 or fewer followers, which might take many months or even a year, you’ll be considered a micro-influencer. Even if they are currently too tiny for significant influencer marketing, travel micro-influencers can start interacting through public relations channels. You may be included as a source for journalists and writers who are writing about travel, travel influencers, or travel as it pertains to your expertise through directories like HARO. Having an interview or being cited in even one significant magazine might overnight generate thousands of new followers.

14. Keep Your Day Job (or Find a Flexible One!)

It takes time to find your audience and get their support. It also demands the ability to persevere even when the benefits aren’t apparent right away.

It may be challenging for those of us who are on the road without a trust fund to figure out how to travel, produce content, and make money at the same time. Even more challenging are the early stages before the material we’re producing becomes a profit.

I’ve written a full piece about how to benefit financially from your influencer status because this is a challenge for the majority of new influencers.

If your employer makes it impossible for you to travel, have a look at my piece on how to generate money while travelling for suggestions on how to transform the common abilities you use in your present job into freelance work that you can accomplish from any location in the globe.

Tl;dr

These pointers can help you increase interaction, gain more followers, and turn your travel Instagram account into a respectable travel influencer account. It might take months or even years, but if you start today, do it right from the start (choose a good username, post frequently, and use a small number of carefully selected hashtags), and concentrate on baby steps like connecting with your followers and contacting bigger accounts, you can start building momentum to expand your travel influencer profile.

It’s never too late to start; even if your account never becomes wildly popular, it can still be a useful tool for keeping a record of our travels for our own memories. By consistently producing travel-related content, we can gradually increase our travel Instagram’s following and engagement, which will help us launch it to success.

Simple summary: how to Become a Travel Influencer on Instagram

Pick a Username

Choose a username for your travel influencer account that is easy to remember, easy to spell, and available for purchase as a domain name.

Begin posting travel-related content – lots of it

To establish yourself as a travel influencer, you’ll need to make up for a missed time by publishing frequently. Over the first three months, post at least twice a day.

Engage often

Curate genuine relationships with your followers and connect with accounts that are somewhat larger than yours. This connects you to the person behind the account and helps Instagram’s algorithm recognizes that your new travel influencer’s Instagram is linked to the Instagrams of other existing travel influencers.

Stay true to yourself and your niche

People are drawn to fresh travel reports because they are doing something novel or unusual or appearing relatable. Choose a specialty (for example, affordable travel, family travel, leisurely travel, etc.) and keep most of your postings on the subject. Having a large appeal to a limited audience can allow you to expand far faster than striving to appeal to every possible follower.

Stay consistent, and don’t give up

Most Instagram users who try to develop a travel influencer account quit soon since it might be intimidating. The more you publish, the more you’ll discover how much competition there is for the same number of followers. Be committed to your objective, interact with and appreciate your fans, and persevere. Your devotion to content production may pay off in the form of influencer and micro-influencer status, sponsorships, free items, and even free trips over time.

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