By: Jessica Lagomarsini
So, you’ve decided to study abroad. This will by far be the best semester you’ve ever experienced and an adventure of a lifetime! Exploring new places and being thrown in a whirlwind of new languages, foods, and customs all around Europe will contribute to a truly personal growing experience. All your friends and family back in the motherland will be eager to live vicariously through you, and, needless to say, it would be amazing to look back in 10 years from now and be reminded of all the cool things you did.
This leads me to the topic of this blog… Why not starting your own blog while abroad? Blogs are the modern day travel diary on steroids. Here are my suggested steps in creating the ultimate blog abroad:
- Narrow Your Scope: As we learned back in middle school, your writing needs a theme and a thesis to find a basis (ie: Traveling across Europe). This concept still applies to blogging and is the foundation for a successful blog.
- Select a Killer Name: To help get you started, list a bunch of travel related words on a piece of paper and then find their synonyms. From there, create. You could potentially do a combination of your name and a travel-related word. Otherwise, use your creativity. Think outside of the box. Be creative and catchy; would you read anything less?
- Choose a Platform: To really have an efficient blog, you’ll want to host your blog and select the right platform. I strongly suggest looking into WordPress; the formatting is simple and easy to learn. Tip: When selecting plugins, remember that they aren’t Pokemon – you shouldn’t collect them all.
- Go the Extra Mile: For the serious blogger, you may consider buying the domain name. If you do this, you may also want to consider adding Google Analytics to your blog page to keep track of all your hits.
- Create a Following: Post to all your Social Media Platforms. Tip: Don’t forget to tag @bus2alps_travel on insta, follow us on Facebook: Bus2alps, and submit any content you’d like to get published on our travel blog Those Who Wander – we offer some pretty cool incentives for student writers. To learn more about writing for Bus2alps, email [email protected].
- Find Your Voice: Last, but certainly not least, create some amazing, unique content. Include lots of personable stories. For example, that one time you were hiking the mountains of the Cinque Terre and you ran into this crazy Italian man singing and selling limoncello (true story) OR that time you went to the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, and became friends with sheep herders.
