Top 5 Audio & Video Tips for Travel Bloggers

A good number of travel bloggers that I regularly read are doing a great job of incorporating video and audio into their travel blogs, so if you’re one of them — good for you!

If you’re new to travel blogging and haven’t yet tried adding either video or audio, well then you should! It’s a great way to engage your readers, keep them coming back, and increase your audience.

Here’s a few tips to help make sure you’re getting the most for the time that you invest in both creating and posting both audio and video.

Top 5 Video Tips:

  1. DO make sure you have an opening title and closing “credits”. Your opening should be the title of your video, and can be superimposed on the video image. Your credits should be on a plain white, black, or other solid color frame and – if nothing else – list the link to your website with a “call to action” (an invitation to learn more by visiting your website). You can also use the credits – just like in the movies – to list anyone who assisted with the production, and the title to any music used;
  2. If you use music for any part of your video that does not have narration, or as a low-volume backdrop to your narration, DO make sure you are using royalty-free music to avoid legal trouble;
  3. DO use YouTube or other video hosting service (yes, there are others!) to host your video, in order to avoid potential bandwidth over-runs that could wind up costing an arm and a leg, or shutting down your site;
  4. DO ask people to leave comments at YouTube, which will increase views – the more people who see your video, the more that will find your site after seeing your link in the closing credits;
  5. DO encourage others to embed your videos on their travel blogs, and to share them with their friends as well;

Top 5 Audio Tips:

  1. DO include a brief (few seconds) musical intro and exit at the start and end of your recording – this gives your recording a professional touch (but again, be sure to use royalty-free music);
  2. DO clearly introduce your guest (if you have one, in the case of an interview) and/or clearly state the topic of your recording and welcome listeners. If you have a guest, pause to allow them to say hello;
  3. DO use an audio-editing application (like the free Audacity for both Windows and Mac) to remove background noise or hiss, and to clean up any bits that need trimming;
  4. DO be sure to mention your website (and the website of your guest) once at the beginning of your podcast and then again at the end of your recording – repeat it slowly and, if necessary, spell out any parts that might be easily misunderstood;
  5. If you’re not interviewing someone, then DO ask listeners to visit your site and give them a reason to – more information, a free report, or some followup benefit. If you are interviewing someone, keep the focus on them and their website – you’ll get a reputation for being a great interviewer and more people will want to be interviewed by you;

BONUS Tip: Whether you’ve posted video or audio, be sure to follow up with a written transcript in either HTML, or PDF form, and post a clear link to it where your audio or video is posted. If you’re busy, outsource the transcription, but it’s important to do this for two good reasons:

  • Primarily, you may very well have readers who are visually or aurally impaired and providing them with a written record of the narrative will allow them to enjoy your production also.
  • Secondly, it’s SEO-savvy – Google and other search engines can then index the written content of your audio or video production and rank it for any of your keywords that you’ve used.

If you have questions, feel free to post them in our Forum — we have several forum members who are great with both audio and video podcasting!

~Trisha

Are you using audio and video on your Travel Blog? Share your experience with it!

About Trisha Miller 116 Articles
Trisha Miller Editor-in-Chief, TravelWritersExchange.com - Trisha joined the Travel Industry in 1996 with a background in telecommunications and helped to build (and later sell) one of the industry's top inbound call centers specializing in air travel. Her career in Travel Writing began with creating destination-specific content for a corporate travel intranet, and continued as she contributed content to a large number of travel-related companies that were establishing an online presence throughout the late '90's and early '00's. Currently she is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, and a former Board Member of the International Food, Wine, and Travel Writers Association (2009-2015).  Still a frequent world traveler, and occasional guest-blogger on a number of other Travel Blogs, Trisha writes about travel and technology, sometimes both at the same time. You can follow Trisha on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/TravelWriting

10 Comments

  1. Hiya

    These are great tips that I will use. I recently started taking video but have been reluctant to use it …I don’t know, perhaps I think I’ll disappear in a puff of smoke or something …your tips just may have given me the confidence I need to put something together and use it!

    Thanks for helping me get into action to improve what I offer to the world.

    Gwen McCauley

  2. Great post Trisha! I just love Audacity and creating podcasts. I’m getting used to incorporating music into my podcasts. I’m still getting used to YouTube. Thanks for the link to the other video hosting sites. I would like to do more videos.

  3. @Gwen and @Rebecca – thank you to both of you for your kind words! I am glad if these tips help anyone – I’ll be sharing some more advanced audio and video techniques in an upcoming article, so stay tuned (or subscribe if you haven’t already!) :)

  4. You must be reading my mind. I am working on editing a video right now! I am going to try to fit in some credits. It’s an audition video and I only have 2 minutes, but it would be nice to have our website up there. Great tips! Listen to the warning of royalty free everyone. I had great videos up on youtube that were taken off because of music issues. You think that you are just a little person and nobody will notice or care, but they do!

  5. This is mad just makingmy first video and say this great advice posted on theplanetd twitter. great tips now to figure out how to do an opening screen and exit screen hmmm

  6. Thanks for the tips – I only just started implimenting video and audio since i converted to wordpress. I feel it not only allows me to make a quick post, great for days between serious writing, but also ads a nice element to my website.

    Great tips, I’m definitely gonna have to go back and change a few posts to match some of your tips. Seems like they’ll be worth the trouble.

    Much appreciated
    Corbin

  7. I like this article. One additional thought is that if you are creating a collection of episodes to your travel filming you could choose to purchase a license to use a piece of royalty free music but use it again and again therefore cutting your costs and still being able to use a quality piece of professional royalty free music in your productions.

    Good luck!!

  8. Great tips. We just got a FlipMino and can’t wait to start working on video editing; it’s going to be a completely new venture for us. I’m curious as to your thoughts about a post that is purely video. I have seen several sites begin a post with something like, “Here is our video on navigating so-and-so” and then include the video immediately after and no text after that. Both my husband and I tend to just skip over those posts. Instead, we prefer the sites that include text and pictures and an embedded video, if appropriate, somewhere in the middle. Forks and Jets did a particularly great job in their recent video relating to tapas (www.forksandjets.com). But that may just be us because I know that a lot of people love video content. What do you think?

  9. Hi Akila

    I LOVE my Flip Mino! Did my video of an “inside view” of a press trip using only it for the video & stills – the only advice I have with it is that you DO need to hold it more still than other (more expensive) video cameras that have image stabilization built in – if you “pan” do it smoothly and slowly. And if the wind is blowing, don’t rely on it for clear audio (if the audio is important, avoid windy or noisy situations).

    My opinion of video-only blog posts is the the same as yours – I do love video content but I think it’s best as a “supplement” to an article. If you have no text at all then your deaf or hearing impaired audience is left out (unless, of course, you include captions :) ) and also unless it’s a short video, a lot of people won’t take (or don’t have) time to watch it…..

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