So maybe you’re going on a big trip and want to be able to share the journey with your friends and family back home, and maybe even connect with other travellers online, but you don’t want to commit to starting a blog. There’s an easy way to do this with tools that already exist for free, and which you probably use every day anyway: social media. Here’s a quick guide on how to use three of the top social media platforms to most effectively share your travels with others.
Facebook is ideal for sharing longform content with people you already know. Assuming you’ve been using Facebook for a while, you probably are already connected with the people you most want to keep in touch with on your travels. Posting pictures, videos as well as thoughts, observations and fun experiences there can be the perfect way to let those important people back home see what you’re up to and know that you’re doing well. The commenting and sharing features built in to Facebook also make it an ideal platform for having conversations about your travels, and make it easy for everyone to see what you’re sharing without you having to direct individual messages at every one of your friends and family. Facebook groups are also great places to find advice, share stories and get in touch with people you might not know in person yet but who you could make valuable connections with and potentially even meet along your travels.
Perfect for sharing short and snappy thoughts or observations. Twitter is also a great way to connect with people online that you might not have met yet. Apart from taking the assistance of The Marketing Heaven which has shown to be quite useful if one wishes to grow their account, using hashtags is an important aspect of this, as the right ones will let people who share your interests find you. Unlike Facebook, probably not everyone you went to school with, all your family and work colleagues uses Twitter, but those who do are usually highly engaged. This means you have the opportunity to use the platform to make new friends, perhaps other travellers who you might end up meeting somewhere on the road, or just people to share experiences with, get advice from, and share travel horror stories that you don’t want your grandmother to read about!
One of the most useful functions to travellers about Instagram is the stories. Adding images, videos, boomerangs or just short text to your ongoing Instagram story is a great way to give people you know back home a bite-sized glimpse at what you’re doing on a daily basis. Many people even seek the help of companies like Famoid to reach more people. If you’ve never used Instagram’s story function before, it might seem a little confusing, but actually it’s very simple: you add an image or video to your story and it will remain visible for the next 24 hours, after which time it will still be accessible to you in your archive, but no one else will be able to see it. The regular functionality of Instagram, where you add photos to your permanent gallery, can also be a nice tool to connect with other travellers, and share advice and tips, especially when using hashtags, much in the same way as with Twitter.
