What’s It Like to Run a Weekly Travel Blog?

Celebrating the 6-month anniversary of Mapping Memories 🥂

Tomorrow marks the official 6-month anniversary of Mapping Memories.

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

On the 11th of August 2023, our introduction post went live, announcing our baby to the world (Yes, symbolic baby, because, no, Hannah’s not pregnant).

Shortly after (and before) we invited our unsuspecting friends, family, and Instagram followers to join us on this journey.

28 posts later, we haven’t missed a single edition of our weekly newsletter - and we’re definitely proud of that. But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows each week. Some weeks we didn’t feel like it and during others, life would get in the way. But we still managed to get a funny, inspiring, helpful travel story into your inbox each week.

And now we’re letting you in on the behind-the-scenes.

What’s it like to run a weekly travel blog/newsletter? What does the writing process look like? What are the difficult - but also the amazing - things about it all?

We’re here to spill the beans (and throw some confetti of course 🎊)!

The journey so far

It’s been a lot of fun, tough at times, but also way easier than expected. We started Mapping Memories as a way to document our adventures and linger in them a bit longer. (And by looking at the many times we’ve referenced our trip to Swedish Lapland, it’s safe to say we definitely did that - linger).

But it’s grown into a desire of ours to inspire others to explore new parts of the world and experience the beauty that is all around us.

Whether that’s by visiting new places like Japan or Oman for the first time, or by enjoying new spots within your home country (The Netherlands for us), it would be a real shame to let the chance to explore the world's beauty slip away.

And that’s why we’ll continue to share travel tips and inspiration with you all!

What’s it like to write one blog post per week?

A weekly cadence is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s nice to have a routine so you can get used to the habit of posting, regardless of the outcome. The process of writing and posting is the goal, not the exact words that end up on (digital) paper. In our case, it has helped Hannah let go of perfectionism and value progress over perfection, simply because we made a promise to you reading this, that we’d post every week.

And luckily, we’ve been able to keep that promise so far 😉

However, sticking to a weekly cadence can also be tough since life tends to throw curveballs in the form of busy work weeks, juggling personal commitments, or getting sick.

In our case, it has helped that we got to divide the work and help each other out when needed. This meant that Mike could fully enjoy his holiday to Oman the past few days while Hannah held down the fort. Next week, it’s Hannah’s turn to do some snowboarding in Austria, so Mike will retake the lead and look back on his most recent trip.

We’re not recommending everyone to start a blog with their partner, because it requires good teamwork, communication, and a willingness to compromise 😅. But if you happen to have a shared interest and passion for something, why not give it a shot?

You probably have experiences and insights that others could benefit from as well, so it would only be rude not to, right?

What does the routine look like?

We suggest the following order for a blog writing routine:

• Brainstorm

• Plan

• Write

• Share

First, brainstorm a bunch of ideas and keep that list somewhere. We use Notion for this and have a list of ~60 ideas that we can pull from whenever we need inspiration on which post to write.

Second, plan out the order of your posts a few weeks in advance. We usually do this on a 3-4 week basis so we generally know which posts we’ll write for the upcoming month. This helps us be prepared, but still allows us to reorder things in case we have a topic that we’re even more excited to talk about for that week. It’s thought out, but still flexible.

Third, and most importantly, you write! Now it’s time to get creative. Write out your post and share your unique perspective with the world. In our case, we try to have a first draft ready on Thursday so the other person can review it before the weekend. But as we said, life gets in the way and often the review happens on Saturday morning (just like this week’s edition 🤓).

Lastly, once it’s posted, share it with others. We do this by sending an email through Substack (which you are probably reading right now) and we also post a story or reel on our Instagram account.

And after that, the cycle repeats!

Although we have enough ideas for at least one more year of Mapping Memories, we are always happy to hear what you would like to read about. Which posts would you like to see more of? Let us know in the comments, or if you’re reading this in your inbox, simply reply to this email!

What has been difficult over the past 6 months?

In the first few months, we were very focused on the numbers.

How many subscribers? How many views? How many likes, comments, and shares? It’s human nature (unfortunately) to get a dopamine rush and instant gratification from these statistics. And when your body gets some of it, it wants more.

After our initial increase in subscribers and views in the first few months, we had a longer period where those numbers stagnated. And to be honest, we both found it hard to motivate ourselves to keep going every week while the views were decreasing and no new people were joining, even though we were both putting in so much time and energy into it.

But through this process, we’ve learned to let go of the metrics and once again not see that as the goal. The goal is writing and posting, and whoever stumbles upon our posts and chooses to follow along is an added benefit.

Despite these struggles, we are super proud of our 5 new subscribers the past few days, if you are one of them, let us know in the comments, and we’ll come say hi! (If you already subscribed before, you can also say hi, of course 😉)

What are our plans for Mapping Memories?

Our big dream is to find a way to travel the world, inspire others, and also collaborate with companies to help them reach more people with their amazing products or services.

Our first attempt at this will be for our Canada trip with Outdoorsy, the company we’re using to rent our travel van in Vancouver. We want to explore win-win situations where we get to have fun travel experiences as well as give companies a great blog post, beautiful photos, or videos in return.

Besides that, we want to keep giving you your weekly dose of humor-filled escapism. Think planning tips, money-saving hacks, flight reviews, travel recaps, and many more.

We’ve only just started, so make sure to follow along for many more value-packed posts coming your way!

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The best part is having supportive readers

Every time our self-imposed deadline on Saturday came closer, we knew who we were doing it for.

Sure, for ourselves to have a whole log of memories to look back on.

But, also..

For you.

Yes.

YOU!

Having supportive readers like you makes every bit of effort we put into it, 100% worth it. We appreciate the lovely comments during family birthdays or seeing each view, like, and comment you give online. It genuinely means the world to us!

We can only hope that whoever is thinking about starting their own blog, finds readers like you as well.