Travel videos are incredibly engaging and offer your target audience an overall visually appealing experience. It includes a perfect blend of your unique personality and a memorable travel journey. However, as a travel vlogger, how do you grow your YouTube channel and live your dream life traveling to exotic destinations? This guide will give you a deep dive into the detailed steps to start your journey as YouTube travel Vloggers. From deciding on the types of travel videos to the nuances of editing them, we have got you covered.
How To Become a Travel Vlogger?
Let’s start with the essentials you need to know before you shoot your first travel Vlog and get started on your journey. The best thing about YouTube travel Vloggers is that you have the complete liberty to choose what parts you want to highlight and how to reveal your unique story for traveling.
Define Your Story
As per research reports from Harvard Business Review, human brains are naturally attracted to stories and are often curious to follow them. So, create an interesting, exciting, and engaging story to hook your viewers in the first few seconds of your vlog. What unique perspective are you going to share in your video? Or maybe you had a great experience traveling to your preferred choice of destination. What made you feel special? Find answers to these questions and wrap them in a story.
Record Travel Videos
Once you have your story ready, you can start exploring and recording your travel vlogging videos. I recommend recording videos, both detailed shots and wide-angle views, with your story in mind. This will help you eliminate the distractions and shoot only the parts relevant to your story.
Edit your video
As travel vloggers, editing your video is essential to attracting your target audience and buy YouTube views that expand your videos’ reach. Ensure the flow of the video depicts a flawless yet engaging story you imagined before recording. Most importantly, it should reflect your unique perspective to keep the viewers engaged and preferably increase audience retention.
Post and Promote videos
Once you have polished your videos with efficient editing, upload them to YouTube and other social media handles. Besides, it is also a good idea to promote video on YouTube using YT ads. It helps your travel videos gain extra exposure in a short time.
YouTube Travel Vloggers video ideas
As YouTube travel Vloggers, you cannot simply go out there and start recording some random videos. Although you may have to experiment a few times, you can think of the following travel vlogging ideas to grow your channel fast.
Travel Guide Vlogging Videos
It is an ideal choice if you love helping people gain a memorable travel experience while visiting their favorite place. As a travel vlogger creating travel guide videos, you inspire people to make the most of their travel journey. Examples could include “15 things to do in Rome”, “Make the most of Bali trip”, Best places to go in Mauritius”, etc. It does require some planning and groundwork from your end. However, the efforts are worthwhile to grow your travel YouTube channel.
Niche Travel Videos
Do you specialize in luxury tours or budget traveling? Or maybe you are really good at adventure sports and can start an adventure travel YouTube channel. The goal here is to choose a travel niche you are passionate about and make travel vlogs tailored to your particular target audience. It helps you cut through the increasing competition and attract relevant viewers with the potential of evolving into lifelong subscribers.
Documentaries or cultural stories
As travel vloggers, you could be passionate about covering the nuances of a particular culture within or outside of your geographical boundaries. Travel videos in this niche have a lot of scope for storytelling and can potentially engage your viewers quickly. However, remember that creating documentary videos will require a lot of effort from your end, as you will have to make a deep dive into the details. However, this will help your audience get to know something that they might not be aware of, and there are higher chances of increasing engagement on YouTube travel videos.
Travel Marketing videos
Maybe you want to attract people to visit your local tourist destination. As a travel vlogger, you can create videos promoting the local service providers and the specialties of your local region.
Apart from the above 4 options, there are endless choices of video ideas to choose from to start a travel YouTube channel. Remember to find your niche on YouTube, as it helps you define and find your target audience.
Choosing the Right Equipment for a Travel YouTube Channel
Now that you have your story and niche chosen, it’s time that you explore a few equipment needed to record your travel videos. Your choice of video recording gear depends on your travel vlogging idea and story. For example, if you want to create videos in the budget traveling niche, you can get started with a simple smartphone camera and a tripod. However, for recording more sophisticated videos, you may require advanced equipment and larger investment. Remember, you will be a nomad visiting different places as YouTube travel vloggers. So carefully choose the essential vlogging equipment for travel vloggers that will improve the quality of your videos and also be convenient to carry to different places.
Edit your travel Vlogging Video- 3 step guide
Although there could be a million of ways to edit a travel vlog, it is better that you set a specific formula to maintain consistency and increase the recall factor in your audience’s mind.
Introduction with a Hook
Capture your viewer’s attention in the first 10 -15 seconds by sharing something interesting. It could be asking a surprising question about the place you visited. Or reveal a shocking fact about the place you are about to share in your travel vlog. You can also state a promising value that is worth waiting for your audience. It is the key to keeping your viewers hooked to watching the main content of the video.
Main Video Content
This is the main part of your content, the story that keeps the viewers engaged throughout the video. It could be around 6-8 minutes long and must deliver the value promised. Ensure that the video follows a smooth flow of information, story, fact reveal, etc. Pause at specific instances if you want to and let the audience take in the mesmerizing experience of the destination.
Ending with a Compelling Call to Action
What do you want your viewers to do after watching the video? It could be as simple as hitting the thumbs up button, bell icon, sharing their view, or clicking the link to book their next travel package. A travel vlog without a compelling CTA keeps your audience hanging in the dark after watching the video. Besides, it also offers a great opportunity to encourage them to subscribe to your email list.
Essential Editing Elements
Although there are various equipment to edit travel vlogging videos, I recommend using FinalCut, Lightworks, or Adobe Premiere. Add relevant voiceovers and overlays to your travel videos to make them engaging and add value for your target viewers. Additionally, remember to add music, as it elevates the mood of the viewer while keeping the video entertaining. However, use copyright-free music to avoid attracting copyright claims from YouTube and penalizing your channel. I recommend adding the real background sounds of the place so that the viewers feel how it is to be there at the destination.
Once you have edited your travel video completely, it is now time to upload the vlog to your YouTube channel.
Optimize your Travel video for YouTube SEO
Simply editing and publishing videos is not sufficient to grow a travel YouTube channel. Optimize your travel vlogs for YouTube SEO. Why? It helps you attract organic viewers in the long run.
Conduct Thorough Keyword Research
As YouTube travel bloggers, conducting in-depth YouTube keyword research is essential to getting your videos ranked higher in search results. Keywords are words or phrases your audience enters when looking for your content. The keywords you choose must have high search volume with low or medium competition, as it helps your videos get ranked faster. Gradually, once you start attracting traffic, you can then move on to keywords with super high search volume and competition.
Customize thumbnails for better engagement
Thumbnails are the first thing viewers see when your video comes across their eyes. The more engaging and curious they are, the higher the chances of clicking and watching your video.
Optimize travel video titles and Description
Infusing your travel vlog titles and descriptions with relevant keywords can be highly beneficial in achieving higher ranks on YouTube search results. It is ideal to place the keywords at the beginning of the title. Moreover, you don’t have to do it all alone. Use an AI YouTube title generator and an AI YouTube description generator to craft ideal titles and SEO-friendly descriptions for your YouTube videos.
Add Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags still hold some value in YouTube SEO as they help the algorithm filter out content based on viewers’ hashtag searches. For example, if you have added #adventuretravelvideos, YouTube will place your videos in the top search results if your audience searches for content using hashtags. Learn how to add hashtags to YouTube videos for best results in YT search queries.
Upload Subtitles and Closed Captions
Subtitles and closed captions encourage your viewers to watch your video content even if they don’t understand your language. Although there are a lot of differences between closed captions vs subtitles, adding them is crucial to expanding the reach of your travel vlogs. If you are someone in the beginner stages, learning how to become a travel vlogger, don’t miss out on this step, as it can boost audience engagement.
Conclusion
This was all about becoming YouTube travel Vloggers and learning how to become a travel vlogger. Although scaling a travel YouTube vlog channel can be time-consuming and effort-intensive, it is worth the effort if you are highly passionate about traveling and sharing your unique perspective with the world through your inspiring travel stories. Start with the steps mentioned in this article and bookmark it if necessary.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. How much do Travel vloggers make?
As per industry estimates, YouTube travel vloggers earn an estimated few hundred dollars a month to maybe six figures or more. However, the earning potential also depends on multiple factors like the niche chosen, the paying power of the audience, the monetization strategies used, and the YouTube channel promotion efforts.
Q2. How long should a YouTube travel vlog be?
A decent YouTube vlog length should be between 3 minutes and 8 minutes. However, it also depends on your content. If your content is informative and highly engaging, even 15-minute long travel vlogs tend to perform well among your audience.
Q3. Is the Travel niche profitable on YouTube?
Yes. Evolving as YouTube travel vloggers and diving into the travel niche is profitable. However, you must choose video ideas and sub-niches in the travel category that attract high-paying advertisers.
Q4. What is the best description for a travel Vlog video?
Instead of simply recording the places you visit and sharing generic information, I recommend you dive deeper into your traveling experience and share the challenges and reflections of your trip.