See you on Instagram

From the very beginning of the social life as we know it, I did not hesitate any single second to join all the more or less successful experiements. I am currently offering content to several blogs on blogger.com, the most dear to me being Foreigner in Berlin, where I share my tasty and not only Berlin experiences.

For years, I am using Twitter on a daily basis, my travel account being by far one of the most enjoyable and successful experience, also for the opportunity to meet so many likeminded travellers in Berlin and abroad. I am also very much in love with and a long time user of Facebook, using my page as a colourful diary of my journeys. But when it comes to really photographic experiments, I regularly used in the last years Pinterest, as a visual support of my posts, especially as photographic guides of different places I am visiting. Not all my social media experiments are equally successful and I know, for instance, that I have to do much more for relaunch my YouTube channel, for instance. For the sake of the search engines, I also set up a Google page and entered the club of Bloglovin’ members.

Most of these social media presences require time for finding various and different content, interaction and SEO choices. And last but not least, my main aim in this online world is to write my travel stories and keep finding interesting destinations to cover. Did I also mention that I have also a full time job and family and friends not happy to accept that I may use the time spent together for some fast social media updates?

The fear of social media burn out – plus some technical clumsiness – kept me away from the very popular Instagram. For the first time in my life I was far beyond trends and almost ready to accept that I will just not be there. Till today when after over a week of smart phone testing and some limited market research I decided that I cannot be an outsider anymore. Plus, such an attitude does not help me short and medium-term plans that I have with my travel blogging.

Within minutes, I set up my new virtual playground: My Instagram account: https://instagram.com/ilanaontheroad/ From now on, expect a lot of impressions about cities, especially Berlin, events, food, street art, fashion, art, shopping and everything interesting that is catching my attention. Can’t wait to share and enjoy together this new side of my travel life!

See you on Instagram!

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Happy ending of the writer’s block (or whatever you want to call it)

Quite a long time without writing…

When you willingly decided to have a life organised around written words, every writing adventure shapes the days of your life. Your so-called free time is in fact dedicated to gathering impressions and images of the new articles and the busy active time is made up of polishing over and over again your words. Sometimes, you might even dream about your next topic. And this is not always the easiest task in the world.

The last 12 months were for me very busy, especially in terms of travel and writing, with a lot of new projects in the making and professional challenges, all connected to the same big professional loves: travel and writing. But having a blog means much more: networking, marketing, a lot of PR and many social activities that helps you give a face to your punctilious work.

There is something I always tried to avoid in my intensive writing life: getting overwhelmed by the writing tasks and ending up not enjoying the very simple act of staying in the front of the white page. Turning myself into a writing robot, an efficient one but not a very happy one though.

At the end of December and the beginning of January I spent a gorgeous time in my favourite place in the big world: the sunny bubbling Israel. (Lots of travel stories coming up in the next days and weeks, I promise…) When you are more than a traveller and a tourist, the feelings are different and the mood changes. You are not longer an expat, a foreigner, but you feel at home, and your life finally does not need a translation.

These are intensive experiences, worth trying them once in a while, but when you are back to your other normality, you need time to select and process all the information, feelings and decisions. Putting them down on paper does not help that much so the best is to just take a little break, read a book, focus on other writings and wait quietly when ready enough for the next travel and writing adventure.

This moment has finally come now, after more than a month of quietness and the blog is back to the real travel and writing life. For the next weeks, it will be mostly focus on the last year travels, while I am getting ready to plan the next legs of my European journeys and much more diversified content.

The writer’s block is finally over, the blog is back!

Happy travels everyone and keep in touch with good travel news!

Ilana

A day in the life of the travel writer

When I try to introduce my latest business as a travel blogger, I am received with envy and enthusiasm: oh, you are one of those people who are always on the road and even sometimes get paid (not the case here) for discovering fancy places, tasting exceptional meals and sleeping in gorgeous hotels? And what are you doing the whole day? Taking pictures that you post on Pinterest or on Twitter? What a cool life do you have?

I recognize that I love a lot my life, especially after I decided that the only person that it is worth to work for it’s only me. As I am a special case of multi-tasking: sometimes I pin, tweet, or write 2 words while listening to some podcast, simply because I can, the life in the social media realm suits me very well. Writing and taking pictures are also part of my old passions that fuelled my early dreams of a career, in my early teenage years. Plus, sometimes I can do good PR tricks as I did some constant work in this domain for a couple of years. I have a lot of interests that I am sharing between my different blogs and social media profile and I am more than happy with this. Thanks to my academic background I am able to access a lot of historical and sociological information that, I hope, gives a different spin to my posts. 

But the only thing I am not allowed to say about this life is that it is easy and the rewards are instant. Behind every trip it is a lot of work and documentation, photo editing and selection. As I do not have the whole time in the world to do it, I need to set up the right schedule in order to get the best of my travel experience. Plus, don’t forget that I am trying to be as informative as possible and thus, my posts are not exercises of self-admiration but are aimed to offer information for anyone interested to see a new place, not necessarily one featured in the big travel magazines. I am permanently hunting new topics, sending mails in order to get the access to new locations and trying to get in touch with the right people for advice, inspiration and guidance. I need to introduce each month new products and new features on the blogs, to improve the quality and the technical appearance of all my social media products. From time to time, I also need a new camera and a better computer meaning that I should be able to get new reliable sources of income. 

I spend at least 40 hours the week with writing, reading, reviewing, updating and editing, as well as preparing and planning new posts. There it is a lot to learn, mainly in terms of social media and proper SEO and every single steps ahead is the result of intensive work, work and work. 

Life is not easy, but at least I try to make it pleasant. Since I am back in the writing business I am happier than ever and will never regret the decision to get out of the corporate life. There are many travel bloggers and freelance writers saying almost the same so it must be a certain true in this determination.