Planning Content for your Travel Business

Welcome to this strategic travel entrepreneur. My name is Rita Perez. Hello. I've been a travel Advisor for over 10 years and am navigating this winding road of entrepreneurship with you. I created this podcast because I wanted to share all the things I've learned from leaders both in and out of our industry that I really wish I would have known way back then. But alas, the important thing thing is I'm aware of them now and I want you to be too. Ready for this week's show. Let's jump in.

Hello. Hello travel pros. Welcome back to another week of the podcast. So glad to have you here. Per usual, today's episode is something that is kind of very dear and dear to my heart. I really love putting out content in my own travel business and especially for you guys in the travel community, but I know this doesn't come easy for other people. So real quick, before we even jump into the episode, I'm going to plug two things that I have for you specifically to help with emails, but I think they can help just generate some ideas if you're trying to post on social or if you're trying to create content in a different way like maybe for blog post or or even, you know, if you want to do videos or things like that. And so the first one is my email article bundle and this is specifically for cruise Travel Pro.

So if that's what you specialize in. I have 50 articles that I have written to my own email list that I'm making available to you. All it is there are so many different like destination. I would say half or more than half of my articles are very destination specifically based. And I talk about luxury cruising, expedition cruising. I do comparisons of different cruise types, lots of river cruising. We talk about different destinations like Alaska, Galapagos, Tahiti. There's some travel tips in there as well.

So make sure you head on and check that out. I'll go ahead and add the link. The email article is available for $100 or $2 an article. And not only do I give you the articles that you can use, really, you can just copy paste it from the bundle once you get it. But I do have some insights on how you can set everything up because you have the articles. But there's a couple different things that you have to do inside your email, not just put the article on there and then I also give you a calendar. So I have listed a calendar that you can utilize for 2022, a suggested calendar. So if you want to move it around, go ahead and do it.

I just wanted to make sure that you actually utilize this bundle and I thought having a calendar to guide you as to when you should be sending out each of the different email articles would be so helpful and beneficial for you. So I have included one of those as well. So you get the 50 articles, you have a calendar as to when you should be uploading everything. And then there's a quick getting started guide as well. So, so check out the link in the show notes if that interests you and if you think you'll be able to implement that. And then the other thing is a more general item. It's called the WET Workshop and WET stands for Weekly Email Theme. And I like this is kind of like how I bounce off this going into the content of today's content planning episode.

It really is to help you because I know when I was first starting doing my email marketing, everybody said you gotta do it, you gotta do it, you gotta do it. But nobody showed me how I can actually start my email marketing. So I created the WET Workshop. It's a super quick, there's a couple different videos and it shows you through the exact process that I utilize to create my content topics or my weekly email themes every single week for the year. So I do this, I do this planning prior to the next year. So I need to do it actually for this 2022 shortly. It's my process on how I can create content pillars for my email themes. So I know when I lay out that planning process, I know exactly the different types of emails that I need to be sending out each week.

And then once I get into the nitty gritty of the planning process, I take that theme and and I create a topic for my weekly emails that needs to be sent out. It helps me really to have a plan so that when I go to write emails I am not just like, oh my gosh, what am I supposed to be writing. This weekly email theme workshop also includes like a template for a spreadsheet that I have to kind of organize all of your weekly themes for the next year. And I do have some templates that I've included that you can kind of like incorporate into your email marketing program so that you know, it gives you like a guide as to what should be where. So you like your intro, your body, your conclusion and different things like that how you really set up your email that WET Workshop is available for the low, low price of just $25. And I'll go ahead and I'll include that link in the bio if you want to get that started also. Now why I say these are kind of good basis for you is because I am planning to kind of like take those themes, the weekly themes, and make sure that they are coming out in my content. Now I know last week I had mentioned that I'm doing content a little bit differently and, and putting less emphasis on social media and actually putting more emphasis on my business podcast and putting more emphasis on different avenues, like in person avenues, making relationships, YouTube, LinkedIn and all that.

If you haven't checked out last week's episode, make sure to go ahead. It's about assessing 2021 to see what I should be planning for 2022. And I say that because when I go back to thinking about content planning, I use kind of like the same steps in a sense to build my content plan for podcasting for 2022. Now my travel business podcasts are set up, those are ready to, the contents are mostly ready to go. I won't say they're, but that is ready to go. And when I think about even the baseline of content planning, you have to think about who is your ideal client and what do you want to sell. Because those are like, if you don't know either of those answers, you are going to just be spewing content out to spew content out, which means that people aren't going to know what to call you about. And if you are talking about Italy for families and Hawaii for honeymooners and Mexico for business retreats and you know, if you're talking about a different thing, can you do it? Yes.

But what do you want to be promoting and what do you want to be known for? You know, there are more and more I'm seeing. So I know someone who just does Amariva cruises. I, there's someone that I know that is moving to just Regent Seven Seas Cruises. So it is those different niches. Like if we think about like on the supplier side, when I think of Kate from Travel Pro Theory, she is the Ireland Scotland expert. So if I needed anybody, if I had any clients, if I had any clients that wanted land on there, who am I going to call? Kate. I already know what she does. Well, Will Medina, you may know him.

He does. I know that he helps a lot with travel advisors setting up their destination wedding. He is the destination wedding specialist. So what do clients come to him for and what is he known for? Destination weddings and specifically at all inclusive resorts. So you have to, you have to be the Kate's and the wills and the Dave's and the Sheilas of The world. And you have to be known for that one thing. I mean, I think I've said this before. McDonald's is known for the Big Mac.

You know, it's these little things. You know, if you go to the grocery store, what are you going to find? Groceries. If you need wood or a toilet part for your house, where are you going to go? The home store. So where are, like, people can think of you as the travel person. That's great, but you want to even narrow it down even further. Are you the family cruise person? Are you the expedition person? Are you the small group person? Are you the Alaska person? What is it that you're going to be known for? Are you the quinceanera person? Are you the person that takes everybody to visit the Jewish memorials in Europe? Find your niche and just keep sticking to it and sticking to it. Because once you do, making content and figuring out your content is going to be so much easier, I promise you. Because once you've narrowed it down, the strategic travel entrepreneur is brought to you by Mailbox Power.

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Let me write about this. Oh, I kind of like this. But that it's. It's very messy. It's messy. Like your people don't know which way from what way. If you're talking about this and that and all the other things, ifs, ands, and betweens, I guess even, like, that's part of the foundational portion of content planning is that you really have to find yourself and who you are as a travel advisor. And it's okay if you change, because we have all changed in this travel business.

We have all changed in this travel business. I started first Starting out promoting, like, girlfriend getaways, but taking everything besides girlfriend getaways. And now I focus on retreats. What are you. And many of my clients, I mean, that's all that I talk about when I am talking on social media or sending emails out or if I'm networking. Like, that is who I present myself as. So that is how people know me. So, okay, I think you've had enough about that.

Once you have kind of broken that down, the next step would be to create content pillars. And content pillars are kind of like your. Your foundational topics almost. So when I think about my pillars, it is retreats, it is cruise ships. And then I also like to talk a little bit about, you know, just entrepreneurship in general. And then I would even say, even though this isn't an official one, something that I can relate to others with, and that's that I have an autoimmune disease and that I'm a Hispanic business owner. So. And that's where I say that I wouldn't, like, classify those as content.

And that's probably where I need to do some work on myself also. But I know I consistently talk about putting retreats on for your clients and putting retreats on for your employees. And so you have to do the five W's. Who, what, where, when, how you have to break it down. So once you have your content. So if your content topic or one of your. So if you niche in destination weddings, let's go to there. Your niche and destination weddings, one of your topics might be ideal.

Cruise ships. Like, let's say you're a cruise wedding and you're. Or maybe like you can. Now I'm kind of breaking it down. I'm trying to do like some live examples for you. But yeah, that is breaking down. Like you do weddings on cruise ships. So what do people need to know about weddings on cruise ships? So obviously one of your pillars should be actual cruise ships or cruise lines.

Another pillar I can see can be the many different destinations that someone can sail on. So those might be like the two pillars that you talk about. Also, wedding planning should probably be a pillar that you talk about frequently because you do cruises on on or you do wedding cruises. And so yeah, I could see those being like three content pillars. So what different topics out of each of those content pillars can you pull out? And you may not think a lot, but once you start putting pen to paper, you can go bananas. Because I just did this recently for content planning for my podcast. There are like. And see, that's what I'M saying it makes it so much easier once you know who you are trying to identify, which is people trying to get married and what you want to do, which is sell them cruise weddings on cruise ships.

It just, oh, like I just see like the, the blinders put on and you know, the use this beams coming up from the, the heavens being like, yes, you have achieved it because, you know, you know, and then you can break things down from there. I know content planning can be like a daunting thing and there's so many things to help you out, but it really is a lot simpler than I think. And you don't have to go into too much detail. And I think, honestly, this, that I think is why I'm relying more on video so that I don't have to write so much stuff down. The other thing that I have been noticing as far as content and specifically social media content, now, this doesn't resonate for LinkedIn. So if you're trying to do LinkedIn, like, this is not the same, but I'm speaking specifically, like for Instagram, people don't really read the captions. Like you have to grab them either on a video or whatever Slide is saying, but people don't really read the captions of things. And I think that's also a really good reason or justification for doing more things on video.

Because video, like, once you do it, once you've done the video, there's very minimal that you need to do moving forward. Like, you may think you have to edit this, edit that, but maybe you don't. These imperfections can actually be kind of nice for people to see, like, the real you and that you are an imperfect being, because we all are. That's where I say, like, maybe we just need to put a little less effort. And you can put a little less effort once you've identified some of these things. Okay, so I feel like I've kind of gone on a tangent for this content planning. I want you to marinate on some of the things that I have mentioned here. And if you have any questions, please go ahead post them up in the strategic travel entrepreneur community.

But I hope this has been helpful to at least lay a foundation. Now. There's different types of content that you can be putting out there. You can do it through audio format here on a podcast. Or maybe you don't want to do a weekly podcast, but you want to do like a, a private podcast feed that's possible. Just do a couple of episodes. Maybe you want to get started in video. Maybe you want to start blogging, maybe you want to start posting long form comment.

And that's where I say the captions are needed for LinkedIn because long form content and video are like the king of content on LinkedIn. It's so like knowing about LinkedIn, it's so different than the other traditional ones. So I forget where I was going off of that because my brain's a little fried right now. But point is, content does not have to be the scary thing and it can be much simpler if we kind of break it down. So even if you want some help kind of like breaking it down like, okay, this is what I specialize in. If you're looking for some assistance to break down pillars, post that up in the group as well and you'll get some of my insights and you'll get some of your fellow group member insights in there. Alrighty. Until next week, you have a fabulous one.

Thanks for joining me on the Strategic Travel Entrepreneur. Please subscribe and leave the show a rating on your favorite podcast platform. Oh, and don't forget to take a look at the show notes for important information and links. See you next week.