About Mandy

Mandy is senior content editor with World Words. She is an experienced travel writer and editor for clients such as Time Out New York and Monarch Airlines. READ HER FULL BIO.

Bad Content Advice: The Common Travel Writing Tips that Are Complete Nonsense

Since the advent of the internet, everyone and their uncle has been quick to offer advice on travel content writing. However, as content writers ourselves, we know that while they may be well meaning, most of the advice is also outdated, ineffective and misinformed, perpetuating the same untruths and mistakes across the world of content.

Therefore, we’ve decided to help redress the content advice balance, by highlighting the common travel writing tips you should ignore. By pooling the extensive travel writing knowledge of our writers, we have come up with a shortlist of questionable tips that are regularly regurgitated online. From declarations about the death of list posts to nonsense about the vitality of keyword density, here are four common content writing tips you can just ignore.

argument-238529_1280 Continue reading

More of Our Top Autumn Travel Content

Autumn has well and truly arrived: there’s a nip in the air, a peppering of russet on the trees and decorative gourd displays every which way we look. It’s one of our favourite times of year, so we’re sharing some more of our best autumnal travel content (just in case you missed it, here’s our previous selection of fabulous fall-themed content).

First up, we pulled out an article we wrote on an increasingly popular phenomenon: light festivals. This blog post was originally penned back in March, but we felt it was a timely inclusion, as one of the highlights of the light art calendar, Prague’s Signal Festival, gets underway this October. And speaking of autumn festivals, we’ve also dug up our write-ups of London’s Totally Thames and Merge festivals, which take place this September and October.

And because autumn also coincides with wine harvest season in much of the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll find a feature we wrote back in 2014 on the ultimate Napa Valley weekend. Last but not least, for those planning some last-minute autumn trips, we have included a recent travel guide to Ireland we wrote for Oliver’s Travels. We think the Irish landscapes are arguably at their most beautiful when hues of gold, orange and red invade all that green.

photo-1446413145391-40052a2477ee Continue reading

How to Write Travel Copy That Sells

Over the last four years or so, we have written an awful lot on this blog about crafting engaging, insightful and well-written travel content. We’ve offered tips on coming up with attention-grabbing headlines, writing gripping introductions and delivering impactful endings. We have examined the role of narrative in travel writing, we’ve looked at how words and images work in tandem and we have analysed the work of the travel writing greats.

Now, after all that, we felt it was about time we turn our focus to a different beast altogether: sales copy.

While travel blogs and articles often seek to inform and entertain potential customers, sales copy aims for one specific thing: to persuade them to buy a product or service. Consequently, it requires writers to take a different approach. We’ve come up with some tips to help you master the art of crafting sales copy for the travel sphere.

iphone-624709_1920 Continue reading

Our Best Autumn-Themed Travel Content

We hate to begin with bad news, but there’s no avoiding it: summer is over. However, rather than dwelling on the negatives (bye bye sunshine, sandals and copious amounts of ice cream), let’s instead focus on the positives.

Autumn is approaching and there are lots of exciting things on the horizon. If you are based in the UK, you can expect a flurry of festivals coming your way, including the UK-wide Museums at Night and London Open House. Not familiar with these events? You can find out more by reading our write-ups of the 2015 editions below. There are also rumours of an autumn heatwave arriving on UK shores. And though we have learnt not to put too much faith in the predictions of the Met Office, we have included our article on Devon’s top picnic spots just in case.

And that’s just the start…

autumn-1072827_1280 Continue reading