Our Travels: San Francisco, USA

Great travel content writing isn’t a matter of sitting a desk and dreaming of far-flung places. It is about experience. Our intrepid team of writers and editors are always on the move, discovering new and exciting places all over the world. It’s this persistent wanderlust that makes our travel content so authentic, evocative and, crucially, effective.

We’re always striving to seek out less-visited idylls like far-flung Easter Island, out-of-the-way Lewis and Harris and the tourist-light Gili Islands, as well as ticking off huge bucket list destinations like romantic Venice, sky-high Dubai and buzzing Bangkok. And that’s only the beginning – you’ll find lots more in the Our Travels blog series archive.

This month, it’s the turn of World Words writer Jemima to reflect on one of her recent travel adventures. Scroll on to read all about her 2019 vacation in San Francisco, including a mini road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway…

Jemima standing (in the rain) on one of the Castro District’s rainbow crosswalks.
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From Supreme Swiss Sights to Secret Spa Stops: Blogs for The Council of Europe

Regular readers of this blog will know that, back in summer 2019, we completed a series of country guides for an online trip planner called Routes4U. The project, a joint venture between the Council of Europe and the European Union, aimed to bring together disparate attractions from all across the continent in a series of themed routes and itineraries. To find out more about this, you can read our previous blogs on writing for Routes4U (here and here).

Fast forward to this year, and to help promote the service further, we were asked to contribute some blogs to the website. These would serve to highlight some key attractions spread across the different regions and itineraries. Ultimately, we focused on two blogs – one about Switzerland’s cultural routes and the other about spa stops on the European Thermal Towns route – and we’ve included snippets from both below. Scroll down to have a read…

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Our Travels: Gili Islands, Indonesia

It’s no secret that the writers and editors at World Words love to travel. At any given time, many of us are trotting around the globe, gathering inspiration for new stories and advice for fellow travellers. Ask us a travel question, and it’s likely one of us can answer it from authentic experience. Just take a look at the Our Travels blog archive for a taste of our team’s vast, on-the-ground experience, from exploring the Buddhist temples of Luang Prabang to hiking the mountain landscapes of Andorra to chilling out on the golden beaches of Mallorca – among others.

This month, it’s the turn of World Words travel writer Nicole to share a recent adventure. Escaping to Indonesia’s Gili Islands, she discovers it can be hard to relax with a book when there is so much fun to be had in paradise…

Nicole cycling through a restaurant strip along the coast of Trawangan (Gili T). She really likes cycling.

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A Top 10 List Blog or a Deep-Dive Feature? Deciding on the Length of Your Content

In the modern world, there’s a widespread belief that shorter content is always better, and that readers’ attention spans are limited. While it’s true that brevity is important in many areas of travel content, it is not always the case. In fact, many readers are on the lookout for in-depth content that answers questions, educates and inspires them.

A recent study by Medium, a platform for technological content writing, revealed that the time spent reading one blog was up to seven minutes, or about 1,600 words. Other studies go further, demonstrating that the top-ranked content on Google has over 2,000 words. While these figures are enlightening, this isn’t just a question of longer versus shorter content – different topics and formats need different word counts. The takeaway is that you should write however much is needed to get your message across. That if you give readers good content, they’ll read it.

So how do you go about choosing the perfect word count for your travel content – and how do you structure it to make it as reader-friendly as possible? Scroll down to read some tips from our expert travel content writing team…

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