How to make a travel vlog from your family vacation

1. Meet your coach : Hello everyone. Welcome to this course with me, Luis, or shop where we are going to tell you how to become a travel blogger from just your regular trips, just your regular family holidays. Who am I? I am a life writer, a health researcher, and an accidental YouTuber. So the way that I fell into the YouTube world was really by just go into places, thinking that I film them for a little bit of memory capturing. Then as I talked about them, people were leaving questions below. My background is initially in hospitality and food and catering. Specifically the way that it affects your body and health as you're eating a certain way. And so as I was going away, I was thinking, okay, this is a really good menu. And I was speaking about the menu. And it's taken off quite well on YouTube. Now, day to day, I am a life writer. I write about modern-day life and the trials and tribulations that you go through specifically to health. So I think going away is really good for you. Sometimes I get asked a lot of questions about what is it, What do you film on? How can I go forward to how can I make this happen for me? So I decided this course would be a really, really great way to get you involved. 2. What will you need to do to be successful?: We had an absolutely brilliant night and I hope you enjoyed it. And what I would like you to do is to make sure that you engage in this course. Do the tasks that I set, because that's absolutely going to make sure you get the most out of this, as well as that we're going to go over the real basics and there'll be subsequent courses where we go further into it depending on what your niche is going to be, make sure you engage in the discussions where I'll be able to give you feedback on what your question is or what your issue is, or how you plan to move forward without further ado. Let's get stuck into this. Feel free to connect with me on other platforms too. You will find me all over if you just have a little look. I am always very open to your questions and I really hope you get a great deal of value out of this course. And then it helps you to start living the way that you really want to. And maybe that bit of imagination you sparked can go that step further. 3. How to find out what you want to achieve: The very first place to start on your journey into creating travel vlogs is to ask yourself the question, what is it that you would like to achieve? It really depends where it is. You want to go as to how you're going to get there. That is, imagine that your North star and you're headed towards there. If you don't know the end point, you're not going to know the way to get them in. You may end up doing a lot of meandering and that's not what you want. Make sure that you feel free to pause this video and make some notes for yourself. First question you want to ask is, what reason do you want to create travel vlogs? So what's your purpose, what you're trying to achieve? Here's a selection of different things that I will encourage you to think about. You could be creating travel vlogs, to be the next big YouTuber, to make yourself some money to turn it into a job. And if that's your purpose, you need to make sure that you're putting out some really professional content. We'll get more into that. Once you've decided where you're going. Another reason could be you just simply want to keep a hold of your memories to look back on in years to come. And YouTube is a really good platform to put that out there. You can even upload them and keep them privately. That's another point we'll get to as well. Oh my goodness. It is blazing sunshine. Oh my goodness. I'm loving this. So pretty out there. Hello, Good morning. I cannot believe. I'm standing here with my beach bag or me, my bikini under my clothes, I'm about to go for breakfast. You could be simply wanting to build an audience, but not for the point of necessarily monetizing your channel, but rather forgiving value to other people that want to go there. That's another option. That's a brilliant way to build a community around pick people who are like-minded like you, and you can all build a little bit of a discussion going on there. Another reason could be simply to try and pay for your trips. So some people, as you would have noticed, I'm sure you've looked around YouTube, get gifted. And if they're gifted their trips, then you could be two. Any reason why you can? Absolutely not. That's the case of building enough of a momentum on your channel to make sure that people will want to sponsor you to do the trips. Getting free trips is a great way of seeing the world and making more of my content. Take a pen and piece of paper and start writing down what it is you see going on with your vision. How do you want to move forwards with your channel? So we are going to get into the basics of what you need to get monetized and how to build a channel. Initially. Let's just get to the nitty-gritty of why you want to be a travel blogger. So take a piece of paper and write down there all the things that you can see that absolutely fill you with joy. If you write something down, say like it's making money. If you write down there or I want to make X amount of money, but something inside you feels a little bit off, a little bit icky. It's not quite right. Then don't go there yet. Only take the things that fill you with joy. Let's start there. You can add other things in lighter, but start there to get your purpose so that you're heading towards journal starring, you know where you're going. Once you've done that, come back to the next lesson. 4. What content can you create?: As this is a course for people who want to make a travel vlog from their regular trips. This is not really for backpackers. This is not for people who want to go travel the world with an open-ended ticket. This is for you. If you're somebody that generally takes your breaks away, whether it'd be a long weekend, even a day out sometimes, or your family two-week break that you get a couple of times a year. It's for those of you who would already do those things anyway. So bearing that in mind, I'm going to tell you the questions that I get asked most frequently from people who also want to go to those places, and then you can begin to build your content. It's really important to start to plan your content when you know what it is you're trying to achieve. So, for example, answering questions, Let's take this one. If you want to answer questions for other people, you need to know what they're likely to be wanting to know. You can think about what you would ask, which is brilliant, but you'll be surprised at how many other people ask different questions. As an example, if you go on all-inclusive breaks and the majority of my vlogs tend to be about all-inclusive breaks that I take with 2a0, I've been to many different countries. They do all Spark different questions. But you can have a bit of a baseline of knowing what people want. If you can provide them with a service and you can show them what it is that they want answered. Then they will come back for more. And they will think that was such good value, that was really worth me investing my time watching that video and I will come back again. The questions I get asked more often than not, can you go out what's around the local result where you're saying, is there a safe in the room? What's the best currency to take? How much money do I need to take for tipping? Where can I go on excursions around the place? Who's the best person is book excursions with what's the food like. And then people often ask different dietary requirements, which is my thing. That's what I go into. They want to know if it's okay for kids. Is it okay for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, those with allergies. So it's all of these things that you want to make sure that you're going to answer in your video footage. When you're going around, you can film all of these things bearing in mind what a lot of people going to want to know. What's the entertainment like is another one. Are the swimming pools heated, some beds? Do you have to reserve some bits? What's the protocol for reserving some bids? Are we near to the beach? A lot of these things, of course, they're going to find out when they're booking it. But if you can answer those questions for them while you're out there and maybe even get on the social media platforms and do a few lives. They aren't going to love you for that and they are going to hit those thumbs up buttons on your videos and they're going to come back for more. So bear in mind if this is something that you're doing for you, for your memories, just film your day. If you're putting it out for public consumption. Some people are going to be interested, but the majority will come and watch because they want a question answered. If you think about Tripadvisor When you're researching to go away on holiday yourself, you will tend to go on TripAdvisor and see what other people have said. A lot of the time you look at the photographs and thick and you imagine yourself there. So if it's the bedroom or the swimming pool, you all imagine yourself there and you'll think, Oh, I like the look of that. Whether it's the decor you like or there's something that you can imagine yourself going there. Or you'll think absolutely not for me. And that's a great value, steel as well because it's showing people don't go there, do go here, and it's giving them an idea to choose. So think about what you would like to see as a holiday and then take your pen and paper and make sure you put it back in the discussions as well. So we could all say what things you're looking for collectively. We can put this together. Don't worry about competition. There is enough out there for everybody trusts me. But what would you like to see? You're researching a break? If you're always searching somewhere to go, what do you want to know about? For me? A little heads up. One of the first things is how comfortable is the bed? Another thing. What's the gluten-free food like? That's giving you a starter. Add some more in the discussions, what it is that you feel you would want to know. So therefore, how are you going to answer that for your audience? I guess I'll be on my way now. 5. What equipment will you need?: Now you've decided on some of the content. So let's get into the next class where we're going to talk about how you create that content. I'm very frequently asked what do you feel one? And the answer to that is very simple. You can film on the thing that feels most accessible to you. If you're going on an all inclusive break, for example, you'll probably get between 1520 kilograms of luggage that you can take. Or hand luggage is generally quite limited, isn't it as well? If you're going to take big packs of camera equipment to get the most amazing content of quality within your, within your cameras stuff. Then you're gonna need to make sure that you factor that in when you're packing your things. For me. I use my phone. That feels weird saying that because I also call it my camera. It's got four K, which is like the greatest that you can get. It's always accessible. I generally always have it on me even if I've left the resort and there's no Wi-Fi and I don't have a local sim. I have my phone with me. It's something easy to whip out your push a button and they are filming and you will honestly, if you're trying to set up that shot and your travel vlog and you're going to miss a moment. So say if you're walking down the local town and a carnival starts to go past and you want to get that, you want that footage, you need that shot in your, in your blog. By the time you've set up your tripod and focusing and everything on a DSLR for example, you've missed it, it's gone. Whereas your phone, you can get it and you can get it all Waze app. So for that, I use an iPhone 13 Pro Max. I like it because it's bigger and I can see what's on the screen a whole lot better as well. You don't have to use a phone. You can use whatever you want. Like I said, make sure it's accessible. It's really important to make sure that the quality is going to be good enough. Now, technically moving on from that with my iPhone, a little floor, but I did come up with because all of my footage goes up onto the iCloud. It's always there. Should I lose my phone? I've still got all my footage on the iCloud. But to upload it to iCloud, then what you need is a big enough iCloud account. I've got one that is two terabytes, that's the biggest you can get. I need to make sure my iCloud is not full up. I need to make sure my iPhone and listen to this really carefully because if this goes wrong, you're not gonna be able to get your footage was found the phone, it won't go to the Cloud. When you're in another country. Connect to the Wi-Fi, which sometimes drops in and out, connect to the Wi-Fi, connected to the plug, the charger. Then you can go to the bottom of your photos and you can go upload to iCloud and they will all go to the iCloud. So no matter where you are on your icons, if you find you becoming a really big YouTuber and you've got somebody editing your vlogs back at home. They can pull it down from your iCloud with your login details. So that's really straightforward. That way then you don't have to worry about, I see this all the time. Do you ever watched like loads of YouTube videos? And they're like, Oh, I'm running out of battery. All I'm running out of memory. It doesn't often happen with the phone. But like I said, you can use what you like. So if you wanted to use a camera that separate to your phone, the other one that people really like is the Canon G7 x, that has a flip up screen that you can look at. And it's just quite a straightforward point and shoot. Camera. Loads of people have success with that and it's a really good quality as well. Tripods are very handy to take, but obviously when you're traveling, you want to travel light. You can on Amazon get a little one that's a little tripod and it folds up to this big. And definitely take I take that with me everywhere I go leaving fit my little Hamburg that goes across me. You know, when you're awake, you want to be safe. You want something that's just going to fit in that little bag? That's great. I can pop that up and carry it around with me. I can pick it up and take it about swap it around and show you the nature outside of where I'm sitting on my latest trip. For me, I find keeping it simple is the best way. So just see what works for you. Have a look at pricing, See what you're prepared to spend, but do bear in mind carrying it all around. Even some of the bigger YouTubers often use their phone in case. And I say it uses his phone sometimes I've seen it. He does also have a massive camera for other times. You can integrate both, but just bear that in mind. So again, share in the discussion what it is you like to use and why. 6. What content gets the most engagement : So in this class going to talk about what content does best. So personally for me, I find traveled to videos do really well. So travel with me from Gatwick to Turkey, for example. That does really well. A room tour does really well. Everybody wants to research their holiday and have a look around what they're going to get. What does the result look like? What does the rim look like? And how is the beach? And as well, if you can do some some lives on, I don't know what your platform is. I mean, I find a really good way of growing the audience, which we'll do that in a different course, um, is to build on Facebook. There are lots of Facebook groups just, you just have to check that you're allowed to share your links and things like that. But if you're getting those Facebook groups and you can go live, amazing, people will love you for that. So when I went to Egypt more recently, we went live and we showed what was going on in the bar of an evening. And there was a violinist and then there was a piano player the next day. And the audience was loving it and I was really, really engaged. So should you actually be filming? So don't beat yourself up too much about being overly professional. Because the thing is you need to get started. If you haven't already started, just do it. Just literally do it. Try if you can to not make the camera too shaky. If you're going to pan around, try not to do it too quickly because it makes your audience dizzy. Make sure you fill out this way round if it's going on YouTube and this way around, if it's going on TikTok or Instagram. Now reals are a really good way of building to go on Instagram. But I think a lot of people don't research so much on Instagram as they do on YouTube. Youtube is very searchable as well, so it's great. It will pop up because it's owned by Google. So if you're going into a Google search engine and you're typing in their view from the balcony in Venice, you've uploaded that video from your YouTube channel, then that is likely to pop up. It depends obviously on search engine, but like I said, we'll do that in another, in another course, talking about growing your audience. So start creating that content. Don't give it too much thought. Don't go into it too crazily. The only thing you will need to be careful of is filming other people's children. You cannot really put other faces, other people's children on your vlogs if you can help it. Because YouTube, I likely to take that video down. Other than that, just get started. Just do some things, have some fun with it. You'll find your own way. You'll find your own way of doing things and you'll enjoy it. And it will be a little bit frustrating while you're learning the technical stuff and you're editing process would all come into fruition bit by bit. The technical editing of the videos. I use iMovie. A lot of people use Final Cut Pro. And I find with iMovie it has got everything that I need. It's hasn't got the greatest fonts in the world. And Final Cut is a lot better for that. I overlay with news. If you're going to overlay with music, you have to make sure it is copyright-free. I use epidemic sound. I can always give you guys a link to that if you need one. We will pop that in the discussion. Epidemic Sound is a chargeable service. You can get some free music from YouTube in the creator area. But if you're filming, for example, if you've ever seen my dancing videos on the dancing videos, if you take out the music that the people are dancing to, it doesn't work. So I leave the content up as it is, and I let all of the revenue from that video Go to the people who created the music. So say for example, they don't seem to Whitney Houston. Whitney Houston's pot will be paid in two rather than to myself. So I won't get any money for that video. But sometimes it's worth it. Sometimes it's not about the money is it's more about the quality. 7. How to get your audience interested in you: So in this section we're gonna talk about what's going to keep people watching your videos rather than click off of them. Think about videos that you've watched. What did you love and what did you not love? Take a moment, pause this video and write down what it is that keeps you watching a video. Do you like it when somebody talks all the time? Do you like it when they don't talk at all? There's all of these different things that's going to mean, Yup, If you produce the videos that you would like to watch, then that's going to be more enjoyable for you to create it. So personally, I do like a lot of information. I quite like chatty videos where people are giving you their own thoughts and feelings because there's a life writer, That's what I mean to how did things make you feel? So I like it when people say all the staff here are really friendly. I had this lovely conversation the other day with Ahmed at the bar and he was saying this and then we had a giggle about that. And they would teach me a bit of the local language. I like that. But some people might literally want the facts and they might just come for the facts and then leave again. They want to know exactly what it looks like. There's a YouTube channel that I've seen quite a lot of times. And they literally take the camera on a gimbal, which is something that you can do this with. And the camera will stay more stable and they just take it around the result and they'll walk around those off for 20 minutes and I upload it. And that's that some people are going to love that if that's exactly what you want to see, That's great. If you want people invested in you. That's a whole other story because you need to tell your story. I think I used to get an unbiased is still I think it's known as the lack of chip monks and I even more than that. Oh my God. Yeah, For some reason I don't eat the ones who appoints. Perfect setting, Perfect Moment. Happy, happy. If you want people coming back because they like you. They like the way that you present. They like your family, feel having family. They're like the fact that you're a solo traveling, if you're Solo Traveler, which I frequently am. If I like how that's making you feel and they were invested in your personality and how your day is. Go in and are you okay? There'll be a lot more chatty. There's much more chance they're going to come back and subscribe. There's much more chance they're going to be invested in you and want to know where you're going next and what it is that you can do. 8. Niche down to blow up: Let's just talk in this last video about niche and down to blow up. So in a nutshell, if you're trying to be all things to all people, not only will the people not know who to come to, that, neither will YouTube. Assuming it's YouTube you put on your platform, you may not, you may start yourself a blog. You may decide to write about it as well. That's something we can talk about in a different video. But if you're trying to discuss, for example, take me, I'm unlikely to go backpacking. I may travel light somewhere, and I am very likely to visit a lot of different places, possibly on my own. I'm not going to be sending a dorm room with lots of other people. I highly doubt it. And this is maybe a writer's retreat or something like that. But again, I don't think so. I'd like to be in my own room with my own bathroom and yes, I will travel light. I have when I went to Bosnia, I don't know if you saw those videos. I just took a hand luggage and that was for a week and I was quite happy. But that doesn't make me a backpacker and I'm certainly not the right person to give a load of advice on that. If you think about the analytics on the channel which you will get into that you'll get into seeing what your analytics are doing. You can really hone in on who your audience are. Now more than 50% of my audience or gentlemen. And that says a lot to me. When you go away very often, it's the man that wants to pick up the camera. I think a lot of it is because he wants to film his wife. And she's very beautiful and he looks at it. It's a peacock feathers. I look at my lovely wife. Let's put around the camera. But it's not always the case. A lot of the time it's the men who were doing the research in the trip. And they're the ones that want to come and watch my channel, for example. But even though a lot of them are younger than me, the majority of them are of an age where you'd imagine they'd probably gone on all-inclusive resort. The people who are sort of gap year age, maybe 20 years old, English. Not so many of my audience, or that there's plenty of them don't get me wrong. It's actually a hello. But not all of them. They're going to probably want to see the backpack of people. They're not going to want to come and see a woman of my age talking about all-inclusive resorts as much. If I was to try and talk about a backpack, they probably couldn't relate quite so easily to that. So think about your niche. Think about what it is that you love. Don't do something that you don't love because it isn't going to work. It's just not, it's going to come from the wrong place with the wrong allergies and it's just not going to gel. So for me, I like to see places that are quite luxurious on a budget that will be good value for money. I don't want to go somewhere that's cheap and feels cheap. The beds are hard or you've got just a sheep on top of you and things like that. I want to go places that feel like they're really good quality. But I can go in the off season. So I won't always appeal to people with smaller children who have to go in school times and stuff like that. Absolutely makes sure what your niche is going to be. Definitely take your pad and pen or your whatever you make notes on and write down what you love. So what is it about a trip that you love? Focus on that and then the Build it and they will come. You've heard that expression, right? So if you build that audience, then the people will start to follow you. 9. Authentic Storytelling goals: I'm going to talk very briefly about my friend Andrew, and I'm sure if he's watching, he will not mind me telling you the story at all. He decided to move from really near where I live. He moved out to live in New York, which is a Spanish Island. And his niche is talking about where your car, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that. People come and look at him going on a trip, showing you around the local place. It woke his dog. He'll talk about his wife. They were really invested in Andrew and his story. Why did he move out there? They want to go a bit deeper. So initially they would have come to find out about New your car. And then they want to find out more about his story. And that is a really specific niche. From his knee. She's built a whole cohort of people, friends and other colleagues and they share each other's stuff. And they are all doing the same. Now specifically honed in on New Yorker. So can you see where I'm going with this now there's every chance I may go to Australia. It might not be an all-inclusive resort. When I go to Bali, I want to go for a month to write a project. And I don't want to go all inclusive because I want to experience the Balinese cuisine. So there will be variations in that, but hopefully by which time people have come because they're looking for a specific place in Turkey or somewhere. And then they thought, I quite liked the way she does her videos. I will stay. And it doesn't matter if that's a thousand people or a 100 people. Somebody stayed, somebody is invested and they are your people. That is your tribe, that is your cohort of people. Whether you're doing this to create memories and you're keeping it for yourself. Whether you want to grow it, whether you want a million subscribers or just get the silver play button, like my dream is for a 100 thousand people on your channel watching your stuff and getting really good value for it while it's great because you're being really helpful. And two, you're hitting the right people. So I hope you found this course really useful. I am very open to your comments, questions, suggestions in the discussions forum, and we're going to talk more in the next courses that I'm going to hone in on about search engine optimization, how you can get discovered, how you can grow your channel, the importance of storytelling within your video, the importance of the titles and the thumbnails, who would have thought it without those being good. Youtube, they're not going to know who to show you a video to. Show you a video to is gonna be a scatter gun approach and it's going to go nowhere. So these things are so important. So please do make sure that you've followed along and that you can then get more notifications from me when another course goes up. And also let me know if you've got questions and we'll approach those as well. Any other courses. So very good luck to you. I hope you really enjoy your journey wherever it's taking you, and I hope you enjoy your trips as well. I want to thank you for being here and I'll see you in the next one.