Blogger Spotlight: Alice Langley, Project: Wanderlust

Using her experience of social media, freelance writing and seasoned travelling, Alice Langley set up Project: Wanderlust in 2015 to store her memories and inspire the public with affordable family travel experiences and tips. Alice’s blog covers her road trips across the USA and holiday to places like the Middle East with her husband and two daughters, giving readers tips on hidden gems to visit and places to eat. In this spotlight Alice talks to us what makes her blog different, how she measures success and how she likes to work with PRs. 

Why should people read your blog? What makes it different? I am always striving to show how travel doesn’t have to stop just because family life starts. With a mix of destination guides, reviews and helpful travel-related hints and tips posts I hope Project: Wanderlust will encourage and inspire families to travel more.

How do you measure the success of your website? For me the biggest success in blogging is to still be enjoying it and for it not to become a chore. The biggest rush I get from travel blogging though is when I hear from readers that they’ve used my blog to plan and book a trip and loved their time there – that means more to me than blog hits and awards.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a blog? Make sure you are doing it for the right reasons – the main one for me being to preserve travel memories in one place.

After that join the community, make friends and don’t be afraid to ask for help. We are mostly all self-taught when it comes to the technical side of blogging and we all remember how daunting that side of it was when we first started out. Bloggers don’t bite, reach out and make friends.

How do you work with marketers and PRs? I’ve been blogging for five years now and in that time I have built up some wonderful relationships with PRs and marketers. The main ways I’m which we work together are through resort and destination reviews, however I  do also accept the occasional travel related sponsored post too.

How do you use social media to promote and share content? What are the challenges? I think the way bloggers use social media to promote their blogs has changed greatly since I started out. These days I promote actual posts a lot less on social media, preferring to use my channels to build relationships with readers and tell stories through updates and images as I go – in the hope that this will grab their interest and lead them to follow my blog posts too.

What can PRs do in working better with you? My biggest advice and plea to PRs is to be respectful of a bloggers worth. It’s not all about money for me, the experiences I am offered through my blog are often worth more than money could buy, but I do get frustrated when PRs see bloggers as free advertising. The campaigns I love working on the most are those that have been creatively planned and are fun to be involved with.

What has been your blogging highlight? Being able to build a freelance career around blogging – and the freedom to travel that this brings.

What will be big in your blogosphere in the coming months? We are just back from a 6 week USA road trip – so I have loads of posts from that to share. I am also launching a blog and Instagram community called #BarefootChildhood in September celebrating children getting back to nature and outdoor play so look out for more info on that very soon.