Is It Okay to Recycle Blog Post Material?

On November 2, 2018 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Blogging10 Comments

We have had our site for a little over three years at this point and during that time we have obviously traveled as much as possible and shared stories from everyplace that we’ve visited. There are times when we’ve looked back at our early days of blogging and thought to ourselves that we could or should have told that particular story differently. Or we’ve looked at a post from our early days and thought to ourselves that we weren’t engaged with as many people back then and should we re-share that experience with a new audience. Sure, we could simply re-blog the old post, but that doesn’t seem the same as taking a new slant on an older post.

We have, at times, realized that there were specific things that we missed about a place that we previously wrote about and then shared that information, but not gone back and looked at our original post from a place and considered doing a fresh take on it. We have, over the years, posted over 700 posts on our site, so the likelihood of people stumbling over old posts is relatively low, but at the same time, we don’t want to have a bunch of redundant material on our site. We do see some older posts being found through search engines, but there are some that just never get viewed after their original posting.

Flying Over the Grand Canyon on Our Recent Flight Home from California

Obviously we strive to always create new and interesting content for our site and want it always to feel informative and fresh. With that said, we don’t travel to new places every week, so we do have to find ways to create new information about places that we have already visited. We usually do that by going into greater detail about a specific site within a city that perhaps we only touched on briefly in our original post or creating a summary of information where we have broken up the information in multiple posts.

On One of the First Trips After Starting Our Site

We have mixed feelings on the thought of recycling old material in a new way. And if we do ultimately decide to create a new post on something we’ve previously talked about, should we delete the old post? Whatever we decide, ultimately we want to make sure that we do it in a way that is stimulating and interesting and doesn’t feel like a repeat.

Do You Celebrate Your Blogiversary?

On July 24, 2018 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Blogging10 Comments

Technically we started our site three years ago in June, but we didn’t truly start blogging with any consistency until August of that year. In that time, we have posted more than 650 posts on our site and continue to learn new things about blogging on almost a daily basis. In the past, we have never acknowledged the anniversary of our site, mostly because we have been focused on the day-to-day activities of simply sharing our stories and information about the places that we have been visiting. When we started our site, we would have never dreamed that we would spend six months living in Germany or that we would travel to 5 different continents.

Throughout the past few years we have enjoyed all of the interaction that we have had with fellow bloggers, travelers, photographers, and foodies. We try to share a little of ourselves along the way and hopefully not just a dry repetition of facts that could be found anywhere. Every now and then we look back at our older posts and consider updating them now that we know more than we did back when we started, but haven’t taken the time to do so as of yet.

So, this isn’t necessarily an official celebration of our blogiversary, but it is at least a recognition of the fact that it is occurring. Perhaps if we make it to five years we will truly take time to celebrate the moment and might even pop open a bottle of bubbly. Do you celebrate your blogiversaries or do they pass by quietly?

Us Against the World

On March 27, 2018March 27, 2018 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Blogging, Photo Challenge13 Comments

Do you ever feel like everything in the world is conspiring against you? There are definitely times when we feel like no one else really understands what we are trying to do or why we are trying to do it. Why do we take the time to write posts almost every day, why do we travel to far away places instead of traveling to see family, why do we spend so much energy working on something that doesn’t make much money? These are all questions that we get asked by friends and family. As if writing a travel blog is a hobby that we do in our spare time as opposed to something that can be more significant than that. We are generally positive people, so we do our best to push some of the negative commentary out of our minds. At the end of the day, we know that are not alone and that there is a community of like-minded people for us to connect with. Do you ever feel the same way, do people question why you do what you do at times?