S6 E69: How To Increase Your Chances of Getting Discovered

Get the show’s transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

“YD: Just because you have a niche, it doesn't mean that you are not doing other stories, too. Like there was a call out for pitches on listicles for Lonely Planet and I answered. Well, okay, it wasn't my niche, actually, it was in the region. It was in the Middle East. It was in Oman. They were looking for stories from Oman, but it was listicles, which I don't – listicles are not my niche. But I answered it and I did it. What I'm trying to say is just because you have a niche, and you have something in mind, it doesn't mean that you're not doing other stories too."

Welcome to the Travel Media Lab Podcast. I’m your host, Yulia Denisyuk, an award-winning travel photographer and writer, entrepreneur, community builder and a firm believer that every one of us can go after the stories we’ve always wanted to tell with the right support, encouragement and structure. I’m on a mission to help women storytellers everywhere break into and thrive in the travel media space.

If you’re ready to ditch your fears to the side, grow your knowledge and confidence, and publish your travel stories, you’re in the right place. Let’s go!

[EPISODE]

[00:01:10] YD: Today, I want to bring to you a discussion we recently had in the Circle, our membership inside Travel Media Lab platform. At the beginning of the month, we set a theme inside the circle. In June, our theme was discoverability. We've dedicated a whole hour discussing honing your niche, creating a portfolio and which platforms we should be leveraging for that for discoverability. In today's episode, I share with you a part of that discussion. This whole conversation and all of our workshops and events in addition to all the support, like pitch review and community that we offer are available to you when you join us over at travelmedialab.com/circle.

Here's why you might want to look at the Circle more closely. This October, we're going to be running a series of lectures inside the Circle on improving your travel writing skills. On this podcast and in our platform in general, we talk a lot about pitches and the mechanics of breaking into and thriving in the travel media industry. Now, we're also bringing you content that's going to help you become a better writer. 

We have an incredible travel writer come and do a series of workshops for us this October, and they're going to be absolutely free for our Circle members. I will be announcing more as we get closer to October. But if becoming a more skilled travel writer is one of your goals, definitely look into becoming our Circle member this fall, because this workshop event is going to be so great. The amazing thing is that you can join us at three different levels, starting at just $27 a month. So you can pay $27 a month and get access to this brilliant content that one of the most successful travel writers in the industry is going to come and teach us. That's a great deal. 

Yeah, we'll be talking more about it soon. But I wanted to mention and see you now. So go visit travelmedialab.com/circle to check us out and see how we can help you. All right. Now, onto this episode.

[00:03:15]

All right. Well, welcome again, everyone to our monthly workshop, monthly conversation. For newer people in the Circle, just to explain real quick. So once a month, at the beginning of the month usually, we have a workshop/conversation where we talk about what the theme for the month is and what do we want to do in that month. Today's theme is going to be discoverability. 

Hi. Hi, Vanessa. Hi, Hannah. Good to see you guys. I figured that that's probably why there's – you guys are not here because of the link. Yeah, it's a bit confusing. I'm sorry about that. I'm glad that you found your way here. So good to see you. So yeah, the theme this month is discoverability, and that really came from – because I asked you guys, what did you want to cover this month, and you gave me some great ideas. Vanessa, you had a lot of ideas so I really appreciate that.

I sort of looked at a lot of them and I looked at all of them. Some of them, sort of started coming up into this bigger theme of discoverability. Right? How do we get discovered? How do we make sure that our work reaches the people who might be potentially interested in working with us. That's how I sort of unified it. From there, I selected three of the things that Vanessa, actually, you mentioned. Which is honing your niche, tips on creating your portfolio website. Then Barbie, your suggestion was what kind of content should we be creating? This is not meant to be like a rigorous workshop, but rather, I'll share with you my thoughts, and my ideas and then let's just have a conversation because you guys have a lot to share too. You're doing a lot of this already. But anyhow, so today's theme is discoverability. We're going to talk about three sort of big areas inside that.

Discoverability, again, is how do we put our work in front of people, right? How do we – it's great to pitch, it's great to do all of that. But it would also be nice if sometimes we – people would find our work through other means, right? You know also my position on that. I've said that before. Let's not wait to be discovered, because the chances of that are much lower than you actually going out there and putting yourself in front of people. But at the same time, it does still happen, right? Even the story, I think I shared with you before, but the story of Jessica Poitevien, who is a travel writer, here in the States. She is going to be on the podcast in July, so you'll get to hear her talk about it. But that's how she started working with National Geographic, actually, because she had a blog post about – I can't remember where, a very detailed blog post. Or maybe it was BBC Travel actually. I don't remember the publication, but they found it on Google basically. They were searching for information on this country, they found her blog post, they contacted her and said, "Hey! Would you like to write a story for us about this destination?"

The importance of, you know, if you have stories, especially if it's locations that are sort of not your typical suspects, that you can easily write about, if it's destinations that are not easily covered, otherwise. It may make sense for you to have a really nice blog post or several blog posts about that destination, because you just never know how Google will put it in front of somebody, so that's really important. Then for myself, as well, actually, I think I shared the story too that my very first work with National Geographic Traveler came from Instagram. Because they saw my Jordan stories, they saw my Jordan pictures on Instagram. The editor saw them, she probably was looking at hashtags or something and she saw them. She went to my profile, she saw that I'm a photographer, and then they emailed me. So it does happen. It's not like it doesn't happen. But just you know, when you pitch, when you put yourself out there, it all collectively increases your chances of being seen.

[00:07:04]

Let's talk today about how do we how do we do that. The three things that we're going to talk about is, one is honing your niche, then tips on creating your portfolio website and some strategies there. Then also, what kind of content we want to create, and where, and how and all that. So the way I think about your niche is that it's something that develops over time, right? It's not going to be something that from day one, you're going to be like, "Oh! This is what I do," because we do have a lot of different interests, right? We want to try a lot of different things. I think also, maybe it's not productive to put that pressure on yourself to right away figure out what your niche will be. I think as you're building a portfolio, it's more important to try to do a lot of different things to see what interests you the most. I think about it in this way, like what do you – what do you tend to gravitate towards, what kind of stories do you enjoy reading, what kind of stories do you enjoy producing. You will know that through doing all this work.

Our niches can be like, they can be topic-specific. Maybe we want to start writing more about food or in Kat's case, design-themed stories, right? Or your niche can also be region-specific. It doesn't have to be just about the topic, it can be region specific, which is kind of what's happening to me a little bit, where I'm becoming sort of this Middle East niche storyteller. People are starting to know me as that person. 

You can also have niches that are both, that you both have a topic-specific niche and also a region-specific niche. However, just because you have a niche, it doesn't mean that you are not doing other stories, too. Like there was a call out for pitches on listicles for Lonely Planet and I answered. Well, okay, it wasn't my niche, actually, it was in the region. It was in the Middle East. It was in Oman. They were looking for stories from Oman, but it was listicles, which I don't – listicles are not my niche. But I answered it and I did it. What I'm trying to say is just because you have a niche, and you have something in mind, it doesn't mean that you're not doing other stories too. What it means though, I think niche is more important for communications, actually.

The niche is what you're choosing to add to your bio, what you're choosing to add to your LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, whatever. Whenever you have a byline that ends up a bio in the magazine, that's where, I feel like that's where you use the niche, because that's what you want people to know you for. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're not doing anything else, any other stories. Particularly in your case, Vanessa, if you're interested in many different things, that's wonderful, right? Just keep doing that, keep doing what you enjoy. But then think about like, what do I want people to know about me? What kind of work do I want to be contacted about? I think that's where the niche becomes useful. It's putting it on your bio, on your website, et cetera. But not necessarily limiting yourself that if it's not in my niche, I won't do this story. Because we need more stories, we need – who knows where those stories can lead as well. That's how I think about it. Is that helpful?

Over time, you develop this expertise. You develop this expertise by doing the work in that specific niche. But yeah, I mean, again, it's quite fluid, actually. It doesn't have to be a very rigid sort of structure. That's exactly how I think about it. I just put it in my bio. If I want people to know that I specify in the Middle East, or that I do stories about artisans, and cultural traditions, that's what I want people to know, because these are the stories that most light me up when I do them. I want people to contact me about that kind of work, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I don't do other things and other stories as well. That's how I would talk about it. Then, in terms of creating a portfolio website or a blog. I think that's – and I'm somebody who is not following my own advice here. But I think that we absolutely need both. We need a portfolio website, and we need a blog. Maybe it's even one website that hosts both of those things.

[00:11:12]

The reason for that is exactly what I just said in the beginning, is that that's how – it's basically a passive way for you to be discovered, right? Because if somebody is searching on Google, again, for a story on in that particular destination, and you happen to have a story on that, you haven't done any – you're not doing an active work. You just put your blog post there once and then it sits there, but you just never know who can stumble upon your work this way. I think when you're thinking about creating a portfolio website, you need to think about like, what is your goal, who are you trying to attract to that website, what is the purpose of this website. For me, for example, if you go to my portfolio website, it's very specific. I want to attract photo editors. I want to attract tourism boards. I want to attract magazine editors. That's why like, when you land on my website, the first thing you see is my images. I want people to see my images right away, because I want more photo editors to contact me. I structure the menu and everything on the website with that in mind.

You'll see that my other projects like Nomad and Jews, like the trip to Jordan, like Travel Media Lab, they're not as prominent on that website. It's still there, you can click on it if you want, but it's not the main goal. The main goal is really my work. I highlight like different destinations that I've been to. I highlight different projects that I've done, because I want people, potential editors to see this and to contact me. 

Of course, if you have a blog website, which is separate from a portfolio website, that's like a whole other workshop and a whole other conversation, because creating and building a blog with the purpose of creating an additional income stream, that's like a huge project, right? It's not something that you do once every once in a while. I think Katie actually would probably be a better expert to talk about that, because she has, from what I understand, she has a successful blog, but it's a project, right? You need to build the traffic, you need to build the content on the website, you need to make sure that it's SEO friendly et cetera, et cetera. 

I'm not necessarily talking about that way to use a blog right now. I'm talking about a way to use a blog to get discovered again. If you have stories, and maybe this is like a onetime project that you can think about. If you have stories that you've been pitching that haven't placed yet that are very unique, that are from some interesting destinations, put them up on your blog, put them up on your blog. Because again, you never know who will find them, who can find them. Continue pitching them too, by the way, because it's okay to have both, right? It's okay to have it be published on your site, and then get it published in a magazine as well. But that's what I would do. Again, I'm not following my own advice here, because I don't have any blog posts about any of my destination. I have my images portfolio destinations, but I don't have any blog posts. It's been on my list forever to do that, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

But if you're thinking about like, how do I increase my discoverability. And again, do it in a passive way. So like, I don't have to do any work beyond that one time. I put it up there, I have the right keywords, I structured it properly, and then I just forget about it. I just let Google do the work. I mean, why not do that, right? It's a passive way to get discovered. I think it's really smart, actually. Again, I know stories of people who have gotten work that way and myself included. It's a really great way to add something like this to your site. If we're talking about maintaining a blog for creating an additional income stream from AdSense, et cetera, that's a whole other topic. It's a huge project. But I think a few strategic blog posts for us as travel storytellers, as travel writers and photographers, I think that's smart really.

Again, I think what I love about this is that it's a passive way to promote yourself, because once you put it up there and you do all the initial work of setting it up, it's just there for you. You never know who's watching, who can find it. That's really important actually. The more we can simplify our job and make it easier, and give ourselves more chances to be found by the right people, the better it would be. I think that's really important. I sent you guys in the chat, Lola's website. I don't know if you've ever checked her website out, but I think she's doing a great job of combining exactly that. She has a lot of like about her, about her work, publications, et cetera. But then she also does, she has a blog, and she's doing stories there as well.

The other thing – that the one last thing that I wanted to mention is, Barbie, that was your sort of idea/suggestion is, what kind of content should we be creating? I think that is actually also a very broad question that maybe we can do actually a standalone workshop on in the future. But the way I think about it is that it really depends on what your goal is, and which platform you want to invest into. Because again, like if you're if you're on Instagram, for example, you decided that Instagram will be the platform where you put most of your eggs, let's say – although we shouldn't be doing that with any of the platforms. We should be – I think we should be choosing two platform strategically.

[00:16:21]

Let's say, you say, "I want to be on Instagram, because that's where there's a chance that editors can find me, particularly photo editors." Because for – if you're if you're trying to be more well known as a writer, then I think you should be dedicating your time to Twitter, for example, because that's where all the editors are, who are putting out calls for pitches, who are interacting with writers on there. But if you're trying to do more photography work, then Instagram is still is a good place to be. Going back to the niche conversation, if you're on Instagram, and let's say you want to be known as a Middle East region, niche specialist, if you look at my feed, a lot of my feed in the Middle East, right? That's how that's how I think about, "Okay, what do I post? What kind of what kind of things I create?" 

Maybe your question Barbie was more, do we do reels? Do we do –

[00:17:13] B: Reel, stories or post, right? 

[00:17:16] YD: Well, honestly, it should be all of it, right? If you're on that platform, you shouldn't be using all the tools of that platform. Of course, the unfortunate reality for me, at least because I don't like reels is that – we know this, right? For the past year, if not two years, that's what Instagram has become. It's all about reels now. That's why actually, you don't see me posting there that much. I could bother to do reels. Every time I do a post, the reach is just – you know how fun it is you guys, you know, I have a pretty size, like a decent following. You how many people see my stories 100, on average, 100 people. On a good day, it's 400 people out of those thousands and thousands. It's like, it's laughable. I don't invest that much time on Instagram anymore, because I'm like just. "Whatever." But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't, because again, it depends on what you're trying to do.

If you're trying to build connections with editors, Instagram is still a great place to be, because they're still there, they're still answering DMS, they're still posting stories themselves. You can still interact with people on Instagram. It could be perhaps, more authentic way to start building those relationships. I wouldn't necessarily use Instagram to try to grow a huge reach, because that's – we talk about this all the time, the algorithm and how hard it is to break through. But again, if you're strategic, if you have, let's say, you do some research and you say, there is are people that I found who are photo editors at Conde Nast Traveler or photo editors here and there. You can do those one-on-one interactions too. You don't care about the reach of your post, whether it reaches thousand people or not, because that's not what you're trying to do, right? You're not trying to build a huge Instagram following. You're trying to connect with specific people, strategically. That is great for that platform. It works really well.

We had a photographer from Britain on the podcast, and she was talking about how she got assignments this way. She was DM'ing these editors, and she was introducing herself and saying, "Hey! Check out my work." They did and some of that led to assignments. You can also be proactive in that way. I wouldn't necessarily use Instagram as a platform to grow your reach, but I would use it as a platform to grow your connections for sure. The other thing I wanted to say is that, maybe you want to think about becoming – and that goes back to the conversation of niche and what do you want to be known for, and how do you want to be discovered? Maybe you want to think about becoming a thought leader or someone with an expertise in the topic that you want to be known for? How do you do that?

In addition to having that on your blog, on your bio, let's say on your portfolio website, why not start a Substack newsletter for example, where you talk about that subject? Why not do an opinion/authority post on Medium. Both of those things, they do require effort, so you would have to commit to that and you have to be consistent with putting stuff out on a regular basis. But that might be another avenue for you to – again, if you're trying to become like an expert, or develop a niche, or to be known for a specific thing. Like, for example, if you want to become, if you want to be known for being a sustainability writer, why not to start a sustainability newsletter, for example. Again, you can host it on Substack, which is a great model, right? You guys know a lot of – I think a lot of you, perhaps you subscribe to the one by Lotte, and what's the other girl's name? The two travel journalists from Britain. If you guys are not subscribing to that, you should. It's a really great newsletter and its own Substack, they host it. 

They are two travel journalists from Britain who just started this thing. From the looks of it, it's growing pretty well. They have a paid option and they have a free version there, as well. I'm not necessarily saying that you need to do that. But I'm saying, if you're trying to grow your expertise, and again, become established in the field as an expert in a specific niche, why not do that, right? Why not start a newsletter on sustainability, for example, and then advertise it everywhere else, and include it in your bio and put it in all the other places where you show up. Because that's again, how people will know, "Oh! She has a lot to say on this topic." It doesn't have to be a lot in terms of huge essays, let's say, every week or every two weeks. A very short snippet is enough, but the goal here is consistency and doing this week in and week out.

[00:21:45]

I actually started doing that, literally this week with the NFT space. Sorry, again, I'm mentioning NFTs here. I'm active in that space. I'm growing in that space. I actually just started a project, a new collection that I just launched today, actually. I started a newsletter on Twitter, because on Twitter, there is an option like you can create that – you can subscribe very easily on your profile. Somebody can subscribe to your newsletter. My whole thing is that, I want to spotlight more women who are participating in NFTs, because there's not that many, and I want to spotlight them, so I've been doing spaces on Twitter, I've been hosting conversations with other women artists. 

I just started a newsletter literally this weekend, and my idea was that, every Sunday, I'm going to profile five women artists, five women, NFT artists. In 24 hours, I already got 17 subscribers to the newsletter or something like that. The cool thing is that, every time I include them in the newsletter, I post it on Twitter, I tag them, and then they spread it too. They're so excited that they get featured, and that's how I got already in one day, like 17 subscribers. I mean, I'm not saying it's a lot. But the newsletter itself, it's a very short blurb on each of them, what they do, who they are, why I like their work. What I'm saying is, my point is that, this effort doesn't have to be huge, but it has to be consistent. That's the most important thing.

That's another thing that I was thinking about that if you want to be known as an expert, or somebody that has a lot to say on any given subject, why not start a newsletter or regular posting on medium as a way to build that expertise and that niche. Of course, like I mentioned, we shouldn't rely on one platform, right? We shouldn't be looking at one or two platforms and selecting them strategically. Vanessa and Hannah both say they have to run. Thank you. Thank you, guys. 

But yeah, these were my thoughts on these subjects. Again, just to summarize, if we want to talk about discoverability, and how do we – how do we make it easier for us to get discovered? We have to continue pitching, there's no question about it. We have to put our work out there. We have to put ourselves out there. But in addition to that, we can do some things that will help us be discovered passively in our sleep. We can be sleeping and somebody can be Googling stories about Tanzania and your blog comes up. You might be contacted about doing some work in Tanzania. So you just never know. In any way we can help ourselves boost our profiles in this way. I think that's a really smart strategy. 

[END OF EPISODE]

[00:24:29] YD: Thank you so much for listening today. I hope you enjoyed this conversation brought to you by our membership, the Circle. If so, I want to ask you to please take a minute right now to support our show. You can do that very easily by leaving us a rating or review on the Apple podcast app or by sharing this episode with your friends, loved ones, posting about it on social media. It really, really helps us to get discovered by more listeners that would find our show helpful and it means so much to me. I read every single review we get, and I take them very seriously because I want to create a great show for you. If you've been inspired by something you heard today, in our conversation, or in any other episodes of our show, please take just one minute right now to support it by leaving us your rating or review. That is one of the best ways you can help us out. 

I want to remind you that this October, we're going to have an amazing series of workshops for our Circle members, run by a talented travel writer who's going to help our members develop their craft. I can't say more right now. I can't release the name of this writer, but we're going to be sharing more details soon. For now, go check out the Circle to see how our membership is structured and how we support our members. If you're looking for support, opportunities and community in the travel media space, consider joining us at the Circle, where that October event is going to be happening. Go to travelmedialab.com/circle to learn more. Thanks again for listening today and stay tuned for next week.

[END]