“Oh! You are going on a trip! You HAVE to make a blog so I can follow you on your trip!” exclaims at least every other person when you tell them you are heading off on an RV journey – especially when it will be an extended one. Even the most technically savvy of us groan aloud when we hear this comment. “This is supposed to be relaxing,” we think silently to ourselves.
Blogging is a lot of work.
Although lots of people have blogs and make it look like all they do is have fun, the truth of the matter is that blogging can be a heck of a lot of work. There is a lot to know and there can be a significant learning curve, depending on how serious you are about blogging.
To be fair, there is a platform that simplifies a lot of the more challenging blogging tasks, and that is Blogger.com. There is still a bit to learn, however, and there are other considerations you might want to make such as how and with whom you want to share your thoughts and photos.
Instead of scrambling to your nearest bookstore to get books on how to become a blogger, read on. There are much easier ways to share your RV travels with folks you love.
Who should set up a traditional blog
Now, this is not to say that you shouldn’t set up a blog. Blogs are great, but they really are a lot of work and are time-consuming.
Traditional blogs are generally best suited to people who are looking to attract people from outside their friends and family to view their photos and writings – usually because they are trying to make a little money.
You may have this idea floating around in the back of your head after hearing how everyone wants you to blog your RV experience. Be forewarned: Making money from a blog can be much harder than it would seem.
How to decide what app is best for you
First, ask yourself who your intended audience is. Are you just trying to share your trip with friends and relatives, or is your objective to let the entire world know about your trip?
If it is the former option, you might want to restrict viewing to a select group of people, and the suggested blog alternatives below are ideally suited to a restricted viewing audience.
Let’s go back to Blogger.com. There’s a catch that will make it less than ideal for many people. It is hard to restrict who sees your blog while making it convenient for them to access it. You can make posts private, but you can only have up to 100 private viewers, and they must have a Google account.
The second question you should ask yourself is how do you want to share? When choosing an alternative to standard blogging, you need to decide if you want to share your travels primarily via pictures with added text, or primarily via text with added pictures.
Path
Path is a photosharing app on steroids. It also allows you to share music, check-ins, etc. It’s very similar to Facebook. For that matter, it practically is an alternate version of Facebook.
Using Path is a great way to set up an account dedicated to traveling, or a specific trip without having all your personal Facebook stuff mixed in with it.
Path lets you type in long descriptions of your photos, which means that you can do some serious writing here and will have space for it. It also lets you have strict control over who sees what.
One neat feature is that it will tell you which of your friends have seen your photo. The downside is that it seems to make deleting or editing information less than straightforward.
Cost: Free for the basic package, but it has paid upgrades if you want to get camera filters, stickers, and remove ads. It’s available from iTunes and the Google Play store.
Moments Private Shared Albums
Moments is a photosharing app that is owned by Facebook and great if you already have photos you want to share with friends and family on FB. Moments was launched as a way to privately share photos with people who are in your photos, and makes it super easy for you to get photos from your friends who also took photos of the same event.
Moment’s tagline is “Get the photos you didn’t take.”
This would be a great app for folks RVing in groups who want to get photos taken by other group members also on the trip. If your fellow travelers are also on Facebook it automatically recognizes them through facial recognition software.
The major drawback is it doesn’t appear to give you the option to add captions to the photos if shared directly from the phone. You can, however, add lengthy comments in place of captions.
Moments is perhaps the simplest photosharing app if you and your friends are already Facebook users. There isn’t really much that you have to learn to use it.
Cost: Free. You can find it on iTunes and the Google Play store.
Momento Private Diary & Daily Journal
Unlike the two preceding examples, Momento is primarily a journaling tool that lets you add photos. If your preferred way of sharing an adventure is centered around words then this is a great option.
Momento lets you decide whether to make each entry public or private, so you can use both safely side-by-side as a personal journal.
What makes Momento unique from other journaling software is that it is highly integrated with social media apps such as Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, etc. You can import your daily activities directly from these feeds.
Additionally, you can share directly to your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts if you wish to make some of your private journaling public. You may also share via email, text, and other apps on your phone that allow photo sharing. In addition, the app backs itself up to iCloud, if that is enabled on your device.
The downside of Momento is that outside of Facebook and Twitter, sharing can be a bit cumbersome. Also, if you want to save more than one photo per entry, you will need to pay for the Premium subscription, but it’s only $3.99 per year which is completely reasonable.
Cost: Free for the basic app, but you will want the Premium version which is $3.99/year. Get it on iTunes here.
If you are hearing from everyone that you need to blog about your trip, but you don’t want to start an actual blog, consider giving one of these apps a try.
