The article will talk about how you can travel on a budget. It will provide tips to help a person budget for travel and some ways of traveling on a budget, like staying in hostels, living off of the local currency, and using last-minute flights.

Many people have a desire to travel the world but have limited resources with which to do so. Some ways you can save money while traveling include staying in hostels instead of hotels and eating food from various street vendors when dining out instead of restaurants (specifically where alcohol is served).

How to Travel on a Budget

According to Jordan Sudberg, traveling on a budget is not just about saving money. It’s about making hard decisions and finding the best ways to travel and stay in a place as inexpensively as possible. In this article, you’ll learn all the basics of traveling on a budget, including some tips & tricks to help get you started!

There are two types of budget travelers: those who prefer to do a lot of research before they leave and those who like to wing it—finding things out as they go along. The first type spends months researching all the options for everyday life—housing, meals, entertainment, transportation. The second type goes to a hostel, buys a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and hits the beach.

Many assume that only the folks on the second type of trip are traveling on a budget. That may be true, but it’s just as much an art to choose the right hostel and ensure you’re eating where the locals eat as it is to figure out what transportation to take from point A to point B. For example, if you’re going from Las Vegas to Sedona, Arizona, I’d recommend taking Flying J shuttles over Greyhound busses. They’ll drop you off at your hotel instead of downtown Las Vegas, saving you time and stress.

No matter what kind of budget traveler you are, being prepared is vital. Be ready for anything, and you’ll indeed have a good trip. Take a few things for your comfort & safety.

First, you should always carry identification (your passport or driver’s license will do). It’s essential to carry some form of identification when traveling in countries different from your countries, such as Europe or Asia. When traveling on a budget, it’s best not to flash too much money around—carrying plenty of cash is fine while on your turf, but in places where foreigners are rare, it can invite dangerous situations.

Next, take some extra clothing with you, especially if your trip will be extended. At least two sets of clothes, although I’d recommend three. Clothes can be a real luxury you don’t realize until they become an item you can no longer count on. And don’t forget your toiletries—this is the one item that might not survive your trip intact. Put aside enough cash so you won’t run out of everything in cold countries (like Sweden) and enough so that you won’t run out of everything in warm countries (like Greece).
Jordan Sudberg thinks that you should also take some small items for home with you—maybe a book or CD or movie to keep yourself occupied at night, etc.

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1. Schedule Content

Before you make the decision of managing social channels manually while away, we suggest scheduling your posts in advance. Whilst scheduling your posts in bulk for the week, or two, that you are away for may take some time, it’s a great way to ensure your online presence isn’t forgotten, and you’ll thank yourself when you lack proper internet connection abroad. When you schedule content, you can decide exactly what content is posted on what social channel, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even LinkedIn, and can set a specific time to ensure you don’t miss your optimum posting time according to follower activity.

2. Avoid Posting Controversial Content

Scheduling content is all fun and games, just like being on holiday. Nevertheless, you should have some method behind your scheduled content, including leaving those posts that could be viewed as controversial until you get home. Whilst most of the time, controversial content goes unnoticed, it only takes one person to flag it and before you know it, you have an army of angry followers behind you. You might be on holiday, but you can’t hide! To successfully manage your social media profiles whilst on holiday, play it safe!

3. Maintain Follower Activity

On holiday, it can be difficult to track your new social media followers, but it doesn’t have to be! There are several tools you can use to keep track of new followers from the poolside. As well as tracking new followers, ensuring your followers remain active whilst on holiday is just as crucial. Followers that fail to interact with your content within 30 days are considered to be inactive, and you certainly don’t want to lack engagement! After all, it is your followers who determine the success of your social media profiles.

4. Hootlet

Hootlet is a fantastic tool for those who want to manage their social media profiles whilst on holiday – without the fuss! In short, the Hootlet tool enables users to integrate their social media within their regular browsing experience, allowing them to easily share content without leaving the page! Not only can users share targeted content found on the web, but they can post to multiple social media profiles, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google, Yelp and YouTube at the click of a button.

5. Be Honest

If you feel as though managing your social media profiles whilst on holiday simply isn’t feasible, be honest. After all, honesty is the best policy and everyone deserves a break now and then! To completely unplug from the internet, make your followers aware about your plan to go on holiday, as well as how long they can expect you to be gone for. This way, you won’t feel guilty about relaxing under a parasol in the sun, and you can thoroughly enjoy your time abroad without worrying about what’s happening online.

Managing your social media profiles whilst on holiday doesn’t have to be difficult, nor does it need to be a stressful occasion. There are so many ways you can keep track of your social profiles without losing invaluable time with your family or friends in the sun. From being upfront with your followers about the time you plan to spend logged out to scheduling content in advance, we say you should take a well-deserved break! Our top tips have got you covered.

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I learned how to reframe and systematically prioritize my objectives in life. Trust me not everyone would gain the same lessons that I had from living out of a small backpack for a year. But for me, it was transformative and taught me most of what I know about people and consequently marketing as well.

Here’s what I learned:

Go Where the Locals Eat

A common issue you’ll run into when you enter a new city is finding a reliable place to eat. By reliable I mean: doesn’t leave you immobilized and cramping the next morning. You can scour the top TripAdvisor reviews for the best place, but you’ll usually end up in a soulless tourist trap. Every seasoned traveler knows to keep an eye open for the small nondescript taco stand with a line of locals wrapped around the corner.

The same can be said for social media. Avoid following advice from “tourists” who don’t actually understand or use the space as intended. Go listen to the locals, follow regular users and learn from them. As marketers it can be so hard for us to remember that most people use social media for their everyday life. We’re so entrenched in analytics and trends that we end up disrespecting the space. You will never find a local eating in a Hard Rock Cafe, just as you’ll never find a Twitter native responding to a constant barrage of links to your website. So, go where your users are and learn their language. Speak to them like humans and respect their attention because you’re in their space and they don’t owe you anything.

Ask yourself: How are people using social media in their everyday life? What are they saying, what voice do they respond to and how are they using the medium? How can I add value to their social real estate with my thoughts?

Learn to Value Relationships

Life on the road can be tremendously lonely. Friends tend to come in peaks and valleys. Typically you’ll be alone for days or weeks at a time until you find a fun club and are suddenly overwhelmed with new faces and names. However, without fail the next day everyone will go their separate ways, leaving you right back where you started.

This lifestyle forces you to appreciate quality over quantity with your relationships. When you travel you only have time to stay in touch with maybe 10% of the people you meet.

The same can be seen in social marketing as well. Focusing on how many followers we have is something we’re all guilty of. Watching that number grow is addictive, but truthfully it’s a complete waste of time as most people will fade into the noise. Choose to focus on who matters. Identify your best followers using tools like Social Draft or Social Rank and laser focus your attention on them. Make them your best friends, the ones you stay in touch with after the vacation.

Ask yourself: Are you guilty of saying things like “I only have 100 followers”? If so you’re one of the lucky ones. This means you now have the opportunity to create 100 deep and meaningful relationships with people who chose to be with you. Don’t fall for quick fixes in life, take your time, be yourself and the right people will find you. Having a small following means having time to engage and keep your humanity. If your engagement is stellar your followers will grow in size and quality. Period. Your engagement is a filter that allows you to sift through the masses leaving only the best behind.

Forget What’s Familiar and Embrace the Unknown

When it comes to life and social media, there is no one formula that is “the answer.” I thought I had a pretty ideal life before I left for my trip. I owned a nice place in Austin, Texas and thought I had it all figured out. However, pushing myself to explore new lifestyles has ultimately led me to learn things I never could have imagined or even known existed.

Travel is about taking you out of whatever you consider normal and showing you that “normal” can be defined seven billion different ways.

Your social strategy is not perfect and frankly it never will be. I don’t care how many conversions that grumpy cat meme got you last week. To be truly successful you have to forge your own path. You have to push yourself to hit the restart button even and especially when you think you don’t have to. When you’re at your best you’re still not perfect, so take note of what’s working and start again.

Ask yourself: When is the last time I’ve refreshed my social strategy? What am I learning from my current strategy? How can I refine my strategy further from what I’ve learned so far?

Always Keep Perspective (Especially When Everything Goes Wrong)

I remember sitting on a park bench in Mexico reading Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way when one particular passage popped out and latched itself onto my brain forever. It’s become a personal mantra for me and it goes like this:

“We must try:
To be objective
To control emotions and keep an even keel
To choose to see the good in a situation
To steady our nerves
To ignore what disturbs or limits others
To place things in perspective
To revert to the present moment
To focus on what can be controlled”

For me, travel is 100% perspective. It’s about taking you out of whatever you consider normal and showing you that “normal” can be defined seven billion different ways on this earth. There is no one normal and there is no one right way to view or interpret a situation.

Use this mindset the next time you have to do damage control for your brand. If you have a customer complaining about your product, I want you to first calm your nerves, place things into perspective and realize where they’re coming from. Then focus on what can be controlled and analyze what you can do to reach the best possible conclusion to the situation.

At the end of the day you don’t have to travel to learn or gain new perspectives. Sometimes it can be as simple as taking a walk in a poor neighborhood you usually avoided, or writing an article for your corporate blog that challenges a popular opinion. The point is to constantly refresh your perspective and to embrace whatever life throws at you with an intention to learn.

Approach your marketing with the intention to learn no matter the outcome. Push yourself into unknown territories and focus on real lasting relationships. You’ll see results instantly both within your following and yourself.

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Hats Off to You for Contributing!

You posted on TripAdvisor and we’d like to send you a FREE hat as a token of our appreciation.

It’s our way of saying thanks for your wise words, candid comments and priceless photos.

Hurry to get your hat, but please don’t forward this email to friends. Instead, tell them to write a review so we can send them free stuff next year!

I was saddened to click through and discover my account didnâ€t qualify, but then later received this message:

Sorry for the inconvenience – Get your hat now!

Earlier today, you received an email offering you a free TripAdvisor hat to thank you for sharing your travel opinions this year. Sadly, we had a technical glitch that kept some of you from requesting your hats.

Weâ€re very sorry for the inconvenience and wanted to let you know that the problem has now been resolved. We hope youâ€ll try again.

Well, I did try again and in 2-3 weeks, Iâ€ll supposedly receive my free hat. I doubt it will be of much quality or something Iâ€ll sport regularly, but the fact that contributors get a little surprise holiday gift is pretty damn cool. And frankly, I contributed a couple short reviews the 2-3 times I logged in just to learn a bit more about the site.

So, Kudos to the TripAdvisor team!

If you have a TripAdvisor account, join my meager network (only two co-workers who shared responsibilities on a travel destination account with me). If I might get a free lid for chiming in and as much as I travel, Iâ€ll become more active.

My profile can be found here:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/members/jfallsman

All you social network site folks out there, take note. We don’t need incentive to participate. But letting us know we’re appreciated is never a bad idea.

[tags]TripAdvisor, travel, social networking, travel sites, destination, travel recommendations[/tags]

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But there’s a new travel social networking site out there that looks at travel a bit differently. MatadorTravel.com, which is still in Beta, is a social network for the culture-conscious traveler. The concept of the site centers around off-the-beaten path travel, whether it be for adventure or for true exposure to the cultures of the visited areas. The founders, two 26-year-old, Bay area entrepreneurs, are both avid travelers, but with what appears to be a more altruistic view of the world than a lot of their VC-seeking brethren. The site encourages volunteerism and outreach while adventuring, as witnessed by the hundreds of non-profits and charity groups that have set up organizations on the site to connect with interested adventure and giving seekers.

“We’re geared more toward getting away from the tours and cruises,” said Ross Borden, co-founder of Matador. “We’re more interested really interacting with people and cultures and hopefully encouraging travelers to focus on volunteering and giving something back to the communities they visit.”

Borden apparently spent some time raising money and working with schools in Africa. His enthusiasm for genuine outreach and do-gooding comes through when you talk to him.

He and longtime friend Ben Polansky gave the site immediate credibility by hiring travel journalists to help populate its content. Site users can submit reviews or even put themselves up for paid travel writing opportunities either as destination experts for Matador on the site’s bounty board where outside travel writing opportunities are posted. Pictures, videos and the like are encouraged as well, but unlike most travel sites you have a profile where you can let other users browsing know what you’re interests and travel history are, increasing the chances of finding those of similar mind.

It’s the focus of the user-generated content that makes the site cool, however. Heart-warming (and heart breaking) tales of volunteering to help rebuild African villages to photos and interviews of Hurricane Katrina clean-up efforts (yes, still) make this little social network one I’d call a “warm and fuzzy.” There’s also some fair entertainment in some of the blogs. While searching for some Katrina information, I stumbled upon this one from a user named Olivebeard that includes the lines:

“New Orleans—by all manner of logic—is ugly. And yet handsomely unique.”

The site launched in August but is growing steadily. It’s built on an advertising model for funding and has the requisite travel booking mechanism built in, so there’s some percentage of income there. Matador also has guest artists designing T-shirts for them you can purchase. These guys may not get rich with this website, but it almost seems like the point is to make the world richer instead.

And bravo to them for giving it a go.

[tags]travel, social networking, travel websites, Matador Travel, Ross Borden, Ben Polansky, volunteerism, cultural experience[/tags]

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