Today on Confessions of a Blogger, we are featuring the lovely Lauren from The Travel Manuel! I actually know Lauren personally and we managed to connect in Koh Samui, while we were travelling in Thailand, last year 🙂 Lets find out a bit more about the blogger behind the blog!
My name is Lauren Manuel McShane and together with my husband, Vaughan, we form a travel journalism duo who traipse around the world telling stories through writing, photography and video. We are 29 year old Capetonians currently based in Mersing, Malaysia and loving life here. I don’t think we will ever stop travelling but we both agree that there is no place like Cape Town.
- When did you start your journey as a blogger and why? When I first moved to Seoul, South Korea to teach English, I began to scribble all my thoughts, stories and discoveries of everyday life on pieces of paper, then notebooks and finally on a blog. I guess I always enjoyed storytelling, but together with a love of photography and travel, a travel blog became a great way for me to share my adventures.
- Do you blog fulltime or do you have a 9-5 as well? At the moment, I juggle the blogging with a mentoring job. Luckily it’s a wonderful job where I get to mentor local teachers in rural Malaysia. Before 2, I am assisting them with their English and how to teach English and for the rest of the day I am writing and doing social media.
- Tell us a little about your space on the interweb and what you blog about? Together with my husband, we run thetravelmanuel.com. We hope to inspire anyone and everyone to escape their comfort zones and explore the world either on short vacations or long term travel. We use various mediums to give people a glimpse of God’s beautiful creation all around us in South Africa and worldwide. We also give tips and guidelines on how to make the process and preparation of travel smoother.
- Being a blogger is not always easy – what motivates you and keeps you going? Learning how to manage, fix and develop a website is the tough part as well as keeping up with social media and editing. The writing I love and while there are some days when I am not in the mood, most days I really HAVE to write.
- What have your biggest blogging challenges been? When I first started, it was learning on how to build my own website and navigate my way around plugins and widgets when everything was so new to me. Also trying to regularly publish new content whilst marketing the site on social media was extremely time consuming. Luckily my husband and I now balance the work load and he is very technically minded and opts to do the things I really don’t enjoy. Team blogging is the best!
- What do you love most about being a blogger? I love having a platform to share the lessons I have learnt through travel with others. It enables me to share the beauty of the world with people who may not have the chance to travel and it connects me with fellow travelers who are moved with the same wanderlust as I am.
- Do you have any blog related or social media pet peeves? {things that other bloggers or social media peeps do, that really annoy you} I love most things about travel blogging other than the competition ~ everybody wants to be a travel blogger ~ And blogging cliques. But hey, a little competition is a great motivator.
- What has your journey as a blogger taught you {about yourself or in general}? Has it changed your life in any way? It inspires and enables me to travel more which is the greatest education and mind opener of all. I often learn more about myself and humanity while travelling than I do at home. I have always loved variety and been repelled by routine, so travel blogging feeds my need to do something new and different with each day. It has open doors to a freelance way of life where I am my own boss.
- If you had to give a newbie blogger any advice, what words of wisdom would you impart? The greatest advice I ever received about my blog was to just start. It doesn’t need to look perfect to begin with. Most great projects never do. Start small and slowly improve various aspects of your blog, making sure it is user friendly. However make sure your content is of a high quality. Keep posts short and impactful, readers of the web hardly linger for too long.
- In three words tell me what blogging means to you: Travel, storytelling and expression.
Thanks Lauren for sharing a bit more about your life and blogging journey with us! You can find out more about Lauren and connect with her here:
Blog link: http://thetravelmanuel.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetravelmanuel
Twitter: @thetravelmanuel
Instagram: @thetravelmanuel
If you would like to be featured on Confessions of a Blogger, then please email Fiona or leave a comment below.
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