By Geraldine Mills

May 3, 2024

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How to Create Your Own Travel Nurse Blog to Document Your Journey

Blogging is a great way to express yourself and is even better at documenting your travels, especially from a unique perspective as a travel nurse. If you’re interested in starting a travel nurse blog, this article can show you what you need to start. But first, let’s discuss the importance of creating one.

Importance of documenting experiences through blogging

travel nurse blog

Starting a blog is a personal prerogative, so you can begin regardless of whether people think your experiences are meaningful enough to warrant your blog. However, unlike other niches, a travel nurse’s unique experiences make for a unique perspective that can be valuable on a blog.

Even if you’re not a travel nurse, blogging can be a personal project you enjoy, especially if wordsmithing and taking pictures are your hobbies. Also, you don’t need any physical items to start a travel nurse blog, so there isn’t any equipment you need to bring as an extra item to keep up with this hobby.

By documenting your experiences through blogging, you can relive your past more colorfully than your photos and videos. Being able to articulate what you went through and supplementing that with pictures or videos you shot can serve as a creative avenue and a personal journal detailing how you felt in more vivid terms.

When you create a travel nurse blog about being a travel nurse, you can also enjoy connecting with people with similar experiences. You can talk to other travel nurses and even create a community. It’s a great way to bond with different travel nurses about experiences unique to your group.

Choose a blogging platform.

Now that you know the importance or relevance of documenting your experiences through a travel nurse blog, it’s time to kickstart your new blogging journey. The first thing you should consider is your chosen blogging platform. Some examples of popular blogging platforms are the following:

  • Blogger
  • Drupal
  • Joomla
  • Medium
  • Tumblr
  • Weebly
  • WordPress

WordPress is a reliable blogging platform for many blogs due to its scalability and various features. However, you’re free to choose your preferred platform.

When choosing a blogging platform, you should consider how easy it is to use, especially when you need to learn how it works. Customization options should also be a factor, especially if you want to personalize your travel nurse blog as much as possible.

Another critical element to consider when choosing a blogging platform is its monetization and management costs. Some platforms are cheaper, while others are more straightforward to monetize. However, if you’re doing this as a hobby, monetization might not be your priority just yet.

These factors should narrow your options based on the platform’s capabilities, preferences, and abilities.

Select a domain name and hosting provider.

Once you’ve settled on a blogging platform and are eager to get a website up and running, you should choose a domain name and hosting provider.

The domain name is your website’s URL or address. It’s what you type in when you look for a website. A good rule to follow is to keep it short and sweet. Also, avoid hard-to-spell domain names. Some people even opt to get a domain name that can quickly determine what their blog is about, but that can pigeonhole your content, so be wary.

travel nurse blog

Your website needs a hosting provider or web host to exist and be viewable on the Internet. The web host provides a server to store the information on your website and serve it to people looking for it or have found it on the Internet.

When shopping around for a good web host, you will primarily consider the cost. You want to ensure the price is reasonable enough so you can at least not monetize your site during the first few months.

Aside from the price, it would help if you also looked at their uptime. They should keep a 99% uptime at all times so that your website rarely is down when someone tries to access it.

You should also ensure that your web host provider has a good reputation and customer service. If their previous customers aren’t pleased with certain things, you’ll know through reviews to avoid them. Also, you want to see that they have reliable customer service so that you won’t have difficulties finding a representative should you encounter issues with your website.

Please set up your travel nurse blog and customize its design.

Now that you have your website’s foundation, it’s time to modify it to your tastes. While there are tons of free plugins and themes that you can install, they might not fully accommodate your tastes unless you get paid options.

According to Sytian Productions Web Developer Philippines, hiring a web designer can be the better choice if you want your travel nurse blog to have more customized features and designs. While it’s a costlier investment than free plugins, at least you know that your website works and is in the design you want. This choice is beneficial if you have no coding experience or aren’t a very “techy” person.

When designing your website or travel nurse blog, make sure that you stick to a color scheme. If you share your blog posts on other platforms like social media, consistent branding is essential to make it memorable. That’s why having a set color scheme is something you should consider.

Set up the main pages.

First, work on the main pages once you have a website. These would be:

  • Homepage: This is the first thing a website visitor will usually encounter, so it should let visitors know immediately what your blog is about.
  • About page: This page should describe your travel nurse blog’s goals, mission, and values in more depth.
  • Contact page: If someone wants to send you feedback or collaborate, they should go to the contact page.
  • Blog page: This page should cover the different blog posts you’ve already made, if any. Usually, the most recent post is at the top, but you can format it however you like.

While you might be a travel nurse blog since it’s the start of your website, you should prioritize these main web pages before creating blog posts.

Write engaging and informative blog posts.

You can start creating your blog posts now that you have the main pages.

It can be as short or long as you want. However, adding images and proper formatting can be valuable to keep your readers engaged. There are no set rules here for writing a blog, but pulling from your experiences can ignite your creative flames, so tap into that whenever you feel stuck on a blank page.

Utilize social media platforms to promote your blog

You can create a separate social media platform or use your account to promote your blog post. Either way, publishing a blog and not promoting it on other platforms can be a missed opportunity to get more eyes on it. So, make it a habit to create a promotional post every time you publish a new blog post.

Conclusion

At this point, you should be the proud owner of a travel nurse blog that will be your companion during your entire journey. All that’s left is to live your life so that you can document it and share your experiences through this new creative avenue. We hope these tips will help you on your travel nurse blog journey. Have you started a travel nurse blog? Are there any tips you would share with fellow travelers? Comment them below.

Find Your Next Travel Nurse Assignment with Our Job Board!

Are you on the hunt for your next travel nurse gig? Look no further than our job board! Click here to explore all our current opportunities.

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By The Gypsy Nurse

August 15, 2013

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Career Changes In Nursing: Exploring the Options, Reasons and Methods

Disclaimer: This article has corporate sponsored links.

The possibility of career changes in Nursing is one of the draws to the profession.

A nursing career can be anything you want it to be. The possibilities are endless. You can work in a high-energy position like ER or Trauma with all the excitement that you can handle, as a case manager in a lower key office setting, or even start your own Nursing Business as an Entrepreneur. There are thousands of positions and specialties within nursing. It all comes down to finding your own personal niche. 

According to the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) “Employment of registered nurses is expected to grow 26 percent from 2010 to 2020, faster than the average for all occupations. Growth will occur primarily because of technological advancements; an increased emphasis on preventative care; and the large, aging baby-boomer population who will demand more healthcare services as they live longer and more active lives.”

Are you ready for a career change?

There are tremendous growth and opportunity in the industry as a whole. If you have a specific interest, there is a position within nursing that will fit your needs. Like Computers?  Check out Nursing Informatics.

Looking to take a step towards becoming a doctor?

Check out graduate nurse practitioner programs. Live for excitement? Try Flight Nursing.  Want to focus on mind/body?  See what Holistic Nursing is all about. Love the elderly? Long Term Skilled Care might be just what you’re looking for.

Already a nurse?  

It can be a bit daunting when you begin thinking about a career change in nursing.  The following articles can help lessen the stress of finding your new niche and help ease the transition by providing you the tools needed to determine where you want to go in Nursing.

Erica MacDonald of SelfEmployedNurse.com explores some of the reasons that nurses choose to change careers.  She further discusses Self-Reflection as a way and means to assist the nurse with the “Big Switch”. Have you done any self-reflection lately?

Are you feeling trapped and looking for a change? Kevin Ross, RN, BSN gives a few easy steps to take to help make your career transition a success at: Facilitating A Career Change.

If you are looking for some inspiration, Jennifer Olin, RN provides an excellent personal example of a nurse that took advantage of the opportunities available and completely turned her career around at: RN Career Path Can Take Many Interesting Turns.

‘Jo, RN’ is the author of the wildly popular nurse blog, Head Nurse.  She writes at Scrubs Magazine with advice on figuring out where you belong and more importantly figuring out if your chosen specialty is the best fit at: Is your nursing job right for you?.

Experiencing burnout? No longer happy or healthy in your work, maybe it’s time to change. Elizabeth Scala explores several ways in which you can ensure a smooth transition at: Change Your Nursing Career the Easy Way.

Nurse Gail talks about her dramatic career change from ‘jet-setter to nurse’ at Second Career Nurses.


This post is a collective effort of nurse bloggers as part of the Scrubs Mag Blog Carnival