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1-year Check-up On Retirestyle Travel

What Retirestyle Travel has achieved in 1 year –

An update on our book, blog, and social media accounts

It has been 1 year since Kevin decided to make a career change.

He always dreamed of being a writer.

He also imagined becoming a travel influencer as part of building a business as a travel agent and tour operator. Tina is a home-based travel agent and, once travel restrictions are lifted and it is safe to travel, we hope to offer group tours for older travellers with the types of attractions and activities and pace that they want and need.

We are writing a book about the best places to retire or snowbird and building a social media presence for the brand “Retirestyle Travel”.

We are very proud of our Retirestyle Travel blog, which launched on a different platform just over 1 year ago.

We also started our YouTube channel around 1 year ago.

Over time, we created accounts on most of the major social media platforms to gain an audience and promote our blog posts.

Book Update

The tentative title of the book is “RETIRESTYLE – Retire Abroad & Ride Off Into The Sunset.”

This book will be about the best places for older travellers to spend time; either as snowbirds or retiring abroad.

It will focus on destinations in Canada, USA, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean because they are most convenient for Canadians like us.

The book is around 75% done.

We need more first-person, practical information about each retirement/snowbird destination through interviews with people that spend a lot of time there or by visiting some of the destinations ourselves.

Thus, we do not have a publisher or release date yet.

Blog Update

Thank you for visiting and reading our blog called “Retirestyle Travel”.

On January 1, 2021, we migrated our blog from Blogger to a new platform. Our blog is now hosted by my sister’s company, Quiring Minds Technology Services. We use WordPress as our blog editor.

We think the blog design and navigation is much better now. We hope you like it.

In 1 year, the 74 posts on our blog have a combined total of over 41,000 page views.  Our old blog website (on Google Blogger) received 28,000 page views in 9 months and our new blog has over 13,000 page views in 3 months.

We seem to have become a bit of an authority on Las Vegas, Nevada. We published 19 articles about things to do in Las Vegas, which seem to get the majority of our page views. We love Vegas and did a lot of research for a cancelled trip that we had planned in the summer of 2020.

We also wrote a popular series of 13 articles about things to do in Winnipeg, Manitoba and other great places in the Province of Manitoba like Gimli and Churchill.  This included very popular posts about famous people from Winnipeg, best restaurants in Winnipeg, and Winnipeg birthday freebies.

The majority of the remaining posts are related to travel for older people and retiring abroad. We hope you take time to read and enjoy some of these posts as a teaser for our draft book.

We have plans to branch off into other areas relating to retiring in style, such as health and wellness.

To try to get new people to read our blog, we authored guest posts on websites like Travel Alerts and Dreams Abroad.

Social Media Updates

Instagram

We have 5,100 followers on our Instagram account called “Retirestyle Travel”.

We typically get hundreds of likes on each post, which is incredible and rewarding.

We were doing one Instagram post per day for almost a year, but we have slowed down to focus on other platforms.

Twitter

Our Twitter account called “Retirestyle Travel” has over 4,000 followers.

We don’t seem to get much engagement on our tweets promoting our blog posts on Twitter, but we have made some good connections with other travel bloggers and writers.

Pinterest

2,100 people follow our Pinterest account.

We have joined several shared boards for travel lovers and continue to learn about this platform.

Facebook

There are several ways you can connect with us on Facebook.

Kevin’s personal Facebook account has almost 5,000 friends.

We have a Facebook Page called “Retirestyle Travel – Become A Snowbird Or Retire Abroad” that has around 400 followers.  This page is for people that want information about the best places to retire abroad (or spend time as a snowbird).

We also have a Facebook Group called “Winnipeg Travel and Travellers” for Winnipeggers and Manitobans that want to share and obtain travel information and inspiration. This group has over 400 members.

YouTube

We only have 140 subscribers on our YouTube Channel so far.

YouTube seems to be the hardest platform to build, but we haven’t put enough effort into this platform.

Our 15 YouTube videos, including a few great cruise highlight videos, have received over 1,800 views in total representing 33 hours of watch time.

TikTok

We are not sure if TikTok is the right social media platform for us due to the time limit on the videos and because of their youthful users.

We have 75 followers on TikTok.

Our TikTok videos have received over 325,000 views, but 290,000 of those views came from one video about a beach in Capri, Italy that went “viral”.

How you can help

It would be great if you would follow us, connect, and subscribe to our accounts on whatever social media platforms you use. The links are above and in the signature line below.

Most importantly, in order to be notified directly of new blog posts, please sign up for the e-mail notifications on this website at the right side or bottom of this page.

If you enjoy our content, you can also help us realize our dreams by liking, commenting and sharing our blog posts, social media posts, and YouTube videos when possible.

 

We are thrilled and grateful that all of this was achieved in just 1 year.

One day, we plan to write a more detailed blog post about how we achieved these results.

Thanks a million for your support and encouragement.

 

Happy Travels,

Kevin & Tina

Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive notifications for new posts and other content. 

P.S. Here are links to our social media accounts, in case you want to connect that way:

Retirestyle Travel Instagram
Kevin’s LinkedIn
Retirestyle Travel Facebook Page
Kevin’s Pinterest
Retirestyle Travel TikTok
Retirestyle Travel Twitter
Retirestyle Travel YouTube (Please check out our YouTube Channel for travel videos)

16 Comments

    • Kevin Strong

      Thanks, Jodie. The main reason we started the social media and blog was to connect with people like you and build some sort of potential audience for the book. But, now the blog has taken on a life of its own and we hope it also provides valuable and useful information as well as travel inspiration.
      Social media is another animal that we haven’t quite figured out yet.

    • Kevin Strong

      It has been work, but fun at the same time. We are making progress. We need to travel soon to finish our book about retiring abroad or becoming a snowbird and it would be nice to have new content for blog posts and social media.

  • JoJo Hall

    Wow, this is amazing! Congrats on all of your success with your blog and social media platforms! It’s amazing to see the progress of others over time!

    • Kevin Strong

      We appreciate that. We feel like we have accomplished a lot, but see many people who have accomplished more. We’d like to become more of a go-to resource for older people who want to become snowbirds or retire abroad. It seems our Las Vegas posts get the most views by far.

  • Mr Barry A Till

    Youhave accomplished a lot and should be rightly proud of your achievements – 41,000 page views is a lot! Well done. You seem to have social media well and truly under your belt!

    • Kevin Strong

      Thank you. I’m close to 50,000 views now. I just wish my posts for older travellers and people who want to retire abroad were more popular. I feel pretty good about Instagram and Facebook. Still learning the rest.

    • Kevin Strong

      Every once in a while, it is nice to see how far we’ve come and we thought we’d share it with our readers. Also, some people might be starting to wonder when our travel book about snowbirds and retiring abroad will be published.

  • Karabo M.

    The book is nearly done! Congratulations!!

    I would like to find out if you are planning to expand to Africa specifically countries such as Kenya and South Africa?

    • Kevin Strong

      Thanks. The book about retiring abroad and travelling for older travellers and snowbirds has not progressed in the past 9 or 10 months because we can’t travel.
      We don’t plan to travel to Africa anytime soon, but hopefully one day we will go and learn about that great continent.

  • Shireen

    Congratulations on your achievements so far! I’ve just followed you on IG and liked your Facebook page (already following you on Twitter).

    • Kevin Strong

      Thanks for following us on social media. We are proud of what we have accomplished on our travel blog.

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