It’s no secret that I love to travel, and sharing my travel stories, tips and tricks is a major part of the fun for me. So, when I started playing around with the travel app, Findery, I was giddy with excitement! Warning: It can be very addicting.
Findery is a social network for travel content that let’s you create “notemaps” for places you have been all around the world, from your favorite neighborhood Mexican restaurant to the beaches of Brazil. Under each main notemap you create — which are usually cities or countries — you can create individual notes about things to do, where to go and what to see in that area. You simply upload a photo, write a description, add tags and mark its location. It’s like posting a digital postcard and sharing it within the Findery travel community.
Documenting your travels with Findery
One of the best things I have realized about this app, as a travel writer, is that it can literally function as my own travel notebook when I’m on-the-go. Say you are visiting Chicago and eating at a very unique wine and tapas bar, you can literally snap a photo of the restaurant, upload it to the app and leave a note about your experience, your favorite tapas or the brand of wine from Spain you loved. This can help when you get home and start writing about your trip because you already have some of the main pieces of the story written down in your Findery notes.
While you can think of Findery as a digital and social scrapbook of your travels and as keepsakes from your trips, one of the other key features is that people are engaging with your content. Similar to other social networks, you follow other Findery travelers and, of course, you want people to follow you. You can like their notes, follow an entire notemap for a destination or leave comments and questions underneath the notes.
Travel notemaps on Findery
My very first notemap is Taking the Kids to Guatemala and I have created 12 notes about our trip to Antigua and Lake Atitlán. This is not only a great place for me to write about key components of our trip, but can be a great resource for anyone planning a trip to Guatemala. Plus, other travelers can get the inside scoop on where to go and what not to miss!
Since my family and friends know that I travel a lot, I get emailed questions all the time about certain places I have been. Now I can simply share my notemaps with them and all the important places of interest are organized in one place easy for them to search themselves.
Travel planning search tool
Not only does Findery let you create travel content to share, but you can also use Findery as a travel planning search tool. You can search the Findery app by destination and find notemaps about that specific destination. If you are planning a family vacation to Italy this summer, you can search the app for Italy and begin to read about interesting places to visit or a great hotel someone recommends. You can follow someone’s entire notemap about Italy, save certain notes to your own Italy notemap or save them in the “Places I want to go” notemap.
Travel Locally with Findery
When you are using the app out in the world and from your phone, the homepage will show Near or Far. If you select near then the app will populate notes that are near you, so when you are visiting a new city, you can instantly find notes and points of interest that are literally right around you. This is also great for finding new things to explore in your hometown. You might discover something you never knew was even there before or it might encourage you to try a new restaurant based on someones note.
The Findery app has so many of the features I like about other social networks and pulls them all together in one gorgeous app. It allows me to share my travels, write about my personal experience, share travel tips and engage with other travelers. I can also collect travel content that I want to use in the future or instantly find information about a place that I am visiting right at that moment. I am a huge fan of post it notes and I think of Findery as leaving leaving post-its all over the world. Whether those post-it notes are mine or someone else’s, it’s a fun and exciting new way to explore the world.
Download the Findery App from the iTunes store and be sure to follow me! @WanderlustLiving
Disclosure: I am working as a content ambassador for the Findery app. I share this with you because travel is my passion and it’s a awesome app that I am seriously obsessed with!
