One of the most talked about food bloggers in India, Dr Nandita Iyer, has been taking the F&B digital industry by a storm. A doctor with a specialisation in nutrition, Nandita is a veteran blogger who started off with her blog, Saffron Tail, way back in 2006 in order to simply keep a track of the impulsive dishes she would try in her kitchen so that she could reproduce it later. Looking back, Nandita shares – “The blog chugged along slowly, taking breaks once in while. The idea was to document my experiments in healthy cooking and share these recipes with anyone who would care for them. I had no clue about keywords, SEO, traffic etc., but I finally started taking this seriously in around 2015-16. That also coincided with the time when more and more F&B brands wanted to explore digital marketing in collaboration with food bloggers.” Currently, she engages with millions of people through Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The ways of a food blogger
Nandita goes about her blog with a serious content strategy based on data-driven parameters like keywords trends as well as innovative ideas like seasons. Her social media profiles, too, reflect weekly themes such as healthy baking and mango recipes.
On being asked about her social media preferences, Nandita shares, “I have been on the grandfather of social media networks – Ryze, that was founded in 2001. So I’d like to think social media networking comes naturally to me. That aside, each platform has its own rules of engagement.But, for a food blogger, as I am understanding pretty late in the game, Pinterest is everything. Especially, when it comes to sending boatloads of traffic. One thing I do understand is to share interesting and useful stuff from other blogs and websites too, and not just your own links. Strike up conversations on topics of interest, help out someone in need. All this adds up in the long run.”
Tips for food bloggers: “Become a food blogger because you LOVE food – shopping for food, cooking food, eating food, writing about food. Not because it is the in-thing these days. With a gazillion food blogs around, what will make you stand out is a niche, so find it and stick to it. Don’t give up easily. Building an audience is a slow process. Stick to generating quality content on a regular basis and you will see growth and success.” – Nandita.
An influencer’s take
Nandita strongly believes that most of the content is being consumed via mobiles phone these days and hence, brands need to mould their content in a smartphone-friendly way. She also has a clear opinion on the need of balancing the voice of her content when posting for a brand. Nandita asserts, “Bloggers understand their audience just the way the agency or marketing person understands the brand. It is always good to allow the blogger to communicate in his or her usual style because that’s the way our audience will like it. The best campaigns are ones that are not forced to look and sound like a campaign. Dozens of hashtags and spamming relentlessly with updates or tweets, without being considerate to the audiences only succeeds in putting off the audience big time.”
Nandita definitely prefers to work with brands on a long-term basis because according to her it portrays a strong association between the brand and her that her audience grows to trust and understand over time. Upon asked about the need for influencer marketing platforms like Greenroom, Nandita shares, “Influencer marketing agencies are the conduit betweens brands and bloggers or influencers. Finding a right match for the campaign and the values a blogger stands for, this is made possible by agencies.”
With bloggers like Dr Nandita Iyer continuing their good work, many people are drawing inspiration to start their own blogs. This, we believe, is going to develop into a cooperative environment which is going to prove beneficial for businesses as well as consumers. We wish Nandita all the best for her future endeavours.
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Suggested read – 6 steps to become a food blogger.
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