When a child turns five, it can make any mom nostalgic and as I was look back on the years gone by, I decided to go through more than a 100 blog posts . I realized that some blog posts had been more popular than others and here I share the behind-the-stories which led to these blog stories.
My most popular blog post is one on Bengali weddings. Interestingly I called it bengali wedding part 1, this was in the very early stages of my food blog and I was optimistic that I would be covering Bengali weddings galore, and decided to write them in numerical order. in the past five years this is my only post on a bengali wedding, and guess what it isn't actually about the wedding food. the story goes like this... it was my mum's cousins wedding, who actually is as old as me, I would have loved to attend but, as explained in my previous post, Igot only 10 days off in 18 months, and that included any Saturdays or public holidays. which meant I would not be able to attend the wedding. As a blogger, content and 'content generation' is paramount, so I begged my mother to take a few food pictures and send me a little info, so that I could put up a a blog post. the day before the actual wedding, one has the aiburobhaat, or the day a girl has her last 'official' meal in her own home, and is served the choicest of food items. It was this ai buro bhaat which mum proxy covered for me, and it went on to be my most popular blog post according to google analytics. GO FIGURE! anyhow, read the blog post here bengali wedding part 1
My second most popular blog post was one that I expected to be a block buster. My interview of David Rocco, the delicious Italian celebrity TV Chef whom I just happened to run into in Goa, and pestered for an interview. the entire story ofcourse is on the post itself, but what most dont know is, that after a number of phone calls to and fro to his publicist and manager, I managed to get a slot early morning. It was also the morning I had a surgery of a 4 month old baby. the surgery was for 11 in the morning, and I drove 20 km to Panjim from Mapusa, and back to work, and it was a brilliant day, because not only was my interview a blockbuster, my surgery on the child went exceptionally well. a day when I would have had to choose between my profession and my passion, and I decided to juggle both, and managed to swing both, is beyond exhilaration. I am not sure how many would understand it, but it was a tremendous moment, one which I did share with David Rocco, after the interview was done. read my fun interview david Rocco interview
My third most popular travel post has been about my babymoon. I was obsessed with the idea of babymoons , I read every article and blog there was on the subject, while I was pregnant. I literally scoured the internet and found very few Indian travel bloggers writting about babymoons. for one you needed to be pregnant to be writing it, and i guess food and travel bloggers were either young or unmarried to be babymoon blogging, who knows why. but there were very many great resources on what to do and what not on a holiday while you are expecting, and I loved putting it all together and even though we had a very short staycation, we made the most of it. the blog post was later extensively posted by the Alila Diwa resort in Goa, and boosted the popularity of the post even on their own hotel blog. It was a fun experience, also one where I felt like I was writing about a topic not many had written before about, and it felt brilliant . read the post Babymoon
My fourth popular post, is again a huge favourite of mine, and I can understand why it is so popular for many food writers/food critics, or would be food writers and restaurant critics. It was at the end of one year of writing my newspaper column called 'Goa on my Plate' , it was a proper hard copy newspaper column and I loved the fact that I could hold my words in my hand. I could see them in print, and see them in onather persons hands. they also came with gorgeous professional pictures by the newspaper photography team, or the PR agencies. The articles got edited by the newspaper too, so I didn't have to bother much on spell checking my work. It was also very different from writing a blog. The lessons I learnt are in a funny presentation and I absolutely loved writing it. I always wanted to write for publications, but of late I have realised the tremendous growth, opportunity and satisfaction that a blog can provide . Read one of my favourite blog posts here : food writer
The fifth in the order of popularity, is another interview. this time not of a celebrity chef, but of a social media food movement in Pune, called Pune eat outs. now Pune eat outs is a facebook group, in which people share their experiences and reviews of places they have eaten in , homechefs and avid foodies get to interract with restaurant owners and in general it is a meeting pace of all pune foodies. I know of only Pune, but I gather every city in the country has a food group like this, and almost each one has a following. But I saw the organic growth of this group first hand. I saw it grow metastatically, and with tremendous crowd participation, so much so that it has tumbled out of the confines of online meets to offline celebrations, even collaborationss, and has spawned an entire army of other food groups . I wanted to delve into the minds of one of the founders of these succesful onlune food groups, and Aniruddha Patil turned out to be a friend, neighbour, and fantastic person to know. interstingly this interview was not conducted in person, but was typed out as an FB message , and even though I had not met Aniruddha back then, the interview was still a big hit. Read about the why and how of Pune eat outs HERE
It's funny how the internet works, or may be it is the SEO, search engines which have popularised some of my blog posts more than others, or maybe it is the brilliance of the content itself. was it my own inadvertant marketing skills? Was it something I did right? you tell me. I would rather have my readers tell me why they loved a blog post and shared it with friends, because suffice to say, I just write , even after 5 years of food blogging, I am yet to figure out what 'works' and 'what doesn't'. My advice to fellow bloggers would be to stop worrying about the numbers, and concentrate on the experience, because writing the blog post, and sharing it is in itself a very satisfying process. The numbers, the followers, the adulation all follows.
this post os part of my five year celebrations, to share with all my readers the journey till now.
the beginning
travel kits
The fifth in the order of popularity, is another interview. this time not of a celebrity chef, but of a social media food movement in Pune, called Pune eat outs. now Pune eat outs is a facebook group, in which people share their experiences and reviews of places they have eaten in , homechefs and avid foodies get to interract with restaurant owners and in general it is a meeting pace of all pune foodies. I know of only Pune, but I gather every city in the country has a food group like this, and almost each one has a following. But I saw the organic growth of this group first hand. I saw it grow metastatically, and with tremendous crowd participation, so much so that it has tumbled out of the confines of online meets to offline celebrations, even collaborationss, and has spawned an entire army of other food groups . I wanted to delve into the minds of one of the founders of these succesful onlune food groups, and Aniruddha Patil turned out to be a friend, neighbour, and fantastic person to know. interstingly this interview was not conducted in person, but was typed out as an FB message , and even though I had not met Aniruddha back then, the interview was still a big hit. Read about the why and how of Pune eat outs HERE
It's funny how the internet works, or may be it is the SEO, search engines which have popularised some of my blog posts more than others, or maybe it is the brilliance of the content itself. was it my own inadvertant marketing skills? Was it something I did right? you tell me. I would rather have my readers tell me why they loved a blog post and shared it with friends, because suffice to say, I just write , even after 5 years of food blogging, I am yet to figure out what 'works' and 'what doesn't'. My advice to fellow bloggers would be to stop worrying about the numbers, and concentrate on the experience, because writing the blog post, and sharing it is in itself a very satisfying process. The numbers, the followers, the adulation all follows.
this post os part of my five year celebrations, to share with all my readers the journey till now.
the beginning
travel kits
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