As we celebrate National Youth Day today, The Pioneer brings to you a sneak peek into the world of blogging, the fastest-growing economy amongst the youth.
Tanisha Saxena
Earlier we were busy addressing the looming crisis of employment, while today a community of youth is highly motivated to stay back in the country where the super-rich is leaving. It’s the community of bloggers who are adding to the growing economy these days.
The Pioneer gives you a sneak peek into the world of blogging as some of India’s top bloggers share how their dichotomy is glaring and why they matter for the upcoming immense possibility to make the country even richer.
From being a medium of personal expression, today, blogging has become one of the most successful employment alternatives for people and a crucial aspect of online marketing strategies for firms. According to a study, our blogging industry is currently valued at INR 1275 crores and will grow at a CAGR of 25% for the next 5 years. India alone will be an INR 2800 crores market by 2026. Formerly viewed as a marginal activity restricted to the technically savvy, it is slowly becoming more of a mainstream phenomenon on the internet.
Speaking with us on the blogging ecosystem, Richa Singh, Co-founder and CEO of Blogchatter, tells, “As someone who is in the business of blogging, it makes me so happy to see that globally, popularity and the trend for running a blog have remained consistent for the past five years.Out of more than 1.8 billion websites worldwide, there are currently more than 600 million blogs. Because of this, blogging continues to grow, and people continue to read blogs. We are all hungry for human connections and upskilling, and blogs are a great way to satisfy both those needs.”
Since 2016, Blogchatter is one of India’s first blogging campaign based on Alexa and associated tools. A blogger for more than ten years, Richa envisions a bright blogging future for the youth.
She continues, “If done properly, content marketing alone may triple exposure, engagements, and average purchases.” According to her, it is important to focus on writing for people! Nearly everyone watches videos two times as often as we read the information. She stresses that people should start making videos right now if they wish to thrive in the blogging industry. People can simply begin integrating them into the blog posts while publishing.
Having said that SEO as we all agree, is an important component in content creation and Richa highlights that a lot of us shy away from SEO and keyword research. But it is something we need to invest in learning if we really want to achieve our blogging target in a challenging market. “One hack that I can share with you is to remember that the person typing on Google search is a human too. Use that insight while finding your keywords. You will win half the battle! They say Rome wasn’t built in an afternoon, it takes consistency and attempts. The good news for the blogging community is that running a blog is here to stay, and it’s going to grow even more.”
Blogging is a huge industry and content creation has no limit. However, there are so many factors behind the scenes like geography, competition in the market, pressure to be regular, and so on.
Seconding to this, Shagun Segan, one of the most popular travel bloggers in Hyderabad, believes that content creation is very demanding so you can be lost in the whole travel vibe and still need to create because he has a responsibility towards his audience. At the end of the day, when people reach out to you for travel suggestions and appreciate your content, it does feel good. An often missed aspect is all the big influencers in metro cities have had the first-mover advantage. Is it a challenge for the others?
“They made their accounts and had a big chunk of people on the platform already. When compared to other smaller cities, the penetration levels of these apps were very less and even now it’s way lesser. For example, Hyderabad still has only about 79 lakhs reach on Instagram and the active profile number is around 10 lakhs. Whereas Mumbai has 1.5 crore and Delhi has 1.9 crore. The key is to tweak the content for local followers and you could break the code. But all those initial followers were already following the big influencers from the metro cities, hence the brands didn’t have to necessarily come to the smaller cities. Despite all, gradually things are shifting bit by bit.”
Harsh Aggarwal, the founder and CEO at CoinSutra and ShoutMeLoud says, “When we talk about blogging the thing that we do is limit the entire idea into “content creation.” I believe that content creation is probably not the right way or just the way to define blogging. Before someone enters the blogging ecosystem they observe and follow thorough research and then start blogging. Secondly, we assume that there’s a lot at stake. Blogging requires more time but minimal capital and above all, there’s a process.
We Indians are so hardworking in general that we can easily imagine the hard work we can put in something of our own. When I had started blogging, I used to devote some hours from the day in understanding the nuances and then gradually took it as a career. Blogging is business and there’s no need to box it.”
Indeed, women have finally broken all shackles and are exploring nearly all realms on their own terms. However, things were contrasting say a decade ago. There weren’t too many women bloggers in the country.
Today, the tables have drastically turned in favour and gender is no barrier. Saloni Kukreja, food blogger explains, “The market is pretty saturated and most people end up doing similar things. So, one needs to find an edge, recognise their own voice and not just this but also make sure that they are getting traction and being noticed.
I have worked with a gamut of brands in America as well as here in India, the thing is that for a blogger one has to have that openness to listen to the brand’s and understand their requirements. I started some eight years ago and the times were really different from now. I think these days there is more acceptability in society as social media has taken the world by storm. It is no longer just about convention media outlets that one needed to help them raise their voice.”
