Indian Food Blogging: Separating the wheat from the chaff

A recent article in the Independent newspaper of UK caught my attention. It talks about how some of the food bloggers in UK are promising great reviews to restaurants in lieu of a free meal. The topic struck a chord with me and I started wondering if Indian market is too different and if very soon we will see the similar articles in Indian publications.

Food blogging started a few years ago as a hobby for most food enthusiasts who wanted to share their opinion of the restaurant where they ate as a normal paying customer. With growing social media influence and growing trends amongst the mainstream media to restrict themselves to advertorials, PR machinery found a cheap, impressionable and easy kill amongst the fast multiplying hoard of food bloggers who have now become a part of their strategy of most new launches, menu changes and limited time food festivals. While I got my first invited review almost a year after I started blogging some six years ago, today’s bloggers get them in few hours of starting the blog; even though their blog neither shows in Google searches nor merits a reading. In fact I know of many PR people who ask people to start a blog so that they can send them a free invite for a meal and many PR representatives have started their own blogs to manage their clients.

Rekha Kakkar, a renowned blogger, says “I no longer introduce myself as food blogger. Whenever I see people who have no knowledge of food start writing about food just because it gives them opportunity to hog at expensive restaurants, my enthusiasm to write a review dies a hundred deaths”. Rohini Ghosh, another prominent food blogger says, “There has been a boom in the number of free-loading bloggers, and pretty soon a similar article will come in Indian media too!”

So while some of the PR companies are trying to fool the client by offering them 4-5 reviews every month and getting them covered in unknown blogs, what is that a restaurateur should know before approving any blogger visit for a meal that cost them money and time? Should they be more concerned about number of blogs they feature in or should they be bothered about the overall reach to their ‘target customer’? The answer is obvious and finding out these details is not very difficult if you know how.

What a PR company may not tell its client?

A PR company may fake figures to make the few blogs look appealing. Here is small and easy gauge to find out the true worth of a blog:

–         Check Alexa: So if you want to check the alexa of www.indianfoodfreak.com, go to alexa.com, then to site info and type blog address, http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/indianfoodfreak.com. If the Global rank is less than 4lacs and Indian rank is less than 50 thousand, then it is worthwhile to look at the food blog for a review. Do note, a recipe blog will normally have a lower alexa rank than a restaurant review blog but it does not mean recipe blog will get your target customer. Note, lower the alexa rank, better is the blog. Also see the search visits percentage on the alexa page. It denotes Google traffic coming to the blog. Higher it is the better.

–         Google Page Rank: A page rank can be checked at http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php by writing the blog link. It denotes importance Google gives to a blog while indexing. The page rank can go upto 10, however in real world anything above 1 is great for a restaurant review blog.

–         SimilarWeb Rank: Just like Alexa, Similarweb is another tool to check rating of similar websites. A lower Similarweb rating is better. A similarweb rank can be checked at https://www.similarweb.com/

–         Facebook members: Most food bloggers have their own facebook page and groups. Check out the number of members it has. The post has that much more potential to be read by your target customers. Indian Food Freak for instance has over 8000 members on the page, over 27,000 members on the group, apart from its various other groups like Gurgaon Food Freak that has over 15,000 members, and has its own chapters in Mumbai, Ranchi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Chandigarh, Noida,  while many more are coming. Such groups also ensure that whenever there is a relevant discussion, a restaurant will get visibility through the posts done on the blog.

–         Positive Reviews: Does a blog always give positive reviews? If yes, then a positive review for you also does not hold water. The readers, if any, would always look at such reviews with an eye of suspicion. It is better to get an average rating by an honest blog than to have a high rating by someone who is trying to be goody-goody for a free meal. Remember, customers is the raison d’etre for your existence, and a honest blogger who gets to visit so many restaurants every month may help you take corrective steps before it is too late. I remember this line in Hindi that I read as a kid, – “Chaplooson se savdhaan”

–         FB reviewer: A new trend that has come in is of the facebook reviewer. These people don’t have a blog, but would keep writing on their personal FB profile about a restaurant. Their reach is limited to their friends who not surprisingly are mostly from the F&B industry; and they are certainly not your target ‘customer’.

The moot question is if it is a bad idea to invite bloggers for an invited review? I don’t think so. As long as the blogger is honest and remains true to the core, there is not much difference between an invited and an anonymous review. Rather invited reviews help blogger discover much more that would be missed on an anonymous visit. Just like few bad elements in every industry, blogging is no different. It is now up to the PR machinery and restaurateurs to decide what pleases them in the long run. If the current trend does not stop, earlier it was paid reviews by main stream media that gave rise to blogging, blogging will also be replaced with something that is seen as more neutral.

Also read Conducting and Managing restaurant reviews