Food Blogging Workshop by Social Bong

Wannabe food bloggers picked up innumerable tips and guidelines from experienced bloggers to help themselves get started on their blogging journey in this recent food blogging workshop organized by Social Bong and presented by Zomato. It was well timed as we are approaching the gastronomic quarter of the year (October-December, the time of the year when we look forward to eating to our heart’s content much more than anytime else). It was held at Aauris, the new hotel at Robinson Street, off Rawdon Street.

Anindya Sundar Basu and Madhushree Basu Roy, the blogging couple behind Pikturenama, a food and travel blog, kickstarted the workshop with a fun-filled and highly interactive session on why blog, tips on good blogging and setting the expectations of a new blogger right. They generously drew from their blogging journey of about one and a half years. The common queries like how one can monetize the blog were handled well. 

Madhushree Basu Roy and Anindya Sundar Basu

It was followed by Debjani Chatterjee Alam’s informative session on the technicalities of starting and maintaining a blog with a lot of useful and actionable guidelines (like getting the size of the pictures right for the blog to load on a smartphone screen which is the increasingly used medium to read blogs). Debjani’s blog is named Debjanir Rannaghar and she’s a recipe and review blogger. She, among other things, discussed search engine optimization (SEO) and buying a domain name for a blog to create its own identity and shared costs of the online tools for a blog. The audience was kept entertained by her wisecracks. The session had an informal approach and the audience felt free to place their queries.

Debjani Chatterjee Alam. Photograph by Subhadip Mukherjee.

The lunch spread in Bengali cuisine was extensive. I liked fish chop and devilled egg, though missed the mustard sauce. The Sorshe Machh (Mustard Fish) with a sweet twist was decent too and the Chhanar Payesh (Creamy dessert with small cottage cheese balls) was impressive.

Post lunch, Samridhi Singhvi (Marketing Head-East, Zomato), gave an overview of food reviewing and bloggers’ opportunities on Zomato. It was a useful session in terms of understanding Zomato better for those who were not much familiar with it. She importantly explained the dos and don’ts of a good review on Zomato.

 Samridhi Singhvi

It was followed by ace food photographer Sayantan Sarkar’s session where he taught food photography on DSLR and mobile camera and his wife Rani Sarkar taught food styling before shooting. They shared a lot of pointers and tips for everyone to improve their photography skills for food. The practical part of the session where Sayantan shot the lunch spread was quite effective.

 Sayantan Sarkar in the practical session

Poorna Banerjee (of the blog PresentedbyP), a lifestyle blogger and one of the most experienced as well as leading names in Kolkata blogging circuit, took the last session in her no-nonsense style with valuable tips on writing and promoting a blog effectively on social media. Further queries were cleared in the panel discussion before the wrap-up. The panel comprised of Sammya Brata (blogger and founder of the Calcutta Instagrammers group on Facebook), Dolon Dutta Chowdhury (of the lifestyle blog Pout Pretty) and Anindya. This should serve as the starting point and Kolkata needs many more such workshops in near future.

Poorna Banerjee. Photograph by Subhadip Mukherjee.

#BloggingWorkshop #FoodBlogging #FoodPhotography #WorkshopKolkata

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