There’s more awareness about influencer marketing now, than before: Devashree Sanghvi

The food and travel bloggers says that brands and the hospitality market understand the value of bloggers now more than ever.

Food and travel blogger Devashree Sanghvi left a lucrative career as a lawyer to follow her passion of travel and food a few years ago. She started her food and travel page on Instagram called Thecrazyindianfoodie in 2015, and since then, has never looked back.

Devashree Sanghvi is one of the most popular Indian food and travel bloggers of Instagram.

Her Instagram page boasts of 138k followers and is a verified account. “When I started the blog, I was a law student juggling internships, law school and also the struggles of running a new blog. In 2017, I graduated and got a job at a law firm. By this time, my blog had grown exponentially and so had my workload. I needed to dedicate more time to the blog and law being a demanding profession, too, I decided to take a break. I focused my energy into the blog and there’s been no looking back since then,” says Sanghvi, who clearly loves her life as a travel and food influencer.

 

Quitting a well-established job to follow your dreams is not easy to do as it sounds. But Sanghvi did it without too many apprehensions. “It was a big decision and a scary one. But I also was well established with the blog when I did quit the law job, so I wasn’t just taking a leap into the unknown. Plus, I always had a strong education and back-up plan in case things didn’t go the right way. So, it was a well thought out decision,” she says.

One of the main struggles of being a social media influencer is the hours of screen time that one has ton dedicate. But Sanghvi says that you must interact with your followers and cannot let go of them when they are your main strength. “It’s really important to engage with your followers. Sometimes that’s tough with so many comments and messages coming in, but I make it a point to spend an hour a day at least replying to as many people I can. It’s really important to appreciate and interact with your audience as they’re your main strength,” says the blogger, who has travelled to multiple countries and has stayed at multiple resorts across the world, as part of her job.  

Sanghvi truly believes that the digital marketing industry has changed drastically over the last few years. And she is glad that today, bloggers get the due respect that they deserve from brands and the market. “Now more than ever, brands realise the importance of working with the right kind of influencers. There’s more awareness and knowledge about influencers marketing than say two to three years ago,” she says.

 

However, things seemed to have taken a turn for the worse in the hospitality industry with the pandemic hitting and people getting confined in their homes. But Sanghvi is positive that we will come out of this with a new normal. “The lockdown has severely affected the food, travel and hospitality industry which also affects us indirectly. I don’t know about the vaccine but we have to accept and live carefully with social distancing and proper sanitisation measures. People won’t step out except for work or unless absolutely necessary so this has and will really affect the whole dining out, travelling and vacationing in hotels business. But I feel that the future is bright. Once things start functioning, the need for social media and influencer marketing will rise, too,” she says, adding, “This will also lead to a boost in domestic tourism as more and more people will want to travel internally to places in India that are closer and safer than facing long quarantine periods abroad.”

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