INFLUENCER INTERVIEW : ANIRBAN SAHA

Anirban Saha(www.anirbansaha.com) , a photo-blogger from Kolkata, sheds some light on his blogging journey and how influencer marketing is shaping up for bloggers.

How your blogging journey began ?? What motivated you to start blogging ??

I started blogging in class 12, after having come to know about it in a Bengali teenage magazine. It used to be a public-personal e-diary. Later in 2009, I became the blogger of my college’s entrepreneurship cell. www.anirbansaha.com is live from August 2010.

Is there any specific genres you prefer while blogging ??

I post my photographs along with my writing. So, I call it photo-blogging. I prefer to stick to travel, culture and event coverage.

What according to you is an Influencer ??

A person popular for right reasons and whom people trust, is an influencer. In the world of digital media where brands use such people to promote their brand or cause, I would like to define an influencer to be a person who can moderate discussions on consistent topics with a consistent amount of people participating in it constructively.

This would ensure a expected reach and the conversion.

If a brand wants just brand awareness and to reach out to people, a person with a good presence in the social media can be regarded as an influencer. But if I brand wants their products to be sold by the influencer, the conversion rate is of utmost importance.

If the influencer has grown his klout organically over a sustained period of time through discussion and quality service, nothing can be as valuable.

Influencer Marketing – what it holds for bloggers ??

Money!

And if the brands share their blogpost, it means more reach for the bloggers!

What are the problems you faced while interacting with brands for campaigns ??

I generally do not do campaigns for other brands, unless it is an initiative of my own. But very recently I’ve worked for the West Bengal Government, Magnum ice creams, IIHM event and Literary festivals in Calcutta.

There were a few times when I believed a specific product or service was bad and promoting it through my blog would not be a right thing to do.  

What you think of Kolkata Blogger community ?? Is it that active as compared to Delhi or Mumbai ??

There are many bloggers in Kolkata, but not many of them take it up professionally. They are not as active as compared to Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. A lot of awareness needs to be created not only about blogging but of the digital space, digital content creation and distribution. It is with this idea, a friend and I had started “Kolkata Bloggers” [www.fb.com/kolkatabloggers, www.kolkatabloggers.com] last year. We have near 400 active bloggers from the region. We conduct regular meetups, workshops and corporate engagement programs. The engagement has increased over the last few months and we are confident Kolkata will be as active as the rest, if not more.

What you think of Blogmint as a product ??

Blogmint is the requirement, as we proceed to the next step in Indian Digital sphere. We require a forum where the corporates and the digital content generators should find a common platform to discuss expectations from each other. This is a fantastic forum. Kudos.