Hebbar's Kitchen shares the secret ingredient to social media success...

People who are always looking for, or looking at food, prepare your tastebuds for some tingling and your stomach for some rumbling. Introducing - Hebbar's Kitchen, a cookhouse of short recipes.

Are you bored of ordering food online and Maggi cannot comfort you enough? You can head on to Hebbar's Kitchen's Instagram feed for easy-to-make two-minute recipes but first, let's glance through how a passion cum profession gained over 700K followers on Instagram, 9.2 million organic followers on Facebook, 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube and a ranking in top 10 most viewed Indian channels in Facebook, according to a Vidooly report.

Looking back, where did it all begin?

Hebbar's Kitchen started as a hobby, which later turned into passion cum profession. I was always interested in cooking but I never thought I would open a blog someday. After I got married and moved to Australia, I wanted to continue my Software testing profession here in Australia. But it wasn't easy to get a job here in Australia without any local experience. Meanwhile, just to kill time I opened up a free wordpress account and I started to post few basic recipes with step-by-step photos. Well there wasn't any great response initially. In between, Buzzfeed Tasty videos were creating lot of buzz and I was inspired by their videos. Also there weren’t any Indian channels (or could be but not popular) showcasing the Indian recipes with shorter videos in Facebook. Hence I thought to give a try with shorter videos and the response was amazing.

What's in the name?

Hebbar is my husband’s surname to which I belong to. It is a most popular Hindu surname from Udupi, Karnataka amongst various Brahmin communities. Since I had decided to write a blog, was thinking what to name it? Then, I decided to come with my family name as it not only shows the identity but also helps to connect to all vegetarian eaters.

What is your USP in this cluttered space? How does your content give you an edge?

I guess it must be the short videos, which makes my readers to try my recipes. I also try my best to post videos everyday, which helps my readers to be in touch. And I make sure to share most simple recipe like chutney to the difficult ones like baking cake. I keep the video short and share step by step photo recipe, notes and tricks for each and every recipe in my website. This motivates user to refer and try my recipes. Also, I give online support in solving queries via Facebook page messenger and email.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BuD3Ga4lcYw/

Please take us through your content creation process. How do you stay relevant and relatable?

Content creation is not a day job. My husband and me plan the entire weeks schedule well in advance. We make sure to add recipes from different category like breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner and desserts. This not only helps to get variety of recipes but also helps users to try most of them in their daily routine. In addition we try to accommodate the incoming reader requests to our schedule and try to meet the current demand.

How do you take moolah with your efforts?

We have partnered with Google and Facebook to monetise our website, YouTube and mobile app. We also do brand promotions as running a blog is not easy. There is a heavy investment and day-to-day expenses to maintain the server.

Also Read: Interview: Don’t follow what everyone else is doing: Gia Kashyap(GiaSaysThat)

How do you maintain editorial objectivity with the influx of brand briefs?

We get numerous brand partnership proposals, however we make sure to partner with brands based on mutual benefits and interest. We also, make sure to try all the products before in hand and give an honest review rather than being biased. For the betterment of brands and for ourselves, we place or use the products in a subtle manner, that it doesn’t look very obvious of being brand promotion.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtQZCnlFFpm/

One instance/experience that made it all worthwhile

I was really surprised to see the response I started to receive on videos. I was so happy and thrilled to see report from Vidooly, which ranked us, in top 10 for most viewed Indian channels in Facebook and top most in health and food channels in Facebook. You can see detailed report here. We are over almost 9.2 million organic followers on Facebook and 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube.

Weirdest brand brief/request ever

We have received couple of proposals to discuss on possibility of selling our brand.

If not blogging, you would be?

Working for an IT firm from 9 to 5 like robots. It is always good to be a boss of yourself and build your own dreams, than being hired by someone to build their dreams.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BoG3G96BQuw/

A day in your life....

I am fully busy in creating stuffs for Hebbar’s Kitchen. I started blogging to kill time, but now I feel I do not have enough time for myself. It keeps me so busy that I do not have time to think of anything else.

Message/tips for upcoming bloggers

Never give up in what you are doing, as dedication and consistent is very important.

Your Favorite Influencer

Who else can be a better Influencer than your mom? My mom is a great cook and I used to miss her food after getting married and moved to Australia. I used to always call her and ask for recipes, as her recipes are traditional and full of flavors.

The Future you foresee for your Personal Brand

Well certainly we want to diversify our channel and just not limit to food recipes category. There are numerous future plans for us, including merchandizing our brand, tie up with ecommerce to deliver the recipe ingredients, creating sister channels including review channels and baby rhymes animation. In addition, we do have plans for opening food outlets and creating food chains with franchise options too.