Work hard and Work harder if you don’t succeed says Utpal Khot, Blog Owner, Fashionablefoodz

With his love for fitness & food and simplistic writing style, Utpal Khot is on a steadfast track to win viewers in the influencer world.

Starting his journey from the manufacturing industry, Utpal Khot followed his love & passion for food, travel, and fitness to start off his own Blog page, FashionableFoodz.

With both his Instagram pages, aceinfluencer, and foodietweeter, Khot commands thousands of followers on social media.

Looking back, where did it all begin? 

I was into content creation way back in 2006-2007 when I was in the corporate world. I was writing mostly for website updates and designing online market research questionnaires and editing a lot of pre-written content. Post-2011, I thought of starting a blog of my own to give a face to my work. Since I used to cook a lot and am a self-trained Chef, friends asked me to write with food as the main ingredient of my blog.

What's in the name? 

It all started with food. Since I was working on Italian, Spanish and Mexican cuisines in those days, I always found their plating more fashionable as compared to others. So, the word “fashionable food” was somehow stuck for a while. I officially started a personal blog in 2012 and then went on to a WordPress self-hosted blog in 2015 which is not one of the premium Lifestyle blogs of the country for fashionablefoodz.

I am humbled to have the best reader base that showers their love for my content. I get over half a million visitors on my blog annually and have close to 3.5 million page views annually. 

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

I connect with my readers through my simple English, trying to cover the lifestyle space as a whole and not just focussing on any one aspect of it.

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

Our team does the basic scrutiny for knowing what’s hot in the market based on various factors including season, trends, updates, etc. We then list down a set of quarterly topics in Lifestyle, Travel and Fashion segments.

It is further broken down into a niche like food, parenting, fitness, etc. Once we have all the topics in place, the team creates basic content for me. I then work on the fine-tuning and finishing of the post.

Also read: Be real and authentic: Megha Sarin, Fit as a Fiddle

How do you make moolah with your efforts?

I do some paid posts for brands that take care of the costs.

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

My blog is SEO monitored by experts all over the year. So we have fixed dates of publishing articles and Brands have to agree to the schedule to get their posts published. I also ensure that the blend is even so that no two similar niche posts are published back to back.

One instance/experience that made it all worthwhile.

Many. Fashionablefoodz is new and people recognize me for the content I have created over the last so many years. Brands look at the content and give me work with faith. I am the proud father every time my baby Fashionablefoodz gets some work due to its content and it makes all the slogging worthwhile.

Weirdest brand brief/request ever

Nothing so far. Thank god.

If not blogging, you would be?

A Full-time social worker for my NGO ‘Being the Real Human Foundation’.

A day in your life...

Starts with morning breakfast, replying to Whatsapp messages from friends, clients, and Team members. Also, brand pitching and phone calls are done by lunch. Afternoons are purely for serious blogging, networking, and social media. I try to answer as many as possible from my fan base that has questions. Evenings are spent with family and my pets, of course not neglecting any business calls.

Message/tips for upcoming bloggers

Work hard and work harder if you don’t succeed. There is no shortcut to success. Buying links and paying heavily for getting your DA/Alexa rank would leave you unsatisfied creatively at the end of the day. So if you don’t want to live in any fear of losing your ranks, blog seriously, blog passionately and blog regularly.

Your Favorite Influencer

All are my favorites. Having taught many, the basics of Influencing they are more like students/family. Most of them teach me something or the other now and then unknowingly in return. There is so much to absorb and learn from every Individual. I keep doing that honestly. So I would not want to name a few as favorites. I can only say that my Influencer family is over 4000 spread globally and I Love them all.

The Future you foresee for your Brand

I would want Fashionablefoodz to be remembered as an honest Lifestyle blog connecting the common man with the Market leaders and brands. Fashionablefoodz as a brand will be a bridge of faith between the end-user and the seller with only good, tried and tested products being recommended to them.