Interview with Shifa Shiwangi:
Shifa Shiwangi is a Food Blogger from Ghaziabad. She is more creative and passionate about cooking. Shifa always posts awesome content on food and lifestyle on her Instagram handle. We had a great discussion while an interview with Shifa Shiwangi.
Amar Ajnalkar: Tell our readers about yourself?
Shifa Shiwangi: Hi … this is Shifa Shiwangi, I am an influencer and basically my posts are related to food and lifestyle as I am very passionate about cooking and a big foodie as well. I am also a firm believer that food is the only thing which works wonders in keeping people together. Apart from it, I have an interest in learning about numerology, parallel universe, aquatic life as well.
Amar Ajnalkar: How did you come up with the name for your Instagram account?
Shifa Shiwangi: I choose @wannaeat16 as my page name because I wanted whenever I post any post related to food it should appeal to others to wanna have it and my birth date is 16 .. so, I named my page wannaeat16.
Amar Ajnalkar: What is the best thing about being an influencer?
Shifa Shiwangi: Being an influencer it gives me the freedom to express my love for food and my views on social matters as well and I also get to know about their views as well.
Amar Ajnalkar: What is the best collaboration experience that you have done with a brand?
Shifa Shiwangi: I have good experience with all the collabs that I have done so far but I would like to highlight my recent collaboration with Falcon face masks, basically in this pandemic time nothing is more important than safety, Falcon group deals in face masks, which I personally used and liked very much because of comfort they provide as well as they are made in India #vocal4rlocal and by posting this I have successfully given a social message to my followers to use face mask regularly which is need for the hour.
Amar Ajnalkar: How many hours a day do you work and hows your daily schedule?
Shifa Shiwangi: It’s very difficult to tell how much time I spend daily on social media because it depends upon the engagements you got for the day. somedays it’s approx 2-3 hours and some days it takes the whole day to create content.
Amar Ajnalkar: Is the influencer profession affected your family life? if yes then how?
Shifa Shiwangi: Honestly it doesn’t affect my family life as such because if you see any other field, most of them have fixed working hours and as an influencer, you get ample amount of time to spend with family and it also gives us leverage to work according to your suitable time, it’s not in the case of an office job or any field job.
Amar Ajnalkar: What motivates you in life?
Shifa Shiwangi: My motivation in life is criticism because I believe more people criticize me more I will desire to grow in life apart from it if I talk about my motivation to work as an influencer is that in this profession you are the boss you and don’t depend on anyone to grow .. it gives you complete freedom to experiment with your work-time to time and you can also take a break for a period of time whenever you want.
Amar Ajnalkar: What are your favourite books or movies related to your niche?
Shifa Shiwangi: My favourite books are: The Alchemist and The Secret and I enjoy watching sci-fi and horror movies.
Amar Ajnalkar: What surprising lessons have you learned while influencing?
Shifa Shiwangi: The most surprising lesson that I have learned while influencing is that brand and sometimes audience prefers influencers who have a huge number of followers .. some influencers buy followers and do all kind of unethical things to grow their page and brands gives work to them without checking their profile engagements and statistics ..which is very saddening and influencers who have fewer followers but they are experienced and in this field from a long time are left behind .. and I want this to change .. experience matters, talent matters not numbers.
Amar Ajnalkar: Top 3 skills required to become a successful influencer.
Shifa Shiwangi: Top 3 skills in my opinion are :
1. Being Social Media Savvy: You have to know thoroughly how it works .. because without a lack of knowledge about social media you cannot showcase your work properly.
2. One should be good at communication .. so as to communicate with brands you have to present yourself, your audience can ask you questions about your views and content .. that can only be done when you are good at communication.
3.Last but not the least one should be a good learner .. always be ready to learn because as time changes you have been exposed to new ways, concepts, trends etc. .. so you need to be a quick and good learner to catch up on these things as quickly as possible to put your game on top.
Amar Ajnalkar: Hows your experience with Amar Ajnalkar?
Shifa Shiwangi: Firstly. I would like to thank Amar Ajnalkar for taking this interview. it’s really nice to talk about my passion and career and sharing my thoughts about it. Amar, you have put a nice set of questions to ask as I think its the basic knowledge and it will help the ones who want to be in this field.
Amar Ajnalkar: Two lines for our reader.
Shifa Shiwangi: There are very few of this kind of detailed interviews of bloggers and influencers out their and Amar is doing a very good job .. so I just want to say that whatever you want to do just do it with all your passion and put every bit of efforts in it with full confidence.
