For many people it comes as a surprise that English is NOT the most spoken language in the world. It is Chinese: Mandarin Chinese. English is in fact at position #3 even after Spanish.
And another surprising fact is that Hindi is immediately after English in the ranking list at position #4 with more than 300 Million native speakers.
In line with these numbers and rankings, we do have a separate alternate online world led by Chinese websites and even a Chinese Google alternate: Baidu.
But sadly unlike Chinese, even with such a huge market and audience for Hindi language, resources on Internet published in Hindi are scarce.
Finally reversing the trend, it seems Internet is getting it's initial taste of Hindi with a recent increase in the number of Hindi websites, blogs and communities. Who knows, we may soon have a search engine specially crafted for Hindi websites (like Baidu).
If you too have an inclination towards this centuries old language and are planning to pen down a few articles in Devanagri script then there can be no better time than this.
Read the interview to know the secrets from one of the pioneering Hindi bloggers: Naveen Choudhary, how he created and manages his popular blog NaveenChoudhary.com
Sai: Namaskar Naveen, welcome to BloggerStop. Would you please introduce yourself to our audience?
Naveen: Namaskar Sai. I am a marketing professional and work with an International publishing house as Head of Marketing. I come from a beautiful city called Jaipur and these days I am based in Noida. To keep myself energised and motivated, I do blogging and photography. I keep observing regular/irregular things around me and those things become subject of my writing and photography. Political satire is favourite area to write.
Naveen's Hindi Keyboard - You Can Use It Too
Sai: Blogging in Hindi is definitely getting famous in India. Please shed some light on this relatively new language of blogging?
Naveen: Not only Hindi, but blogging in regional languages is increasing. I see many people using their native language to write blogs and there are audiences for the same. But you specifically asked about Hindi so I will speak about that, also because I write in that language. I agree with you that Hindi blogging is getting popular. A big size of population speaks Hindi, think in Hindi and sing Hindi songs. They love to read in Hindi which connects with their thoughts in own language.
The journey to Hindi blogging was not easy. I started blogging in 2009 in English. Soon I realized that I express myself better in Hindi and that’s how this blog took a different shape. Biggest help for me was Google Indic Transliterate. It made Hindi typing so easy that after installing the input tool, I never thought to write again in English. With this tool anyone can write any regional language. Next push was given by Facebook where people started sharing thoughts in Hindi.
Sai: As we have a professional photographer here, we would like to see the most amazing pictures taken by you.
Naveen: Oh no. I am not a professional photographer at all. Yes, I am a photographer by hobby. Fortunately some of the photographs got published in travel magazines, books and also on GettyImages. These things motivate me to click more, but I consider myself amateur as I still don’t have full command on my area of interest, which is travel and streets. I upload some of my clicks on Flickr. These can be seen at Flickr: NaveenChoudhary
Sai: You have been associated with the print media for a long time now, so was that your source of inspiration to come online or was it something else?
Sai: You do have a little flavour of politics in your blog too. So, do you too face the “Arnab Heat” from your audience and do you reply to all the comments or just the important ones?
Naveen: Political satire is my favourite and I feel these satires went well with the readers as some of them got more than 3K shares. But such topics never go well with hardcore supporters of any party. Yes, I get heat from these supporters. Some debate, some abuse. Infact, couple of months ago one of my blogpost shared on Facebook was mass reported by a particular group. They asked in WhatsApp groups to go to my Facebook profile and report. But these things motivate you more. These people really tell you that you pressed the right nerve.
I try to reply everyone. I definitely reply when someone is giving a counter reply sensibly and debate in a decent manner. I appreciate different thoughts and I feel all bloggers should take difference of opinion positively.
Sai: Do you have any specific goals/expectations from your blog? Have you already achieved any of these goals (we just want to know about all the milestones that your blogs have achieved)?
Naveen: Being a Hindi blog, initially it was difficult to get daily visitors as search engines were not supporting much to the regional language. I haven’t really set any specific goals but definitely I wanted visitors in 3 digits everyday which is happening now and it go on 4 digits on the day I publish blog.
Sai: How much time do you devote to blogging? Do you blog on weekends?
Naveen: When I started it was a weekly affair. Now with more responsibilities professionally, it becomes difficult. But with any big political action happening, I try to write something on Friday and push it on weekends. I also contribute to some news sites in terms of articles, so managing time becomes challenging sometimes. At the moment I try to publish 3 blogs every month.
Sai: What are your present blog stats, i.e. number of daily visitors, your global reach etc.?
Naveen: On a normal day, I get 150-200 visitors daily. When a blog is published this number shoots between 3000-5000. Depending on the number of blogs I published in that month, monthly traffic goes around 12000-15000.
My 75% of audience are from India, followed by US and UK.
Traffic Sources For Blogs in Regional Languages
Sai: What are the main sources of traffic for your blog; search engines, social media or something else?
Naveen: Search engines are not a big help in Hindi articles. My articles in English get decent traffic through search engines, whereas Hindi posts receive traffic through social media.
Learn How To Market A Blog With Naveen
Sai: Being a Marketer, how do you “Market” your blog?
Naveen: There are 2 ways:
Market your blog: I have a decent following on Facebook. I use social media to promote my blogs. I also do some basic SEO thing such as meta description, H1 tags, title, focus keyword etc. In addition to that I also promote my blogs in communities such as indiblogger.com
Market yourself: I cannot write blogs daily but I keep posting regular Facebook updates which made my style popular among friends and followers. So whenever I post a blog, they know what kind of stuff they are going to read. In addition to that, sometimes I write for other websites which gives me additional recognition. Readers from that site usually search about me and land to the blog page.
Sai: How do you teach Hindi to Google? In other words, do you use any special SEO strategies to promote your content in Hindi?
Naveen: Honestly speaking, this is still a challenging area. I am not a technical person; hence I am more dependent on content based SEO. I try to understand what kind of Hindi words related to that articles will be searched on google and accordingly, I plan the titles, meta description and H tags.
Sai: Have you been able to generate income from your blogs. Are you planning to ditch your 9 to 5 job with a blog?
Naveen: I get some money through adsense but that is not enough at the moment to ditch my 9-5 job. For me blogging is more for my own satisfaction, hence I never worked very seriously on generating income.
Sai: Are you planning to employ someone to help you in blogging or outsourcing some of your work like blog-designing, social networking or someone for your PR department?
Naveen: Not at this level. I try to experiment myself on the design part. Social media is my strong area.
Sai: Have you done any mistakes in your blogging life? And what have you learnt from these mistakes?
Naveen: Yes, many times and primarily at design level. I was lured once to get more clicks on google ads to increase revenue. Hence, I tried to use such themes where any reader will click an ad intentionally or unintentionally. Very soon I realised that exit rate is increasing. People are not spending enough time on blog, they are quitting quickly. When I analyzed, I found that these themes made reading text difficult. Also the ads are taking reader away from my site and most of the time they are not coming back. My primary motive was to make people read my blog. Later, I changed theme again and made it easy to read.
I learnt that blog should be for the readers not the advertisers.
Sai: Something you really want to change in your blog or in yourself being a blogger?
Naveen: Changing in the blog is something which happens occasionally, mostly when I get a new idea or see something great. As a blogger, I definitely want to be more regular and use common man’s language as much as I can.
Sai: Say, you are sponsored to travel to 3 world destinations. Which destinations would you pick up, and why? Would you like to take someone along with you? If yes, whom?
Naveen: I love to see different kinds of culture and different kinds of people. I love to see hustle bustle of a high street, at the same time I want to be lost in serenity of mother earth. I want to see stylish people; I want to see people from traditional background. So in short, I want to travel whole world, but if asked for 3 destinations then I would choose Las Vegas, Switzerland and any country of Africa. These 3 places will make me experience everything, I want to see.
I am a married man. Do you have a choice to say any other name except my wife? :P Jokes apart, I usually prefer to travel alone as it gives me flexibility to explore and experiment with the place peacefully and at my pace. From past 2 years, I am driving to any one destination alone in year end, which is atleast 1200-1500 kms from my base location.
Be Yourself! Says Naveen
Sai: Any special message you would like to share with our readers as well with everyone else?
Naveen: It is very simple to write. Express yourself through blogs. Let’s spread good words in the world. Just remember one thing - when you are writing, be yourself, don’t become a ‘writer’. The moment you will leave yourself and try to pretend as writer you will lose your readers.
Sai: How can we connect with you (online and offline)?
Naveen: Offline anyone can connect on 9999617755 but only through call or SMS as I have uninstalled Whatsapp.
I am available on social sites and email which are mentioned below:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/naveenblog
Twitter: https://twitter.com/naveen1003
Google+ : https://plus.google.com/+naveenchoudhary
Email: naveen[at]naveenchoudhary[dot]com
Erin Ferree, founder of 