They would come back from trips and write whole pages in Word with restaurant recommendations and experiences for friends. They came up with the idea to gather them in one place and launched the “Travels and Plates” blog. Alexandra Cincu and Catalin Cincu they also made an Instagram page for the blog, but over time it turned into a virtual place where they post about themselves, the places they see and good food.
One of the resolutions set at the beginning of this year was to be consistent on Instagram and send out the newsletter regularly in 2023. These brought them an increase in the number of followers.
“We have grown steadily since the beginning of the year, and definitely the biggest catalyst was the series “Bucuresti in Farfurie”, the one in which we interview people from HoReCa (and not only) about their favorite restaurants in the city. It was also the project for which we thought about it the most until we let it go”, say Alexandra & Cătălin.
Alexandra and Cătălin Cincu tell in the following about the content on Instagram for “Travels and Plates” and how they juggle content creation, full time jobs and parenting.
The people behind the “Travels and Plates” blog
Alexandra & Catalin: Our story began 13 years ago, on the benches of the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences, when we met. We both had a strong drive for writing, which first pushed Alexandra to open a culinary blog at the time (salt’n’Sasha), and then to conduct a series of interviews together on Gustos.ro with the people who started popularizing the street food phenomenon in Romania. These are two of the chapters that laid the foundations of what would become “Travels and Plates” – the food & travel blog that I launched a little later, in 2016.
What thought did you set out on, Călat?times and Plates
Alexandra & Catalin: We always came back with stories from our travels, and if we had friends or family members going to destinations we had already visited, they would ask us for all kinds of tips & tricks. I would write whole pages of Word for them with sights, restaurant recommendations and even whole itineraries. So we thought… if we keep writing so much material, why not collect it in one place? Thus came the idea of the blog.
First posts
Alexandra & Catalin: I started the blog with a serious collection of posts from previous trips – what to do in Barcelona, where to eat in Brussels, where to stay in Bologna, etc. And in addition to this, with a first interview (of which we are still very proud) that we gave him Jose Avillezthe most famous chef in Portugal (even at the present time). I did the interview in 2014, in Lisbon, two years before the blog was launched – we were supposed to publish it elsewhere, but here it is on “Travels and Plates”. We’re still starstruck by that meeting with Avillez.
Communication on Instagram
Alexandra & Catalin: At first, it was strictly just a communication channel for the blog, but it slowly, gently turned into an about us page. I post a lot from my travels, after which, during the pandemic, like everyone else, I post recipes. But we have to admit that we didn’t give it much importance until this year. At the beginning of 2024, we had two resolutions: to be consistent on Instagram and to post as often as possible newsletter (which appeared around 2023). And here we are now.
Building the image
Alexandra & Catalin: In all honesty, we didn’t have any plans to build a specific image for ourselves. Our online image matches 100% offline. We are simply new, just like in everyday life.
Community Growth Stages
Alexandra & Catalin: We’ve been growing steadily since the beginning of the year, and definitely the biggest catalyst was the “Bucharest on a Plate” series, the one where we interview people from HoReCa (and beyond) about their favorite restaurants in the city. It was also the project for which we thought the most until we let it go. But in the end I said “let’s do it and see what happens”. As I said before, it’s a project inspired by the “Best of London” series from the guys at TopJaw.
How having a lot of followers has changed you
Alexandra & Catalin: In no way are we the same people. 🙂 We even fast sometimes when people stop us on the street or in restaurants and tell us they’re following us. We are still not very good at receiving likes and compliments. But we are working on it. Regarding how our posts influence us, we can say that the number of followers gave us more courage to create somewhat more serious content with an educational tone, such as the “Back of House” or “Understood HoReCa” series. We are very happy that we now have the opportunity to reach a larger audience with the messages we want to convey.
What strategies do you have to increase your visibility online?
Alexandra & Catalin: Although we are both people who work in digital marketing, we have never sat down to put down a concrete online strategy. Things went naturally because through the prism of the profession it comes naturally to us. However, it’s something we’ve been aiming for since the beginning of the year. Let’s post constantly. We wish we had more time to pencil and stick to a posting schedule, but the truth is, right now we post when we can shoot, write, edit, and so on. We have multiple roles – content creators, but also full-time corporate and toddler parents, which takes up quite a bit of our time. We hope to be able to organize ourselves a little better in the near future and shoot new series that we have on the cards since the beginning of the year.
Most popular posts
Alexandra & Catalin: Certainly the episode of “București în Farfurie” in which I invited Simion Bogdan Mihai. And no wonder. It’s one of the longest episodes, but it has surpassed 1 million views on TikTok. We are honored by his presence in this episode and very proud of the material. Even we have seen it at least 20 times.
hearings
Alexandra & Catalin: On Instagram are the people we meet most often in real life. People between the ages of 25 and 44, very passionate about food, but also about travel. They are the ones who write down our recommendations and go to the relevant places, then write to thank us. And it’s a very nice feeling. TikTok’s algorithm is slightly different and often pushes videos to too many people who don’t necessarily understand what we’re up to with this project and who don’t even follow, just stop by to give their opinion. It’s the platform that gives us the most trouble when it comes to moderated comments. 🙂 But even on TikTok there is a beautiful audience that is growing day by day. We started YouTube at one point, but we didn’t stick with it. But maybe one day…
The most important changes in social media platforms
Alexandra & Catalin: Social media is constantly changing, but the biggest one is definitely the shift in focus from images and text to video for the most part. Which we don’t mind at all. Alexandra has always been passionate about video creation, so this only gives us more opportunities to play the way we want. What we don’t like about social media platforms is that they change the algorithm every time you figure out what to do to maximize reach. Overall, the fact that you’re never really in control of how your content reaches (or doesn’t) reach your audience is a bit of a bummer.
What channels do you follow on social media?
Alexandra & Catalin: What we don’t like, we don’t watch. What we advise everyone else. If you don’t like it, just skip it. But there are a lot of accounts we like, and as you’d expect, most of them involve food or drink. If we were to give a few examples – Gastronomy Globetrotters, Dan Has the Munchies, Amuse Bouche, Hayatteria, Prăjiturela and the list goes on. We are always keeping an eye on the accounts of restaurants and many chefs, baristas, bartenders or restaurant owners. That’s where the best content is for us.
The lessons of years of online presence
Alexandra & Catalin: We’re the kind of people who tend to be self-deprecating and harsh most of the time, and the fact that our Trips and Plates posts ended up being of real use to so many people gave us a little courage to believe that what we do, we do well. We learned to trust ourselves more. And I learned something else. Let’s stop reading negative comments. Of course, where there is room to argue, we argue with pleasure, but lately we skip everything that means malice and gratuitous insults.
Advertising
Alexandra & Catalin: We have collaborated with several brands so far. Our rules are quite simple, and those who have approached us so far already know them. 1. We never do paid restaurant reviews. It’s true that sometimes we accept invitations from places we believe in and that we want to introduce to our audience. This is our way of keeping our freedom in the recommendations we make. People who follow us can be 100% sure that on our pages they will only see places that we recommend because we really like them. 2. We engage in campaigns only if we like the product and only if we are given the freedom to adapt the campaign message to our type of content.
Travels and Plates on
Alexandra & Catalin: We really want to launch the new series we told you about a little above, resume the newsletter at least once every two weeks, resume writing on the blog and more. There are a lot of ideas on the sheet, for all the existing channels, but it will take some time to arrive at the formula we want. Keep our fingers crossed.
Source: www.iqads.ro
