On Wednesday July 25, 2012, The Future Awards held the Online Business Master Class for bloggers and New Media entrepreneurs. The training which held at the Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, brought together various bloggers, copy editors, IT enthusiasts, writers, social media users and some of Nigeria’s most influential online personalities.
“We are impressed with the training which everyone can see has been a huge success. We are grateful to our facilitators for obliging us their time and to participants for coming. The level of impact has been simply amazing,” said Chude Jideonwo, Executive Director of The Future Project.
The training began with the Chief Information Officer of Daily Times, Mr Cheta Nwanze, presentation: ‘Getting your Technology Right.’ He outlined various tips for generating traffic such as consistency, building content with the intended audience in mind and maintaining an active social media account with updates, directing users to the site.
Nigeria’s super blogger, Linda Ikeji stayed true to her girl-next-door persona. She traced her history in blogging and revealed the many challenges she had to overcome to become the established blogger that she is. She maintained that her consistency over the years is what gave her the edge. She spoke about her passion for blogging, the time and sacrifices she made to achieve the success that she has.
“When it comes to making money from blogging, not many people can make money from blogging,” Ikeji said. “But believe me, there is money to be made.”
Mr. Chude Jideonwo, Editor-in-Chief of YNaija.com and Executive Director of The Future Project speaking on the topic: ‘Standards Still Matter’ emphasized the need to adopt a high standard of practice in online communications. He explained that because the new media is still evolving, the standards for the platform are still being formed. He noted that even established and well respected traditional media such as CNN make embarrassing blunders. Therefore, it should be understood when new media practioners also make occasional mistakes.
Jideonwo concluded by revealing some success nuggets: good grammar, accuracy, humility in accepting mistakes, correction, creativity, consistency, self-imposed limitation when in doubt of news authenticity, and observance of extant copyright laws.
Edidong Umoh, founder of Nigeria’s fastest breaking news service, @NigeriaNewsDesk, spoke on the topic: ‘Location is Irrelevant.’ He engaged the audience in a hands-on-training as he showed participants how to use Google Reader to monitor internet content, while admonishing them to get ready for criticism as the launch online businesses.
Japheth Omojuwa, who spoke on ‘How to Build an Online Personality,’ explained that his online influence is proportional to the increase in his financial status. He urged the participants to strategize and take time to build a consistent online brand and stick to it; he also clearly stated that one criteria for success is to focus on outdoing one’s self.
Founder of 360Nobs, Noble Igwe, was all business when he spoke about pulling audiences online and offline. He started by preparing the participants’ minds that there is no guaranteed way to achieve success in blogging. He went on to list some key attributes which aspiring bloggers must imbibe to succeed such as: strength, topic, speed to market, push, and consistency.
The event was streamed live on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #TFAMasterClass. It trended while the event was on.
“It gave us great pleasure to trend for hours on twitter however we were more pleased that people who couldn’t be at the training for one reason or the other could still benefit,” Chude Jideonwo said.
The Future Awards Season 7 takes place on August 26, 2o12 with a reception for the nominees taking place first on August 4, 2012.
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