Tope Olofin: Going from hero to zero with Social Media (Y! Superblogger)

by Tope Olofin

social-media-plan1

I say it is time to channel all that time on Social media to something productive. Put all the Social Media hobbies to good use. Give out value to the Nigerian market and it will definitely reward you.

Hey people, this African child wishes you a great new week ahead. So this past week, I was pretty silent about what is going on around me. I had my very first public speech made….well it is the first outside my own community. I must say it was fun to get out from behind my computer and to interact with people I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with. The good news is that I came back in one piece.

I remember promising on twitter that I was going to share the speech on here. I will do that in a minute, but before I go on, let’s dwell on some life issues. It is called the past. A friend told me that I am living in the past and because of that I will fail to see the good things happening around me. While there is a strong point there, I wonder what the solution is for getting out of that. For this week, I guess my mantra will be this “Tope you are not allowed to use your past to play ludo with your future”. Not bad shey?

Okay back to serious issues which involves creating my great future, here is my speech I gave last week. I hope to give you more information on stuff I learnt while was in San Diego, but until then read how to go “from zero to hero with social media

Psssst, it is a lengthy one, let’s see who can keep awake till the end of the topic….I am giving away 4 N1000 to the first 4 commenters who can constructively tell me the lesson behind my speech.

 

FROM ZERO TO HERO WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

Japheth Omojuwa’s iPad was stolen during one of his trips while on board one of Arik Air’s domestic flights. He reported the issue to the appropriate authorities but they were unable to recover his prized device.

This resulted in a breakdown of agreement between the two parties, with Omojuwa claiming Arik was high-handed and careless while Arik maintained that the matter be settled as quietly as possible.

He, along with 26 others, was banned from flying on Arik Air aircraft. Omojuwa took to twitter and of course the airline was mentioned for all the wrong reasons, giving the brand a huge dent, because of the Negative Sentiments that swept through the Social media space.

It was a social media showdown, commonly referred to as the Omojuwa effect.

You should have guessed by now that his iPad was eventually replaced by Arik.

Today, the use of the internet is not the way it was 10 /15 years ago. About a quarter of the world’s 6 billion people now access the Internet daily.

Many researchers of trends and statistics attribute the rapid exponential growth in internet usage to the sudden widespread availability and easy acquisition of internet providers. In Africa, we’ll have to give it to the smartphones.

According to the IT and TELECOMM DIGEST “The latest Internet world’s stats figures on connectivity rate in Africa show that Nigeria tops Africa at 45 million internet users, while Egypt, Morocco and Kenya, respectively, follow the West African nation with 21.7 million, 15.7million and 10.6 million people being connected.

South Africa ranks 5th with 6.8 million

And with all this came Social media.

Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and the list go on has revolutionized the way we interact with one another. Some things remain constant though and that is, behind every social media ID is a human being (usually anyway).

In spite of Nigeria’s figure which is a huge number, how many are using these tools to create value? How many of us are using these tools to move ourselves and passions forward?

I’ll have you know that while some of us are playing around with these tools, others are using it to generate income and harness the creativity that abounds in the Nigerian Market. A good example is the controversial actress, Tonto Dikeh, who released her singles “Hi” and “It’s Ova” in October 2012 and she hit five million downloads in ten hours – all she did was tweet about it.

Just think about this for a second, a little over 6 years ago, did you know these brands?

Omojuwa.com

Linda Ikeji

Jumia

Konga

Deal Dey

Techcabal

All of them used Social Media to creatively build their Nigerian brands, at a global level. They are Social Media Heroes.

The internet and more especially social media, has made the world a level playing field. It doesn’t matter what location of the world you are in, you can harness the power of Social Media and become a success story.

Kalley Cuoco (Penny in Big Bang Theory) is a self-admitted commercial addict. Sometime ago she spoke about how she saw a commercial (an ad) for a product she thought was ridiculous and she tweeted about it.

Within minutes she lost thousands of followers, and was contacted by the brand she’d slighted unintentionally. At the time she didn’t even realized how much influence she had with people whose names she did not know. People she probably will never meet.

Shortly after releasing his album, Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay Z took to twitter to engage his fans, answering their questions on a variety of topics. One of the people he responded to was a Nigerian girl who saw her followers grow astronomically because Jay Z answered a tweet from her.

That’s the power of social media!

Did you know that the Average time on a website is less than 30 seconds, but studies have shown that the average time spent on Facebook is about 15minutes?

I say it is time to channel all that time on Social media to something productive. Put all the Social Media hobbies to good use. Give out value to the Nigerian market and it will definitely reward you.

So what if you are not as controversial as Tonto or you can’t sell stuff like Jumia or Konga does, how about simply teaching the next person how to grow a twitter following from 0 to 500 followers in one week?

Oprah Winfrey had a TV show of about 30million viewers offline, by the time she jumped on the internet wagon, she had only 200,000 viewers.

Why? Because it is not her terrain. Yet you see some little kids with millions of YouTube views. How much do you think she will be willingly to pay from a well informed source to grow her followership online?

How much are you willing to pay for what you don’t know?

My friends, that’s the concept behind consulting.

According to Forbes, consulting is a $100 billion per year industry

And what is consulting? It is when a person provides professional or expert advice on any subject to another person.

I like to say, it is simply knowing more than your client on the subject matter.

Many people believe an impeccable degree is crucial to become a consultant and the same myth is applied in Social Media consulting.

Social Media consulting does not require credentials or degrees; all you need is to help someone get the results they are looking for faster, easier and more efficiently, than they can do it for themselves.

That’s all the credentials you are ever going to need.

A lot of people don’t know that they know or they tend to overestimate the technical know-how of everybody else.

Many Nigerians have skills they’ve picked up during their playtime on these social media platforms, which if channeled well, can have a significant impact on the Nigerian Economy not to mention their bank accounts.

Imagine getting paid for giving sound advice on how to set up a Facebook fan page or how to utilize the power of Twitter for customer feedback? Or how to seize the opportunity behind the upcoming image sensation, Instagram and the goldmine called YouTube….the possibilities are endless.

How about just using these platforms to move you and your passions forward?

Don’t say it can’t be done. Many people, both young and old all over the world are making it happen. Become a pioneer.

Nigeria is too small, Africa needs you.

Ermmm before you go, here are a couple of pictures I took at the event.

pixo5

pixo3

pixo1

 

————————-

Tope Olofin loves to rant. She is a boisterous and hilarious English graduate from the University of Lagos. She believes life’s experiences are priceless and the best way to capture it is by writing. She blogs atwww.toperants.com and tweets @toperants

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

 

 

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail