When it comes to new media, you need to be flexible and go with the flow. A lot of it (new media) is learning what can catch and hold the attention of your audience and trying new things regularly to keep catching the interest of your ever growing audience.

Most of it is having the willingness to change the way you communicate with your audience so that you don’t lose your relevance. It is always a willingness to change the way you have always done things (at least for branding online) and be willing to walk into your future.

A ship is safe in harbour but that is not what ships are for – William G.T. Shedd

Don’t stay in your comfort. Be willing to try new things consistently to ensure that you grow and keep growing.

Having a social media platform that works is not having too much time on your hands that you cannot use for anything else. It is the future! It is the vehicle for influence and decision making.

It is having a digital business card.

When you have a social media platform that just lies there that and doesn’t share anything, impact the world around you or touch anyone’s life in anyway, it might as well be dead.

Let me tell you a story:

Damilola Elebe, was simply an OAP with Beat FM (with a salary at the end of the month that could satisfy some young people her age) but she was blessed with dreams of becoming a film writer, a book writer, anything writing until she got on social media and then met up with other young people who were already writing scripts for Multi Choice Nigeria. All of this happened in about two years and season 3 of her YouTube sitcom, Skinny Girl in Transit (It can be found on the internet if you use the the hashtag #SGIT to follow the conversation) will be released in a couple of weeks on Ndani TV.

She has so many opportunities and has had so many dreams realized because social media. Today she is still an OAP, a writer, a film maker and she is making important contributions to her community, much more than she was making as a fantastic OAP.

Dami Elebe is simply a friend on Twitter. We follow each other. You might say, that’s just social media but she has opened the door to so many opportunities for me, you have to call her a friend indeed.

Dami is just one person who has used social media for good. There are so many of them.

There’s Subomi Plumptre who creates solutions for brands and people. There’s Esther Ijewere who trains widows in skills acquisition programs, pays for school fees, feeds multiple families etc. There’s many groups where you can get doctors, lawyers, activists, teachers, trainers, everyone is using social media for good.

What the companies call Corporate Social Responsibility is being carried out by individuals and companies are partnering with them to achieve social good, faster than it used to be done in the days of Frank Olize. Frank Olize and Abike Dabiri were trail blazers in their era. But if they were just a hundred of them, there are thousands and ten thousands of new media professionals.

Omojuwa and a bunch of other entertainers raise millions in 3 days or more for individuals who need urgent medical care. While doing this they won the hearts of Nigerians and sold more albums or simply moved their ministry to the permanent site because of a lot of good will. They did a lot of good and benefitted a lot of Nigerians that might otherwise have been powerless.

They gave a voice to the powerless. If that is not the description of the power of media, I don’t know what is.

Social media has opened the door to communication louder than any tool ever has and you can seat in your couch wishing it away or you can jump on the train and leverage on the opportunities therein and there are many.

You need to brand yourself and keep branding. You must learn about branding and keep learning. Since strategies change daily, you must be learning on the go!

I can reel off the facts but money speaks louder for many people. So let me use Linda’s example.

Linda Ikeji’s mansion in Banana Island made everyone seat up. She is a blogger. The world has sat up long before then. See (CNN, FT, WSJ, BBC et. al.)

Sundar Pichai, the owner of Google came to Nigeria and he didn’t visit the government houses but he visited the online community. Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook visited Nigeria and the same thing happened.

This just lets us know a little too late that the age has changed again. The potential in technology is huge and instead of fighting it, we need to embrace it and learn, learn, learn, it is the future.

I was honoured to be part of blogville almost ten years ago when no one knew it existed and Mark Zuckerberg and Sindar Pichai were still on their way to becoming billionaires.

In case you are wondering who Sisi Yemmie is, she is the face on the Youtube video in Lagos, at the airports, at the places of important in Nigeria. How did she get there?

By simply vlogging regularly. She is a food vlogger and blogger who share her life and food experiences with her over 80K people on Youtube. She was a blogger first. She makes unimaginable income from blogging/vlogging.

She is not an unserious person.

I bet many people thought Mark Zuckerberg was an unserious person until Facebook became larger than the largest continent in membership. Once the money started rolling in, everyone became taking him seriously.

Nigeria might not be taking Sisi Yemmie seriously but Youtube is. Learn more about growing your personal brand from Sisi Yemmie.

Woli Arole was a guest on one of her blogs about growing your brand. Woli is really funny. He is not unserious. His instagram handle says that he is an MC, actor and an international stand up comedian. He started building his brand two years ago.

Just to prove it, He has 449.5K followers on instagram, he travels to many countries in the abroad to do shows. The money follows him. That’s the power of branding. The potential in technology is immense, we must study and learn what we need to take advantage of it.

I hope you enjoy this video because you can learn a lot about new media and how you can do it different from the way it has always been done.

NEW WORDS

Blogville: A place on the internet where people, young intellectual college undergraduates or college graduates used to journal their hopes and dreams and share and interact with like minded people from everywhere in the world

I put the names of some of the people I mention in links. So if you click on them, you can find them on Wikipedia. If I didn’t put the link, just type in the names on Google, put a comma and type wikipedia and you can read summaries of their personalities and achievements on Wikipedia.

Disclaimer: If I didn’t mention you and you are doing great things on social media, don’t hate, participate. Email me at [email protected] and let’s share what good and innovation is happening on social media.

[“Source-businessdayonline”]