Nigeria Bloggers Conference

Yesterday marked a memorable day for the online industry in Nigeria. Notable online writers or bloggers as they are popularly called from all parts of Nigeria came together at Elomaz Hotel, Maryland, Lagos to spark off a new movement in the online industry while the World Bloggers Conference was going on in Las Vegas, USA. I can hear someone ask “What exactly is blogging?” and to that I answer,

“If you are reading this now, you are reading my blog. If you still don’t understand, please indicate as a comment and I’ll get back to you”.

“Who were the bloggers represented at the conference?”

“Popular and successful bloggers like Deolu Akinyemi, Gbenga Sesan, Olumide Alabi and others”.

The conference started on a very good note with Ogho emore (www.emoreogho.com) kicking off the proceedings with a welcome message and the national prayer. Thereafter, Deolu Akinyemi introduced the agenda of the conference and the meeting swung into full beat. Already, there were seated several participants from different parts of the country in the Hall.

Deolu Akinyemi spoke on how the internet community in Nigeria though large and growing steadily, was not reckoned with internationally. In fact, he said “Nigeria is stated to have only over 9,000 registered personal web domains hosted online”. In response to this, Gbenga Sesan, Olumide Alabi and a few other people disagreed stating that most websites owned by Nigerians are paid for and opened by friends or affiliates in Malaysia, Singapore, USA, UK, Canada or Australia. As a result of this, a large percentage of Nigerian websites are not accounted for on the web as being Nigerian.

Deolu further spoke on how bloggers in Nigeria should begin to look as blogging as a more powerful tool than just writing for the fun of it.

“There are personal blogs that are more popular than CNN, do you know?” He asked.

Gbenga chipped in “CNN when they first did a review on blogging made a mockery of it and said it won’t go far. Today, the most active part of the CNN website is the blogs.”

Blogging literally swayed the view of voters in the past 2 elections in the USA. Someone said “If you want to know the undiluted truth, look it up in a blog”. Did he mean that all people wrote in their blogs was the absolute truth? No. He just was saying that if one was going to tell any truth at all, he’d probably do it more likely on his blog where he has no restrictions and no particular obligations to anybody but himself.

Of course, many bloggers around the world also make regular income from blogging. In the US, about 40 million registered personal domains exist. About 12 million of them are adults. The Nigerian online literates might not match that of America or the UK currently but millions of Nigerians, especially youths are internet literate, meaning that there’s no reason why Nigeria shouldn’t boast of at least 1 million personal registered blogs.

It used to be said that Nigerians don’t have a reading culture bla bla bla……I think that is changing big time because the more exposure you get to the internet, the more knowledgeable you can become. To confirm it, at the bloggers conference were present a few people who didn’t have blogs at all but were addicted readers of other people’s blogs. The only reason they were present at the conference was to seize an opportunity to meet some of the authors of the blogs they read consistently.

Gbenga Sesan tried to answer the question – What is Blogging? During introductions, some participants had brought up the fact that they didn’t know what blogging was all about and where at the conference to learn. Gbenga’s session served them well as he broke down as much as he could the ideology behind blogging. For him, he said he decided to start blogging when he discovered that he could influence and control what would be said about him when he left this world (died) because his blog would be alive to furnish sympathizers with information about what he stood for forever.

Olumide Alabi treated the topic – Why you should own your own website. Among many reasons, he stated that it makes you unique (it sets you apart), it increases your control (most blog hosts are restrictive to what they allow to be done with your blog). It also increases your findability.

Gbenga Ajijotan came up to educate the participants on how to make money while blogging beyond Google Adsense. He practically opened my eyes to the possibilities of earning steadily from my blog. Of course, he didn’t forget to state the most important property your blog must possess – Traffic. How to drive traffic to your blog is another topical issue for yet another post.

After Gbenga’s session, a panel constituting Deolu Akinyemi, Anu Oluwadare, Gbenga Sesan and Olumide Alabi (luminous) was convened and they answered as best as they could questions fired at them from the audience on website hosting, blogging and other related matters.

Anu Oluwadare explained to the audience the importance of RSS feeds. How bloggers and/or blog readers can maximize the use of them. RSS feeds makes it easier for people to find your blog and makes it easier for you to read your favourite authors’ blogs.

All in all, the bloggers conference was maximum fun and an epoc making event. This is the beginning of an online revolution in Nigeria. Those who take position in Nigerian blogosphere may just rule the country in a few years to come. If people are reading you, then,  they probably will listen to you.

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