The Future Awards Online Business MasterClass held today the 25th of July, 2012 at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.

As expected the plethora of facilitators came to add value to the participants.

The facilitators are as follows:

• Linda Ikeji, Editor, LindaIkeji.Blogspot.com,

• Cheta Nwanze, Chief Information Officer, Daily Times

• Noble Igwe, Publisher, 360Nobs.com

• Japheth Omojuwa, Editor, Omojuwa.com

• Ediong Umoh ­ Curator, NigeriaNewsDesk

• Chude Jideonwo, Editor-in-Chief, Y!/YNaija.com

Their various thoughts are as outlined below.

Chetah Nwanze: Getting Your Technology Right!

• Once you're consistent, eventually, the traffic will come

• The internet is going in terms of crowd sourcing

• Sure fire way of getting traffic up is using an email mailing list

• Which is the most important Social Media Platform to drive traffic to your site

• How many Nigerians are on Facebook...Twitter?

• At the end of the day, content is king

• Follow what your audience is saying and drive your content accordingly

• One of the things you always want to do when it comes to Search Engine Optimization is Keyword Analysis

• Keyword analysis is the first step of any Search Engine Optimization process

• There are two types of Keyword Analysis. On-site and offsite keyword analysis

• A bot net is basically a tool of control

• Who is the most important visitors to you site?...Google bots

• Gmail makes archiving easier

• 3.17 million Nigerians (people who log on from Nigeria) are on Facebook. 18 million are on Twitter. 4.5 million are active BB users

Edidiong Umoh: Location is Irrelevant

• When you begin any project online, expect some level of criticism! You need to be able to withstand that and carry on

• For Twitter, people need to get a summary of your content before proceeding to click on the link

• You need to find out what the people want and give it to them. You can't force your content on them

• When starting a social Media account, you need to define what you want and follow people who have it

Japheth Omojuwa: Building An Online Personality

• Influence is my currency; the more influence I have, the wealthier I am

• Social Media is not virtual

• If you can beat yourself every day, you are a success

• If you are not adding to what I came to do on that platform, you are a waste to me

• If you're obsessed about your business, there's no way you won't succeed

• Nobody is going to follow you if you are not making sense

• The bigger currency at the end of the day is the people not the numbers

• The bigger currency is the people...you cannot make money without people

• The personality cannot be denied, whether you like me or not

• It’s not what you know, it’s what you do with what you know that matters

Noble Igwe: Pulling audiences Online and Offline

• Is online traffic enough

• If you're the first to put up the pictures of an event, you'll get the highest traffic

• Speed to Market - if you publish the picture or story first, you'll always build traffic

• Make sure you always verify your news source while blogging

• To keep your traffic and audience, you need to come up with some sort of rule of conduct

• When you go to places and they ask for your address, put your BLOG address

• Building Online Traffic: Event Promotion, Fliers, Bumper sticker, Business Card, Live the brand

• Building Online Traffic...Strength, Topic, Speed to market, Push, Consistency

• Make sure every post has a good title

• Blog with content that comes to you as a strength

• Blogging...it's about being consistent

• Every single day, somebody sets up a blog

Chude Jideonwo: Standards Still Matter

• If you want credible brands to advertise on your blog, be credible as a blogger yourself

• Do not sacrifice standards that will make you sustainable on the long term. It’s for your own good

• Standards make you better

• Build credibility as a blogger even when it seems no one is paying attention

• Integrity is a business imperative

• The site where you're most likely to find the least errors today is @bellanaija

• It doesn't matter who you are, online, you are competing on the same platform

• The leading authority on blogging in Nigeria today is @lindaikeji

• Standards are set through people's mistakes and experiences

• Avoid grammatical errors! When in doubt, leave out!

• It's so easy to be intelligent these days...at least you have Google nearby...it's only a click away

• Impose some limitations on yourself

Linda Ikeji: It's Talent at the end of the day

• Everything you see on my blog is 100% me

• Be passion driven and not wealth driven

• If you start blogging because you want to make money, eventually you'll give up without making money

• Being good at what you do is very important

• When you are good what you do, people would advertise you. Adverts would come to you.

• You have to carve a niche for yourself...Don't try to be like Bella Naija, you can't

• There are so many entertainment blogs, but I'm number one

• Anonymous blogs don't sell

• If PUNCH has published it, why should I come on your blog to read it?

• Don't make your blog anonymous, let people know the person behind it, so they can trust you.

• Trust me, there's a lot of money online

• As a blogger you have to choose between your readers and the people you write about.

Enjoy and implement!!!

My name is Blossom of the blcompère brand. I am a soon to be published Author, a certified Blogger and an amazing Compère and most recently, a lousy Designer... as simple as A. B. C. D.

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