Who Will Be the Next Linda Ikeji?
That’s the money question or is it?
Bloggers in Nigeria tend to aspire for their blogs to be the next Linda Ikeji, the next Bella Naija, the next spectacular already existing blog.
So they write like them, set up their blogs like them, even approve comments like them.
So what we have at the end of the day are a flurry of Linda Ikeji and Bella Naija replica blogs floating around the Internet sharing the same news via the same RSS feeds, the latest gist via copy, copy, copy and paste, the same pictures and even the same grammatical errors. Nothing new except the web address.
The game plan to success in their minds is to replicate.
Replicate, replicate, replicate with the belief that if they replicate enough success will magically appear.
But success does not come from replicating it comes from creating…creating news that is not seen anywhere else, aggregating content that no one else is carrying…thinking differently. That’s what made the other blogs successful in the first place, they did something that no one else was doing at the time and they did it consistently and they did it different. Being different is what is important.
But how different?
You don’t need to be completely different, you can steal ideas from blogs all over the world. Add a slight spin to it and make it your own like this David Moyes spin and the Abacha spin. An even more current example ….
People have been talking about the missing 234 girls in Borno, but no single original pictures of the girls or even their names has been in circulation … that is a glaring opportunity for the daring blogger that is thinking differently to create original content and change the system. All they need to do is add a slight spin… show the girls names … find their pictures …. just be a bit different and all of a sudden the story takes a completely different direction.
Be different consistently enough and soon the question is no longer “who will be the next Linda Ikeji or the next Bella Naija” but rather “who will be the next YOU-that-is-reading-this-article-right-now!”
Be different, write different and for the love of pure-water… stick to it!
Okechukwu Ofili is an author, speaker, and blogger and a The Trent Elite Voice. Follow him on twitter, Facebook or subscribe to his blog for more honest talk and as @ofilispeaks on instagram for more sketches! To bring Ofili to your school or organization as a speaker simply go here. His third book How Intelligence Kills was published in December 2013, order it at https://bit.ly/intelligencekills.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
