Branding as a Blogger: How to Cook a Frog

Blogging is a creative space a lot of people find hard to understand. The intricacies of blogging; what it entails, what you do and how you do what you do, has become something everyone wants to know. I’ve had someone say, ‘what is Tosin always doing in front of her laptop. Tosin, s’o ti n se Yahoo ni?’, meaning, ‘Tosin, are you into online fraud now?”. I laughed and shrugged off the question because I have gotten to that place where except someone is genuinely interested in what I do, I do not have the mental and emotional energy to sit and explain endlessly, the details of what I do. Why? Let’s just say some people just never understand.

However, in my transition from blogging as a hobby and blogging as a job, I have discovered the best answer for most of such questions. here it is: ‘I sit in front of my laptop every day, writing and advertising products and services for people, online. It’s similar to the adverts you see on TV, only that this is done on social media, such as Facebook or Twitter’. Will they understand this simple explanation? LOL That’s the best I can come up with, to be honest, but that’s not really what this post is about.

You see, it’s very easy to get lost in the blogosphere. There are a million and one fashion, lifestyle or food blogs. There are a lot of blogger associations. So, what stands you out? There comes a time in every blogger’s life where he/she sits and ruminates over what exactly they’re trying to achieve with their blogs, what results they’ve gotten and how to achieve set goals.

It’s very easy for anyone in the creative sphere (bloggers, photographers, artistes, entrepreneurs, writers, musicians, etc) to find themselves in the zone I call ‘Jack of all trades, Master of which one?’ You’d discover that in the myriad of things you can do as a creative, you can do many of them but which of them are you extremely good at? Striking the ‘Master of All’ Title is where we aspire to reach but what does it take to get there?

Be very abreast of new trends, tips and tricks used in the blogosphere. Take time out to find out the Social, Technological, Economical and Political changes in your field of choice. A quick story on how I started blogging (then, as a hobby), shall we?

In 2013, I was in the second semester of my first year in the university. It was our departmental week and a certain man was invited to speak to us. He was and still is a branding expert and his words that day spurred me to work towards leaving my mark on the sands of the internet. He painted the most graphic and most memorable tale in my mind. He was really, a compelling story-teller. He told the story of the proverbial frog who sat comfortably in a closed kettle. The kettle got heat up a little and the frog found a way to adapt. Little by little, the heat applied to the kettle kept increasing and the frog kept sitting down there, getting comfortable with each increasing degree of heat, till it got cooked. The frog got too comfortable with its current position till it became a Chinese dish!

That man, Kehinde Bademosi, The Founder of Orange Academy- a leading digital story teller and tutor didn’t stop there to put tribal marks on my mind. He went ahead to stare at us and said, ‘if any of you comes to me in search of a job, I’m not asking for your CV. the first thing I am doing is Googling your name’. Kehinde literally said that if he Googled a person’s name and he didn’t find anything productive/creative/innovative about him/her, he wasn’t hiring such a person.

I had always wanted a space to record my write-ups but that seminar switched on a light bulb right at the centre of my head. I went back to my hostel and created my first blog. I blogged at olaniyioluwatosin96.wordpress.com. (you can check it out, by the way). At a point, I got distracted. In order to have more views, I started to report news but then, passion over numbers. Since then, I have created and managed about 4/5 blogs, this inclusive. I stopped for a while and when I came back, I discovered the game had changed. Blogging was no longer just a hobby. It was now a full time job. So, I started to research and I haven’t stopped researching, ever since.

Consistently doing the right things and seeing results is GROWTH. Are you consistently researching on how to blog better, take better pictures, increase your views, working on ways to have better relationship with your business, how to use apps, etc? Consistency is very important in order to break ice in any field you choose but consistently doing old things will probably get you to only one place; behind every one else. You just might be a frog that’s already cooked!

In a nutshell, blogging has struggles. Struggles aside who to help you take your pictures, network issues and good laptop battery. There are real life mental and emotional struggles such as constant self-encouragement, drive to be better , connecting with your audience (do they really feel positively influenced by you are do they feel at home with you?) and the most dreaded, depression.

Nevertheless, being yourself and working your ass off to be better at what you do cannot be overemphasised. It’s very easy to be a copycat but for how long will you keep being a cinema dub? I’ll leave you here…

Word for the Day

‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,

a holy nation, a people for his own possession,

that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you

out of darkness into his marvelous light’.

Watch Kehinde Bademosi talking about the frog HERE as related to branding

Till my next post,
Remember,
Always reflect God’s perfection xx.