Been to WordCamp Kenya a day now, and so far things are going right. The experience, the networking, the learning. This is a first of its kind event in Kenya, and East Africa, and I must say the event was really well timed, good location and all. Our speakers are also well versed in their coverage areas as personally I have picked up lots of information bits that will assist me plan my strategy for my future as a blogger/wordpress user.
Several elements I picked here are:
Blog your passion
Yeah, the easiest way to blog is to blog your passion. It does give the blogger leverage in that ideas flow, not much energy is spent on research as opposed to a topic you are not versed in. Passion makes you understand your area inorder to tell your audience.
Engage your target audience
Talk to them, let them feel like its a one on one with them. When you get an attatchment to a few of them, they will feel good sharing your work to others, and thats like recommending you. You know how recommendations work, word of mouth, word of tweet. 🙂
Plan your blogging just like you would do a business
Two of the speakers, Moses Kemibaro and Njeri Rionge articulated this very well, Njeri told us that we need to plan our blogging just like one would do a marketing plan, who are your audience, how will you reach them, is it the numbers versus conversion. By conversion I mean, say you are selling a solution to your audience, you would better have targeted audience 2000 people access your content and 500 of them actually purchase your product, as opposed to an untargeted audience of a million and you dont get a hundred of them.You should know the people you wanna reach and research how best to do this. Taking time to plan gets you right on track early and saves you time roaming in the desert of unplanned work for 40 years like the Israelites of those times.
Be the professional
Take things seriously. Let you be known in your niche, let it flow from your blog to your tweets, own it. You will find even paid consultations going your way just because you are the person who talks with authority in that niche. Moses Kemibaro does that all the time, and you say blogging doesnt pay?
And Many others
And yes, wordpress is not just a blogging platform, it can do virtually anything you would expect of a website, that is dependent on the skill of the developer.
Keep refreshing, am adding images of the event below here(Having charged batteries in that place was a previledge).
