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The Lesson from Linda Ikeji On Building with Authenticity

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Linda Ikeji is peerless in understanding how social media and blogging work. I do not read her works because the focus is not my interests. Yet, I wanted to know why she was successful. Most Nigerian companies put Linda Ikeji on their tags to get traffic. I spent time and saw an interview where she explained her minor secrets. One key point is: “To succeed in blogging, you must reveal your identity.”.

This observation looks simple until you put it in perspective. When she started blogging more than a decade ago, most people blogged with pseudonyms or simply ‘editors’: Linda used her real name, and went ahead to name the blog after herself. She brought authenticity and connected with people, as they knew who was writing.

Simply, the greatest innovation form Linda Ikeji was not the content, but REVEALING herself and going bold to name it after herself in a world where everything was hidden. She was ahead of her time. Recall… many years ago, CVs or resumes were like classified assets. But when LinkedIn came, that veil was taken off.

LinkedIn normalized that secret asset to be visible to other employers as the construct of one-company-worker was broken. So, we all revolted, and went via LinkedIn to tell other employers that we’re here: come and get us as we’re not sure this current one can keep the agreement till retirement.

How do you do digital marketing? You got authenticity on that brand?

Improving the Performance of Your Digital Marketing

Build Your Webinality And Unlock Value

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In this digital age, supply is largely unbounded and distribution channels are unconstrained. As I have noted, winning the business game would be anchored on controlling demand since it would be hopeless to try to control supply. Yes, to have any chance, digitally, you need to have a separation.

Separation means you need to be unique and be you. Simply, in the sea of players, you must be distinguishable and be known for something. If you can accomplish that, the world will reward you.

But today, the game has shifted from control of supply to control of demand for web-anchored consumer firms. And only companies with capabilities to control demand are going to win big. As shown in the table below, most of the greatest internet companies are simply controlling demand and that means controlling how supplies reach users and consumers.

You cannot be the next Linda Ikeji because she has controlled that world. You need to find yours. If you do, the society would reward, not just in writing but other areas of life. You need to improve your webinality (webinality = web + personality) if you want to play a key role in this digital era.

A social media account is a business tool and companies have understood that speaking from the human element is more impactful. A post shared from the personal account of CEO of BBB will get more traction than one shared by BBB. With that understanding, BBB will put efforts to nurture the CEO social media accounts.

For you, as a small business owner or entrepreneur, you need to evolve out of your shells. If you think you will hide and run a good social media marketing, you will not succeed. All those nice contents on your company accounts are there but people do not pay attention, because no one knows the human elements behind them.

How To Improve Your Webinality

The following are some suggestions on how to build a professional online persona. It is establishing your web personality (webinality) to explain that person you are.

Presence: Open at least one social media or blog account.

Specialize:  Define an area of interest and build around it. A five-minute online search should reveal what you represent. You need to differentiate yourself and showcase your core skills and unique capabilities to potential hiring managers.

Accuracy: Always remember that once that post goes online, you may not control who sees it. If you lie on your accomplishments, your classmate or co-worker is just an IP address away from challenging it. Make it accurate – always, otherwise, you will destroy your persona.

Comprehensive: While blog should be short, once in a while, develop comprehensive articles in your field and post them online. It could mean expanding a class project you worked on, adding more contents, and fully proving your expertise. Half-baked contents will not take you too far.

Judgment: What you post or share online defines who you are. Your profile defines you – values, interests and reliability. For employers, they want reliable team leaders and you must not offer less in your web personality.

Vertical Integration: Seek to connect with people ahead of you professionally while building a horizontally network.

Generosity: Share and exchange good ideas. Invite people to your network and be generous to promote good ideas from others. Write professional reviews on books, journals and articles. In no distant time, people will reward you.

Policy Matters: If you are working, ensure you adhere to policies on using the company’s name online. There is a threat that you could be a source of data leakage that can hurt competitiveness. Your profile must not be another portrait of your employer – you must be wise to separate both, where necessary.

Continuity:  Professional online branding is a continuous work-in-progress that requires constant tune-ups of networks, contents and profiles. It must be constantly nurtured.

All Together / Beyond LinkedIn

As we pursued separation, we wanted to create a brand, Tekedia. Though most contents are synced to LinkedIn, I made sure I was not just LinkedIn. To make that possible, my contents cannot just be on LinkedIn which is not easily searchable and discoverable.  If we had hosted all contents on LinkedIn, there would not be an identity.

But having them here provides an identity which drives that separation. It is that separation that most remember even beyond the contents. Riding on that separation, someone can build a business model on the contents. This is a hobby but that does not mean that it has to cost me money to support; at least, it has to be expense-neutral.

Yes, without this blog, we will not have Tekedia Mini-MBA and Tekedia Capital.

Those accused of Sylvester Oromoni Jr’s Murder have been exonerated.

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Recall that we reported that according to the autopsy report, it was medically certified that Junior died as a result of chemical intoxication hence corroborating the family’s allegation that their son was poisoned by his colleagues for his refusal to join their gang.

According to the first autopsy which was carried out by a consultant pathologist at the Central Hospital Warri, Clement Vhriterhire, the result revealed that Sylvester died of “acute lung injury due to chemical intoxication in a background of blunt force trauma.”

Subsequently, another autopsy was conducted by the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) and the result revealed that Junior died of Septicaemia, lobar pneumonia with acute pyelonephritis and pyomyositis of the right ankle.”

These autopsy reports have laid to rest the allegation of murder against the accused persons as it has exonerated them from the crime. The implication of the autopsy reports is that Junior wasn’t poisoned or beaten to death as alleged by the family and friends and even if he was beaten or poisoned by his colleagues, his death can not be linked to the above accusation.

In the Nigeria criminal justice system, for the offense of murder to be successfully  established against the accused, the prosecution must satisfy these three conditions; first establish that there is death ie, the victim died, secondly the victim died from the actions and inactions of the accused ie, the acts of the accused must be directly linked to be the cause or causative effect of the death of the victim and finally the victim must have the intention or knowledge that his actions or inactions will cause the death or grievous body harm to the victim or that the death or grievous body harm will be the forseable effect of the accused actions.

The prosecution was unable to establish that second condition which is linking the accused to the death of Junior, hence the reason the accused was exonerated and which brings the murder case of Junior to a close and the accused exonerated for not been guilty of the death of the young lad.

This is definitely not how we want this case to turn out, we all want justice for the boy and his family compensated and the accused persons (the alleged bullies) to face the brash and harsh side of the law but “lex lex” (the law is the law) and we can’t say or do otherwise rather than obey it.

Moreover, when we talk about justice it should be known that justice is three-sided; justice for the aggrieved, justice for the society i.e. the government and also justice for the accused or the alleged offender. The accused or alleged offender, though accused to have committed a crime, still deserve justice and fair hearing so that there won’t be a wrongful conviction or an innocent man getting punished. As the saying goes, that the law would rather let ten guilty men go scot free than to convict one innocent man.

We will keep our ears to the ground to see what else will come of this case and we will always keep updating you and educating you on its legal implications and what the law says in that regard as your lawyer.

The Sorry State Of Nigeria’s Education Industry (II)

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…this piece continued from here.


It would interest you to note that most of the technical works presently done in China and her likes are carried out by the school children.

Nevertheless, barely few years ago, China was recognized as one of the third-world countries in the world alongside Nigeria and other developing nations. But today, China is among the world’s ruling class as regards science and technology.

In a similar spirit, there is an urgent need to reintroduce History subject, which has abruptly vanished, into the Nigeria’s school curriculum. In this regard, a law mandating every tertiary institution in Nigeria to offer History as General Studies ought to be enacted by both the National and states legislators.

It is pathetic that most of the young ones barely know their past or lineage, and such anomaly is solely as a result of the sudden disappearance of History as a subject from the nation’s education curriculum. It’s worthy to note that without knowing your past, you can never comprehend where you are headed.

More so, world-class libraries, laboratories, and research centres, should be establish in all the existing primary, secondary and tertiary institutions across the federation, which would go a long way to enhance both the reading culture and the practical method of teaching faced by the pupils and students.

The medical and engineering undergraduates ought to be meant to pass through befitting teaching hospitals and workshops, respectively, upon graduation, to enable them acquire the desired skills.

Also, well-equipped national engineering workshops are expected to be established at strategic localities in the country, so that, any graduating engineering student would be meant to pass through any of them. This shall serve as a prerequisite to the ongoing mandatory National Youth Service programme, just as it is observed by the graduating medical students.

In the same spirit, the ongoing Industrial Training and Teaching Practice schemes embarked upon by the students of the Nigeria’s Universities/Polytechnics and Colleges of Education, respectively, must be taken more seriously by the concerned authorities.

The officers assigned to supervise the students, or visit the various firms or schools where they claimed to be, should endeavour to pay regular sudden visits to the said establishments. This measure would help to eradicate any form of insincerity found among the trainees since most of them prefer to dodge the training, thereby enabling the institutions to actualize the primary aim of the Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES).

More so, the institutions involved must, on their part, endeavour to encourage their respective supervisors by providing sound vehicles and other logistics for the national consignment.

On the other hand, the tuition fees, or fees for municipal services, of all the public citadels of learning in Nigeria must be revisited by the appropriate authorities with a view to reducing the fees to their barest minimum, so that, it would be affordable by every parent or guardian. The private owns should equally be monitored.

Due to payment of high tuition fees, some of the less-privileged students often indulge in menial jobs to enable them assist their parents/guardians, or to supplement what they receive from the said benefactors.

By so doing, they would pay less attention to their studies, hence resort to indulging in examination malpractices, cultism, armed robbery and other kinds of criminality, which ends up affecting their academic statuses negatively. Most of them even become dropouts in the long run due to the financial challenges.

Most importantly, government ought to endeavour to employ qualified applicants to teach in all the public institutions regardless of their levels, including nursery, primary, secondary, as well as tertiary. Engaging quack teachers in the public schools has cost the nation a very grievous harm, hence cannot afford to pay more for the damages already incurred.

Thus, formidable and trustworthy agency must be set-up in earnest by the governments in this regard in order to put to stop nepotism, lack of due process, and all forms of corrupt practices affecting job recruitment.

The governing bodies of the various tertiary schools, must on their part, endeavour to fish out lecturers in their respective schools that are accustomed to such any social scandal as, but not limited to, blocking otherwise known as ‘sorting’, sexual molestation, sale of handouts, or what have you, that are currently on the rampage in these institutions.
These governing bodies ought to be meant to be answerable to the aforementioned proposed agency in respect of discharging their duties effectively and efficiently.

Above all, conducive or enabling environment are expected to be provided for the teachers at all levels. At the tertiary level, befitting offices should be allocated to both the academic and non-academic staff to enable them discharge their duties as required.

The teachers, especially the lecturers, ought to be meant to receive reasonable amount of money regarding their levels/cadre as salaries and they should be paid as and when due; and all their entitled incentives are supposed to be revisited from time to time for onward review if necessary.

No doubt, this measure would help to eradicate all manners of corrupt practices namely, admission racketeering, examination malpractices, sorting, just to mention but a few, taking place in the various schools as well as help to put a full stop to the incessant industrial actions invariably embarked upon by the teachers at all levels, particularly the tertiary ones.

The private sector ought to also be mandated to follow suit as regards revitalizing the nation’s education industry. In view of this, any private institution that is unable to live up to the expectations should be shut down indefinitely by the apt regulatory body, such as National Universities Commission (NUC), National Polytechnics Commission (NPC), Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB), or the state ministries of Education, as the case might be.

It’s needless to state that Nigeria has suffered tremendously in the area of education, thus it’s high time the governments crucified any monster behind the lingering mind-boggling ordeal.

Timing Your Business Mission: “timing … more important than execution, funding, team, and even the idea”

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In the startup world, we look for indicators which could be catalytic for the success of any idea. Besides the team, execution capability, and the playbook, if those indicators are not there, the startup will fail. As a result of that, most strategists think that timing the market is where you separate the boys/girls from the men/women.

And that timing means understanding that without smartphones in Nigeria, we would not have the fintech era as we do. It is having the awareness that without logistics in Okigwe that an ecommerce business will struggle there. So, the timing is essentially making sure that you are launching that business at a specific period when other factors are available to cushion its success.  Yes, VR/AR may be a great idea today in Nigeria but the timing is way off right now!

In this Tekedia piece, Samuel Ajiboyede posits: “A study conducted about reasons startups fail showed that timing accounts for 42 percent of team successes or failures in any business, higher than any other factor. The timing was seen to be more important than execution, funding, team, and even the idea. More than every other factor, timing is most critical to the success or failure of any startup.”

Pay attention to all the factors around that business.

Startup Success: Timing May Be More Important Than The Idea

Comment on LinkedIn Feed

Comment 1: How can Timing be more important than the very Idea it’s complementing? Isn’t that a fallacious thing to say? It’s like saying that a means is more important than its end. What good is a Cause that has no Effect or a Means to no End? These things work hand in hand. The means is equally as important as the end.

Likewise, the role Timing plays, as means to an end, in the success of an Idea or a Mission cannot be overemphasised. We live in a 4 dimensional universe in which Time is the 4th Dimension. It maybe abstract and seemingly unreal, but its impact can be Felt and Measured in every actionable event and that makes it very real.

It’s real in mathematics and every branch of science. It’s real for the meals cooking in the kitchen and the elements doing the cooking, it’s real for every musical note on any music sheet, it’s real for the atoms and molecules of our bodies that are constantly in motion, it’s real for our every programs, meetings, events and church schedules, it’s real for everyone and everything that happens in our day to affairs, so why wouldn’t it be real for Ideation and Innovation? You ignore Time at your own peril.

Response by a user: