JUJU v ANALYSIS: ZMOT Part 3

A World Cup Example featuring Ghana vs USA

You might be wondering, what could possibly be the correlation between the Zero Moment Of Truth, analysis and black magic (i.e. Juju)?

Actually there's none. I just wanted to get the attention of a certain kind of audience.
But since you are here, please do stay with me for a minute or two ok?

So, If you have NEVER met or heard of anyone who uses black-magic (or juju), then you've probably spent most of your life living outside of Africa. I mean seriously, practically everyone I know either knows someone who has used juju before, or they have some story of some neighbor or the other.

So my question here is,"why do people use it?" or, "why do they trust enough to try it?"....Do they ever actually think that last part through?

This article should challenge you to think of ZMOT strategy as a marketing strategy that is built on analytical data. Not on hearsay or on old-wives fables.

If you have read my previous articles then you probably already know what the (ZMOT) Zero Moment Of Truth is. But if you haven’t, you may find some definitions here and here.

But before we proceed, I must quickly point out that the question of whether or not I believe in juju is irrelevant to this article.
So please don't ask me if I do. Okay? Depending on who you are, you will not like my response. :)

What is important is that many people in my country and other parts of Africa (West, East, Central, South, and probably North as well) believe in it.

They believe it exists, they believe it works, and some of them would actually pay good money for it to be used for their benefit.
That is the issue!

Some claim it works to protect themselves from harm or against supernatural attacks from their enemies. Others believe it could be to get someone to fall in love with them (funny, right?). And of-course, sometimes some folks use it to get promotion at the office. And funny enough, sometimes even to try to win elections. Imagine that!

So what has all of this got to do with Google’s principle of the Zero Moment Of Truth?

Well....Nothing, directly.

But a critical view of this behavior could help you with building the kind of mindset that is required for successful marketing in this new digital age.

Let's look at a funny example:

USA vs GHANA World Cup 2014  

So here's a funny but true example of what I am saying:

Last night, I was watching the USA vs Ghana (2014) world cup game with my neighbor, Patrick.

We were both commenting on how well the Ghanaians were playing, and recognizing how much better they were than our own Nigerian team earlier. This was despite the fact that the USA were leading by 1-0.

Now, at some point the game, the camera suddenly showed a Ghanaian fan that was unmistakably dressed like a "baba-alawo" (or witch doctor - or juju man).
And I must confess he looked a little scary as the close-up shot captured him in slow-motion as he whipped his hair around like Willow Smith.
Hahaha. Apologies to that sweet little girl. 

He actually looked a bit scary while he was animated, and in slow motion. Hahaha!

Anyway, within the next minute, Ghana got a goal to level the scores. And it was a beautifully worked goal indeed.
So Patrick immediately remarked, "what if it was their juju man that did it?". 

Really!? :(

And while Patrick wasn't such a superstitious person, I guess his comment was because he made some kind of correlation in the fact that the goal had been eluding the Ghanaians all along, until that sudden recognition of the witch-doctor. 

And me, being a man that sincerely supports "fair-play" when it comes to logic and reasoning, I was willing to indulge him for a minute. 
And so I asked, 
"Did he travel to Brazil to use his spiritual juju powers to get a draw for his country, or a win?"


"Anyway, if they were to show him again before the match ends, and within a minute of that showing, Ghana were to get another goal to win the match, then maybe I will take what you said seriously, and I would probably start to do some serious research into juju in football". 
I mean, that's fair enough isn't it?

ANALYZE EVERYTHING

Newsflash: USA eventually scored another goal just before the end of that match, and that ultimately knocked out both Ghana and their juju man out of the World Cup.

But it is important to note that I don't just feel this way about witch-doctors alone:
I think true lovers of football should also not shy away from challenging the "expert analyses" of the many soccer pundits on tv or cable. Because let's face it, these days it is so easy to get on tv and start talking "football analysis" without actually using any real analysis to arrive at your postulations. Neither do the pundits demonstrate true knowledge of consistent patterns in their readings of the game.
(meanwhile, see how I combine Web Analysis with my Football game reading skills)

So in my marketing business, I tell my clients it is important to think about traditional television and magazine advertising this way as well. I tell them to challenge the claims and not just go ahead to buy a billboard advert simply because that's what others do when they've made a certain amount of money.

In fact, it is my nature to challenge everything.

Zoom in on the image below, you'll find some interesting results from a survey that was conducted in the Automotive industry where respondents were asked what had the most impact on their purchase decisions. Traditional stimulus influences are on the left in blue. ZMOT behavior is in red. But also recognize that two options with the green arrows represent stimulus that are digital (online) based, even though they are not ZMOT-inspired consumer behavior. 
(by the way, Stimulus & traditional advertising refers to the kind of promotions that prevailed before the digital age)

I have a theory:

You should not continue to pay for something, where the only way that you can know for sure it works is because its vendor told you so. Juju men say their powers work, and people pay for them. Traditional advertising works to a degree, but how do we really know that degree in this day and age, where you have so many more inventions jostling for our attention.

I am not saying that traditional advertising does not work anymore, or that it is like juju. No, that's not what I am saying entirely. Yet you must agree that television, magazines, radio and even billboards don't have anything close to the kind of influence that they once used to have over our lives.

This is why analysis is so important to me.
And analysis must always take context into consideration. I bet even my friends in my Community, True Football Analysts, are tired of hearing me say this.

So ultimately,

ZMOT mindedness or strategy is NOT about using juju-tactics or blind-trust to gain success for your business, whatever it is. It is about being armed with all the right capabilities for success in this ever present digital age. It is about gathering information and previously unattainable clues into how to touch your customer.

The accurate gathering and interpretation of analytic data along with the use of customer retention management systems relieves a ZMOT minded marketer of the anxieties that usually come when you rely on the whims of the gods.

And unlike in traditional advertising, where John Wanamaker (1838 -1922) said he didn’t know what half of his advertising spend was being wasted, today, thanks to digital marketing tools and human resources, you can be sure that you can find out and plug up such a wastage quite easily.

ANALYSIS IN SEO, PPC, DISPLAY, SMM, YOUTUBE, & ALL DIGITAL STRATEGY

Analysis goes a long way in ensuring the proper use of digital marketing techniques like Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), Online Advertising (Display and Search Advertising), Youtube & other Video Marketing platforms, Social Media Marketing, etc.

Analysis also improves your tactics and strategy along the way. The need to be able to do this right cannot be overemphasized in this volatile digital age we are in.

It is about realizing that your potential customers and clients are changing fast. They are now constantly asking questions online, about your brand, your offerings, your techniques and even your competition. 

The scariest part is that they are already getting some answers to their questions. The problem is, from whom?

People are more likely to search for answers before making a decision to buy.

In conclusion:

ZMOT strategy will not give you magical powers to sell your products online. Just like Juju did not give Ghana victory against the USA (despite how well they played on the night) But your ability to think in this new paradigm - gathering and analyzing data - will give you a clear edge with your online transactions and deals. Whether they be goods on your e-commerce site, an offline professional service that you’ve advertised online, or even a cause that you wish to advance within your society.

Thanks for reading......

Please leave a comment, or ask me any question you like.

You can also ask me questions related to the Zero Moment Of Truth and/or digital marketing on the Digital Africa Community on Google+ 

Google Analytics, Marketing Attribution and the True Football Analyst:

Now, it would probably amaze some of you that I want to relate web analytics with football analysis! Well, I am doing so because I live in Nigeria in Africa and there isn't that much "analyzing of websites" going on in this part of the world, I can tell you that much! And this is mainly because most business owners haven't yet come to the realization that they need to analyze their effectiveness. 

So what I am going to do with this article, is try to relate this concept of Analytics to another one that practically all African people (Nigerians especially) know so well....

GAFC - GOOGLE ANALYTICS FOOTBALL CLUB!

Now, I would first need to quickly point out that I will be discussing soccer, and not the NFL. In short, European football and not American Football. Okay that wasn’t shorter, but I'm sure you get the point.
I must also mention that, unlike almost every soccer fan I’ve met, I am the very rare type that actually hates to “analyze” why a team won or lost a football match after the 90 minutes have been completed. So often times I say things that shock practically everyone that call themselves football fans.

For example, I still insist that Diego Maradonna’s Argentina squad in 2010 was tactically one of the best since 1994. In fact I consider Jose peckermann's 2006 squad the only one better in that time frame. A claim that not one human being I know agrees with.
But I don’t care about that; it’s not my problem….they are the ones who need to open their eyes. Hahaha!

Anyway, seriously, you should also know that I never judge the performance of a soccer team according to the number of goals that were counted for or against them at the end of one single game. So my take is that unpredictable things happen during the course of 90 minutes that sometimes make the beautiful game of football seem to resemble an adulterous whore. Do pardon the illustration.

But now let me quickly get back to this discussion and define Marketing Attribution and Google Analytics so that the football fans reading this article can catch up with what I am about to introduce to you geeks out there:

WHAT ARE THE KEY CONCEPTS?

Google Analytics is a powerful instrument that is used for measuring a website’s activities, like visits, clicks, and the defined goals that may have been setup by the website owner.
These activities need to be measured when you decide to start using your website as a marketing, branding or promotional instrument for your business or whatever cause the website was built for.

So burn this in: A website shouldn't be just a dummy in cyberspace that most companies around you have one of and so you feel you must therefore have one yourself.
You’ve completely missed the point, if you go this way.


Visits and Clicks to your website can come from any part of Africa or the world at large. They can be attracted by your brand name, or they can be attracted by your website’s marketing strategies and tactics. Either way, once they’ve come to your website, chances are, you can get them to buy your products, visit your shop or direct their colleagues to it, subscribe to your articles, and even promote your brand for you. It all depends on how you much you are willing to get out of digital marketing.

Conversions are the completion of goals that are specified by the website’s owner as important things he would like visitors to do while on his site. These goals will depend completely on whatever is the nature of your business, and they will be the major things that you would be measuring with Google Analytics. Additionally, if you have an e-commerce website, these goals would primarily be the actual purchases of items made by online customers on your site.

So Google Analytics is like an instrument of forensic examination that helps you scrutinize your website’s performance in terms of how well it is achieving its GOALS (just like in soccer you know?). It is the only way to know for sure, what and where you need to make improvements so that your website can perk-up on its performance and begin to achieve those goals, and reach for greater goals.

But the aspect of Google Analytics that I really wish to discuss today is Marketing Attribution. 

Along with Advanced Event Tracking, Attribution is one of the least mentioned topics in GA by the so-called digital marketing "experts" in Nigeria. I have also searched online for articles on this topic by other digital marketing professionals from the African continent; sadly, I've found none.

Nevertheless, the impact of Attribution (when it is well done) on your website and your entire business could be quite useful in creating quite a mismatch between you and your competition on the digital frontier.

So without further ado, Attribution is about giving value to different channels within your overall marketing campaign so that you can get a clearer understanding of how effective each of the various channels or “players” in your marketing efforts are performing.

We use Attribution Modeling because often times digital marketers think that one aspect of their marketing strategy is working better than other channels, and as a result they tend to focus so much effort on that particular medium at the detriment of other channels. The potential problem here is that if you are mistaken with this assumption, then your marketing campaigns may never reach their full potential.

WHO WOULD RELATE SUCH THINGS TOGETHER?

So let's go back to football for a while:

Now, if you were to take away both Mezut Ozil and Angel DiMaria from Real Madrid FC, you could be surprised that Cristiano Ronaldo would score fewer goals than you know him to score. 
I could have said the same about Iniesta and Xavi on Leonel Messi, but I have seen otherwise.

Anyway I don’t mean to start an argument here, I am only pointing out that it is important for you to learn how credit should be shared in your marketing campaigns. And thankfully, your marketing campaigns don’t have huge egos. Hahaha!

And for those who wish to argue football, you can join my football community on Google+. But you should be warned that there are many who consider me a real rabble-rouser, who became an obsessive football watcher when I was 16 yrs old.

I had started disagreeing vehemently with the usual British commentators and studio pundits from when I was about 20, and since then I have very seldom ever taken their kind of football analyses seriously.

By the time I was 22, I was watching some matches 3 to 5 times over, just so that I could discover patterns in certain formations. It even got to a point where I preferred watching a recorded game to a live one; since in a recorded match, you may easily press review to understand why a player made a certain move (whether it was a fluke or a calculated knack of genius).

In any event, the relevance of all I am saying is that (and this is just my opinion) Attribution in Google Analytics also requires a similar kind of obsessive behavior in paying attention to analytics data. When I first started using GA, I thought it was extremely complex and boring. But the trick was to tarry and then learn first to pay attention to the simpler details before graduating to the more advanced metrics. 

If you did that, and also opted to follow the most knowledgeable experts and the insights on Attribution that they very generously share on their blogs, You would suddenly realize that this could all be so much FUN………Or maybe not.

BASIC ATTRIBUTION MODELLING

Anyway that depends on the kind of person you are, I guess.
For me the connection became obvious when I first noticed that the Last Click assumption that almost every digital marketer was pre-occupied with, could easily be likened to the Leading Goal-scorer in a football team, and how most people assume that he scores those goals by conjuring them all out of nothing. So just like in football, most people come to digital marketing with the Last Interaction model of Attribution already ingrained in their minds.
In case you are a bit confused with what I am talking about, I will give you a quick background of how it works.

Marketing Attribution in Google Analytics, comes with a few models that are given by default to help you appreciate which of your marketing channels are actually bringing you the most goal conversions in your campaign. Isn’t that awesome?! In digital marketing, there are a few given models, like Last-Click or Last Interaction model where 100% of the credit for the conversion is attributed to the last marketing activity that led to the conversion. Another example of a model is the Time Decay version, where credit is shared in a progressive way, where more of the credit is given to those marketing channels that the visitor encounters later on into his journey to conversion.

So with Attribution Modeling, I quickly found an expression for my unique kind of football analysis. The fact that my analyses are NOT ABSOLUTE in nature makes me feel very much at home with Attribution. The constant learning and testing of Marketing Attribution models in Google Analytics can greatly sharpen your ability to improve future marketing efforts; which makes me very glad that I have always rebelled against football commentators’ and general opinions, but have always learned to chart my own course in assigning credit in football teams’ victories or losses.
Let me demonstrate:
 

LAST CLICK - The Barcelona Example:

I am not a Barcelona fan.
In fact I actually hated the club immensely from the early 90s right up until Pep Guardiola took over and turned them into the second most glorious footballing spectacle that I ever saw in my life. The most glorious being the Real Madrid era from 1995 to 2002.
Yes. I am a Real Madrid supporter; but I guess that other Madridistas might refuse to believe that, on account of what I just said about their rivals, FC Barcelona. But in such an event, all I can say to them is “grow up, and enjoy football as a game!” Hehehe.

Anyway, now I am going to demonstrate how paying close attention to Sergio Busquets, Xavi, Dani Alvez, Pedro and Lionel Messi, has coincidentally helped to greatly improve my understanding of Attribution in Google Analytics.
Now If you’re a fan, you’ve probably noticed that I left out Iniesta from this Barcelona selection. Well that is because this article is NOT exactly about football, but more about Marketing Attribution. And I have actually observed that Iniesta’s contribution to the Barcelona team’s overall attacking potency is much more of a diversion to the opposition’s defensive formation. And that doesn’t adequately help me in analyzing website macro and micro conversions.
So for the sake of this model, let us assume that Messi, Busquets, Xavi, Alvez and Pedro are 5 variables of marketing channels in an Attribution model. They could represent, if you like, PPC, YouTube, Banner, Email, and let’s add some shiny new toy like TourDash.

At FC Barcelona, Leo Messi is the guy who scores the vast majority of their goals. But what really makes this individual special is that he is also the one who provides a reasonable majority of their goals (at least over the past 4 seasons). But what might yet surprise most of you, is that I have also carefully observed that this same Messi is often also involved with providing the assist to the ASSISTS…what I am now call the 3rd Ball To Goal.

Meanwhile, this doesn’t automatically mean that without Messi, Barca won’t score goals, because football is not that simplistic. What it does mean though, is that those who have everything to gain from the team’s overall success (the coach, the owner of the team, and the fans)are forced to reckon with Messi, and will not likely be willing to gamble on leaving him out of the team for important matches.
Now, in an extreme case, if Messi’s contribution is overemphasized, and his team mates’ are assumed to be redundant; such a situation could illustrate the Last Interaction Model in Marketing Attribution.

Many business & website owners are fond of taking the reports of their web analysts superficially, assuming that the Last Interaction of each customer is the sole reason for his/her purchase or goal completion. Thus they are assuming “Messi” does it all, without digging deeper to find out how much of a role the other players are playing to assist him. The problem is that these clients may therefore increase their focus on that particular advertising channel; and reduce, or completely freeze off any efforts on improving other channels. Yet such a scenario could be very harmful.
So thanks to FC Barcelona, I came up with a custom model of Attribution. Which is merely a more conservative and perhaps more practical variation of the Last Interaction model.

From the diagram labeled Figure 1 above, you can see how I have reduced the over dependence on the Last Interaction, by assuming that other marketing channels may have played a more important part in the decision process of the customer. It is important to note also that the labeling of each color bar with a designation of the 5 various channels

Once you’ve done your goal setting in Google Analytics (GA) and all of your online marketing campaigns (and even your traditional marketing campaigns like TV, billboard & magazine ads) are being properly tracked; the next thing is to begin to analyze and do some tests with the new assumptions that you discover from your attribution models.

LINEAR ATTRIBUTION- Falcao Left Atletico Madrid:

Now any true football fan today as heard of a Colombian footballer by the name of Radamel Falcao, but those of you pure digital marketing nerds may simply just take my word on anything I say, for the sake of the argument okay? Hehehe!

So the funny thing about Falcao is that he was such a great striker that only a few people noticed how awesome his supporting cast was. The likes of Arda Turan, Diego Costa, Adrian and Koke made Falcao’s job spearheading the attack much easier that it looked. 

But now that the Colombian striker has left the team, they seem to have become even stronger.

Attribution helps you to understand that the visitor of your site that converted (i.e. took an action that you have indicated in GA as a goal) may not actually be experiencing your website’s marketing tactics for the first time. It doesn’t always mean that because a customer came into your site and purchased a camera because you sent an e-mail the day before, that it is automatically the sole reason why he took that action.

There is need to discover if there were probably several assists leading to that email. The same customer could have at various points taken a mental note to visit your website after seeing several of your other marketing campaigns like your blog, your Pay Per Click advert on Facebook, and maybe even your banners on affiliate sites.

Now, the Liner Model of Attribution is designed to give equal amount of credit to each of the marketing channels of your campaigns. Digital marketers use this when they assume that every member of the “team” is of equal importance. Ofcourse, this may also be a poor assumption that could lead to wastage of marketing spending on some channels, but the idea is to experiment until you find what works best for your campaigns based on understanding how your customers interact with your channels.

WE ARE STILL AT THE BEGINNING HERE IN NIGERIA

I hope this was at least slightly enlightening to you, and you’ve gotten the idea that Google Analytics is a great tool that you might have been overlooking in your marketing efforts.

Starting early enough is what really matters. Then we must patiently continue growing in understanding, in know-how and in experience. I have shared a few other articles in digital marketing that you might like to look at.
If you would like to pick more of my brain on other digital marketing topics, you may reach me on my Google+ profile and add me to your circles. You may also join my Digital Marketing Community. 

Alternatively, you might wish to see how opinionated I am about Football/Soccer on my G+ Alternate Page, True Football Analyst. 

I am Rotimi Orims. 
I am passionate about Exploring the Web, about Learning, about Digital Marketing, about Football, about Movies and about Music. 
I know, those are a lot of passions! 

Online Marketing & Cashless Nigeria

Many people in Nigeria love to carry cash all over the place. And I cannot understand why a young woman who imports and sells original beauty products doesn't desire to set up a website with delivery services.

To find out the relationship between the two sentences I just made, please read on.

How Cashless Nigeria Can Boost Our Economy.

The CBN's resolve to enforce the use of ATM machines, POS terminals and online banking in Nigeria may be a curse for many traders in Alaba International Market and Idumota, but it is certainly a blessing for those of us in the online marketing industry.

Just think about it, the Federal Government is trying to make sure that 160+ million Nigerians have the ability to do their shopping on the World Wide Web. How can that be a bad thing for me?

ATM machines reduce stress for banking hall staff. Online banking reduces stress for you (the customer).
Shopping with your debit card on a POS instrument helps you keep your cash for more handy uses. While online purchase gives you the benefit of buying things you cannot get in your immediate location.

So How Can This Boost Our Economy?

One word.
INCLUSION.

For a very long time, the Nigerian youth have been excluded from virtually anything that can put them in a position to gain economic ascendancy or even to merely earn their financial independence. They have been battered and methodically barred from politics (which sadly and unfortunately is the most lucrative industry in this country). They have been effectively excluded from the crude and refined petroleum steeple-chase. And the miserable souls have even also been tactically (however unintentional the tactics are) cut off from any hopes salvation that could come from venture capitalism.
It is pathetic, really.

Yet, with the World Wide Web comes suddenly the opportunity of autonomous wealth creation. Now you have the chance to forge your dreams into reality. You can give life to your ideas by taking advantage of the vast array of free tools and free knowledge online. And such knowledge that you cannot get in a million years, from any of the high cost university in Nigeria.
You even have a ready market for whatever product or service you are selling. And you have more than 2 billion people to choose from, who browse the internet everyday all over the world.

So how’s that for inclusion!?

So now you understand the relationship between the two sentences I made at the top of this article:

You may say that a cashless Nigeria would slow down your business, or force you to have 10 bank accounts just so you can save the daily earnings from your beauty shop.

But a cashless Nigeria could also force you into running your business in e-commerce mode; which puts you into a completely different atmosphere of earnings.

Think about it. Or ask us why at Online Africa

Learn Online, Do Online.

The earlier we Africans learn to take advantage of the internet, the better for us.
No matter how badly our rulers bruise our economies, there will always be some kind of "escape route" for those of us who are ready to learn, to read, to investigate, to SEARCH.

After watching the Youtube video clip of "My Oga at the Top" most of us laughed and laughed. Yet there are some of us that are only just a little bit more conversant with the World Wide Web than that unfortunate Government official in that video.

So therefore, Facebook is a good thing. So is Gmail. 
But for you to really start enjoying the World Wide Web, you have to start using Google, or any of the other search engines (Bing, Yahoo!, etc). You need to start visiting different kinds of websites to get different new experiences. It is just like moving from the village to a big city, or resuming at a great new school, like Unilag. 
You need to move around and make new friends, and discover new things that bring a new spark into your life. Otherwise, you may never get the best out of that experience.

I guess I have probably only succeeded in making some of you feel embarrassed. But if that's enough to make you want to do more for yourself than liking every post by Chief Ben Murray Bruce on Facebook, then I guess I've done a good service to you.Just to rub it in a bit, I should let you know that my seventy something year old mother currently reads news about Nigeria off the internet in the US. She is also doing other cool things for herself, like check her airline's frequent flyer mileage, her hospital appointments and even investigate buying a house in the US.

But now, I am guessing some of you might be asking, "so what will I use Google for?". "Where do I start to exercise my right to information?"

Well.....for instance, you may start with searching for "agbalumo" if you are a Nigerian. That should give you an idea of just how unlimited the information on the web really is. 
You may choose to learn "How to make jollof rice with all its ingredients". You may even decide you want to find "bus fares from Lagos to Abuja".
To be honest, your imagination (not mine) is the limit. But you must realize that the kind of information that the search engines return to you are not always the best they can be.

So it is always a wise thing to check the second, third & forth pages of the search results. Or you may retype and adjust your search query to make it more specific.
For example, if the results that you see for "opportunities for new entrepreneurs" are not exactly what you are looking for, you may make it more specific by typing "opportunities for new entrepreneurs in Lagos, Nigeria in 2012".
  
So go out there today and start surfing the internet!
Explore!
Learn and Be informed!
Search!
:)

Do follow this blog.
Like it.
Share it.
Then connect with me on Google+
Rotimi ORIMS - ME

Get Web Literate

Online Africa would like to share with whom it may concern, that SEARCH is the most useful activity you can ever do on the internet.
I think it is unfortunate that most of us in Africa spend so much time chatting and arguing on social networks, and fail to realize how much learning we are actually missing as a result.
As a trained journalist (of the University Of Lagos department of Mass Communication) I have to strongly reiterate that popular saying that you all know so well....
"Information is power". 
And these days, it is absolutely free of charge.

Funny enough, I remember a while ago, when a former boss of mine bragged to me about his son, saying the boy was an "internet guru". 
It turned out the boy spent all of his time downloading hip hop tracks from Limewire, and listening to the Dudu Radio service. 
He had no programming skills. 
Plus he confessed that he had never done any kind of coding whatsoever.

So I realized that his father had thought he was guru because of how many hours of the day he spent on the computer he had bought for him, and how much it was keeping him in the house, instead of going out with his friends. But the most interesting thing about this story is that that man is not the only person making such a mistake. 
Most of us assume someone is very "good with computers" simply because we see them spending a lot of time with computers, or we see them use the internet often.

Yet if the only thing you are doing on the internet is to send and recieve your emails, or you're looking at your friends' photos on Facebook, or listening to music on Spotify or Youtube, then to be very honest, you are NOT an internet expert, or even enthusiast. 
And I dare say, you shouldn't even be fully regarded as being web-literate. 
The internet is primarily a gigantic global resource for knowledge and informarion. And it has also become a wonderful platform for e-commerce, and opportunity for entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals. But how can you understand what I am saying if you have not been truly excercising your right to SURF the internet? Your right to power. 
If we in Africa are limiting ourselves to chat rooms, or uploading photos from our mobile devices, then how will we be able to take advantage of all the knowledge and information available on the web? Seriously? 
Think about it, and ask me questions if you like.
I'm here to help, really!
You can submit your questions in the online community....Online Africa.

Make Your Website Work

The primary reason why any company embarks on building a website should be to help it achieve its business goals. So why are many entrepreneurs, companies and large corporations building websites more-or-less for the sheer sake of just owning a website?

When you build your website using a web developer that has little or no knowledge of optimization or online marketing, and ask him to simply build you the most attractive looking website, obviously you are just trying to get a website merely for the sake of owning a website for your business!

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I am not in anyway implying that it is a terrible thing to set up a corporate website for the sake of aesthetics and perhaps pride.
No, that’s not my point at all. In fact, it is indeed a good thing to have a website you can always refer your clients or customers to, where they can check out a branch of your business that is close to them. Or you can always warn your clients and customers to look at your site for contact information of your authorized dealers and salespeople, so that they don’t get scammed by crooks claiming to represent your brand.

So I will be the first to tell you that owning a website serves so many useful functions all at once. But what I really want to tell you is that if you are not using your website as a major marketing instrument; or as a means to increase your sales and improve your brand, then you are obviously underutilizing your website’s potential.

Now building a website that maximizes your brand for gains in business would require not just the services of a web developer or web design company. It would require the services of one or more Internet Marketing professionals as well. As a matter of fact, depending on the level of competition in your field, you would most likely need to solicit the services of this internet marketing professional AHEAD of the web designer.

…Why?

Well because many web designers are not even aware of some of the technicalities and nuances involved in building a website that woos the appreciation of your brand’s target market and commands the attention of its potential markets.
In fact, there are many web designers today (especially in Nigeria) who don’t even realize that the websites they are building today, were structurally outdated several years ago. Therefore if you hired a web designer who doesn’t even realize that things have significantly improved in his own business, how would you if the website he builds for you is good enough to help you maximize YOUR own business?
This is why a professional Internet marketing consultant who understands Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be needful to you to help you ensure that you have the RIGHT web designer.
This SEO professional could even hire, or at least interview the web designer for you. Because it is much more cost effective for you to have your website built from scratch complying with the current standards of structural quality, than for you to go through a much more expensive process of having to tear down and rebuild some of its pages later on.
Apart from having a structurally high-quality website that is very friendly to the user, you also need it to contain strategic information that boosts your marketing and complies with Google’s standards.

Search Engine Marketing may be the most important thing for companies that hope to do business successfully in the Nigeria of the very near future. It is not exactly the same thing as the SEO (search engine optimization) I mentioned earlier, but it definitely entails it. And without going into too much academics, Search Engine Marketing or SEM gives you the ability to meet your potential clients one step after they think about the services you are rendering or the products you are selling.
Wouldn’t you, Mr 3D printer, love the idea that when strangers in Abuja search Google for “3D Printing in Nigeria”, they come up with your company website in Lagos? Isn’t that more target oriented than merely buying a center-spread, full-colour advertisement in a glossy magazine that sells nationwide?
Or you, Miss Events Planner? I bet you would love the opportunity to have your website listed among those that an excitable, soon-to-be bride would see when she searches Google for “elegant wedding planners in Lagos”; wouldn’t you?
Well of course you would!
This is where SEM/SEO professionals come in very handy indeed.

The last major area I wish to look at for now, is the wonderful and almost mystical land of SEO Copywriters and Professional Bloggers. In this land you have the professionals who are not just gifted writers or communicators to people. They are experienced in understanding the rules and penalties against those who try to deceive the users who search the internet’s search engines, and they also understand the principles that govern how the search engines themselves operate. Such principles that any ordinary gifted writer may not consider while writing. The truth is that there is a slight difference between a talented writer who writes to entertain or inform people, and one who writes for the purpose of entertaining, informing and cleverly persuading people to take a particular action that is desirable for you, the owner of the website. Such copywriters are quite different from your traditional advertising copywriters, even though some of them (myself included) may have that background. These SEO Copywriters are more conscious of how much the reader would be satisfied by the message as well as whether or not the message is potent enough to draw the attention of a casual web surfer to the message, to keep the surfer for longer periods in the website, to nudge the reader into taking some kind of action (like Subscribe to the site or purchase an item on the site), and also to encourage the surfer to re-visit the site on a future date.

Professional bloggers are also very interesting cases. The truth is that almost anyone can be a blogger.  And if he is lucky enough to have a timely & catchy topic to share with the world, as far as possibilities go, well then anyone could have a popular blog.
But a professional blogger does indeed