Content Creation and Marketing Course (With Certification)

Intensive Content Creation & Marketing Course
In this Content Creation and Marketing course, you will practically learn how to create content that engages, sells and converts for your business or personal brand.
Content creation and marketing is a must-understood for any business owner, personal brand or professional who wants to build an understand and achieve profitable goals.
The Content Creation and Marketing Course by the Orifunke Lawal Academy is a 6-week intensive and practical instructor-led course for small business owners and personal brands looking to learn to create and use content to advance their brands.
Are You a Business Owner?
With effective content creation and marketing, you can build brand awareness for your business, learn tactics to build a community of loyal followers around your business, and move your followers and fans to paying customers. It is not enough to have products or tell people about your services, you must understand how the minds of people work and how content influences people’s buying decisions.
As a business owner, you will learn how to create content that:
- Builds awareness of your product offers and services
- Inspires people to want to join and be loyal to your community
- Gets converting users
Are You Looking to Build Your Personal Brand?
Building trust and authoritative thought leadership is not accidental. With practical content marketing and creation, you understand what works for your audience, how you can stand out from your competitors and how your paying customers can find you.
As a personal brand, you will learn how to create content that:
- Builds knowledge of, trust in and love for your brand and its resultant services and products
- Positions you as a thought leader in your industry and in the minds of your target audience
- Moves your base of fans into paying customers
What You Will Learn:
- The Fundamentals of Content Creation and Marketing
- Defining Your Target Audience and Build Buyer Personas for Your Business/Personal Brand
- Researching and Generating Ideas for Content Creation and Marketing
- Understanding the Building Blocks of All Types of Content (Long-form and Short-form, Image, Audio & Video) and Strategies that Work for Engagement, Traffic & Sales
- Understanding Content Distribution, Content Promotion and Content Repurposing
- Creating an Effective Content Strategy and Calendar
- Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Content Marketing Efforts and Strategies
- Different Content Creation Tools and How They Work (Organizational, Scheduling, Designing, Video Editing, Text Editing, Idea Generation, Tracking)
- Utilizing Marketing Funnels for Business and Personal Brands
- Content Optimization for Social Media Platforms and Search Engines (Google)
Features:
- FREE 10-minute One-on-One Introductory Consultation
- Live Classes
- 5-Week Instructor-Led Coaching
- Case Studies
- Extensive Exercises and Projects
- Community Work and Interaction
- FREE Access to Canva Designing Ebook and 21-Day Printable Designing Planner
- Secured internships for Best Students
- Examination, Certificate & Virtual Graduation
Training Details
Course Starts: 22nd May, 2021.
Course Ends: 3rd July, 2021.
Venue: All video live trainings will be held via Google Meet while departments/support groups are hosted on WhatsApp.
Training Fee: N45,000 (66% OFF till 18th May, 2021)
CLICK HERE TO SECURE YOUR SEAT>>>> Content Creation & Marketing Course 66% DISCOUNT
Learn How to Use Canva | Canva Course for Career
Canva Course for Career Professionals
Canva is a design software with easy-to-tweak and ready-to-use templates for people with no formal design background.
Advancing your career takes more than just doing your job. With great design thinking skills and ability, you can learn how to grow your career and position yourself by learning how to use Canva to create relevant designs for you.
About the Canva Growth Program for Career Professionals
This Canva course for career professionals teaches individuals how to create different designs for their personal brands by giving them trainings and giving them access to instructors for a period of 21 days.
The course comes in two major forms:
1. The training (which comes in the first few days of the program so participants can be familiar with designing generally and designing with Canva).
2. The coaching (where participants are assigned to instructors who will give them feedback on their designs over a period of 21 consecutive days)
The program is a certified one under the Orifunke Lawal Academy.
What You Will Learn from this Course
HARD SKILLS
- Social Media Designs
- Presentations
- CVs & Resumes
- Planners
- Workshops
- Brochures
SOFT SKILLS
- Design Thinking and Psychology
- Canva Design Elements (like fonts, shapes, illustrations, etc)
- Career Scaling & Development
- Career Positioning
Duration
This Canva course for career runs for THREE WEEKS.
Certification
At the end of the course, certificates and assessments will be awarded to graduating participants. This will also be coupled by a virtual graduation party/project defence
Investment
Registration into the Canva Growth Program for Career Professionals is N10,000 only. However, early registration (till the 6th of September) is at a 50% discount of N5,000.
The course starts on the 15th of September, 2020.
[[Click Here to Register for the Course]]
SEE ALSO:
Learn How to Use Canva | Canva Course for Personal Brands
Canva Course for Personal Brands
Canva is a design software with easy-to-tweak and ready-to-use templates for people with no formal design background.
In this day and age, building your personal brand is not an option but a necessity. Daily, people are breaking new grounds, drawing attention to their businesses, achievements and thought leadership in order to build trust in the minds of their target audience.
It is now important to be able to create designs yourself and within such a short while without having to rely on a graphics designer to create all your social media and branding designs.
Unless you do have the money, your best bet is to learn how to design your necessary and daily designs yourself pending the time you are able to hire or outsource to a professional designer.
About the Canva Growth Program for Personal Brands
This Canva course for personal brands teaches individuals, influencers, entrepreneurs and freelancers how to create different designs for their personal brands by giving them trainings and giving them access to instructors for a period of 21 days.
The course comes in two major forms:
1. The training (which comes in the first few days of the program so participants can be familiar with designing generally and designing with Canva).
2. The coaching (where participants are assigned to instructors who will give them feedback on their designs over a period of 21 consecutive days)
The program is a certified one under the Orifunke Lawal Academy.
What You Will Learn from this Course
HARD SKILLS
- Social Media Designs
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Infographics
- Newsletters
SOFT SKILLS
- Design Thinking and Psychology
- Canva Design Elements (like fonts, shapes, illustrations, etc)
- Understanding Personal Branding
- Developing a Distinct Personal Brand Identity
Duration
This Canva course for Personal Brands runs for THREE WEEKS.
Certification
At the end of the course, certificates and assessments will be awarded to graduating participants. This will also be coupled by a virtual graduation party/project defence
Investment
Registration into the Canva Growth Program for Personal Brands is N10,000 only. However, early registration (till the 6th of September) is at a 50% discount of N5,000.
The course starts on the 15th of September, 2020.
[[Click Here to Register for the Course]]
SEE ALSO:
Intensive Canva Design Course | Canva Growth Program
Intensive Canva Course for Businesses, Personal Brands & Career Professionals
Canva is a design software with easy-to-tweak and ready-to-use templates for people with no formal design background.
Do you have a small business? Are you trying to build your personal brand? Do you want better visibility and positioning for your career? Learning how to use Canva is a hard skill that can increase your earning power.
Unless you do have the money, your best bet is to learn how to design your necessary and daily designs yourself pending the time you are able to hire or outsource to a professional designer.
This Canva course by the Orifunke Lawal Academy is a 4-week intensive, live, instructor-led and practical course for business owners, personal brands and career professionals on learning how to design using Canva.
Are You a Business Owner?
Running a small business on a budget comes with a lot of challenges. Part of this is having to rely on a graphics designer to create all your social media and marketing designs.
Unless you do have the money, your best bet is to learn how to design your necessary and daily designs yourself pending the time you are able to hire or outsource to a professional designer. Hard skills you will learn in this department are:
- Social media designs
- Business videos
- Marketing fliers
- Business pitches & proposals
- Letterheads
- Business cards
Soft skills include (but are not limited to:
- Understanding business funnels and basic strategies
- Developing a consistent visual identity for your business
- Business sales
Are You a Personal Brand?
In this day and age, building your personal brand is not an option but a necessity. Daily, people are breaking new grounds, drawing attention to their businesses, achievements and thought leadership in order to build trust in the minds of their target audience.
It is now important to be able to create designs yourself and within such a short while without having to rely on a graphics designer to create all your social media and branding designs. Hard skills you will learn in this course include:
- Social Media Designs
- Ebooks
- Infographics
- Videos
- Newsletters
Soft skills include (but are not limited to):
- Understanding personal branding
- Developing a consistent visual identity for your personal brand
- Community building for personal brands
Are You a Career Professional?
Advancing your career takes more than just doing your job. With great design thinking skills and ability, you can learn how to grow your career and position yourself by learning how to use Canva to create relevant designs for you. Hard skills you will learn in this department include:
- Social Media Designs
- Presentations
- CVs & Resumes
- Planners
- Workshops
- Brochures
Soft skills you will learn include (but are not limited to):
- Career scaling & development
- Developing a consistent visual identity for your career brand
- Career positioning
What You Will Learn:
- Using Canva to create different kinds of designs; social media designs, presentations, ebooks, videos, app re-creations, etc
- Understanding Canva design elements (fonts, colours, illustrations, shapes, etc).
- Understand design psychology and essentials
- Making money using Canva
- Using Canva to advance your business, personal brand and career
Features & Benefits
- 21-day constructive feedback from instructors
- Periodic provision of resources (written/video)
- Assignments and projects
- Virtual graduation ceremony and certificate of completion
- Lifetime access to community of growing designers
- Departmental specific trainings (Business, Personal Branding, Career)
- Free ebook on Canva Designing and printable Designing Planner
Training Details
Course Starts: April 6th, 2021
Duration: FOUR weeks
Venue: Video modules are hosted on a course website while departments/support groups for practical coaching are hosted on WhatsApp
Course Fee: N10,000
CLICK HERE TO SECURE YOUR SEAT IMMEDIATELY >>>> Canva Growth Program (50% Off Limited Offer)
How to Build a Strong Personal Brand | Orifunke Lawal
Every day, people want to learn how to build a strong personal brand. This is important for several reasons. It can help you increase awareness, develop influence and thought leadership and also help you to gain clients and customers online. Personal branding is who you say you are and what people think, say and feel about you. This goes beyond just posting on social media or taking fancy photos. It is building an identity that people love and care enough to keep following any day.
I have been particular about helping people build strong personal brands for about three years now. I believe that the solution to a lot of people’s woes online (lack of opportunities, no customers) is to build a personal brand. So, when Akan Imoh reached out to me a couple of weeks ago and told me he wanted us to have a tweetchat session on this, it was one of the best things I could have said yes to at the time. Akan Imoh is a PR, Media and Comms Enthusiast who is interested in Business, Governance and Pop Culture. Last year, he contested for the position of Lagos State House of Assembly under KOWA Party. He is also the founder of The Boss Approach.
This blog post is a compilation of my tweetchat session with him, answering a number of questions that people usually answer over time. I have also modified this in such a way that I have included more than I shared during the session so that you understand better. Here are the topic ideas I touch on in this blogpost:
- Cross-Posting On Social Media Platforms to Maintain Visibility
- Tone and Voice in Creating Content
- Deciding a Niche
- Finding a Differentiating Factor for Your Brand
- Building a Strong Personal Brand as a Career Person
- Managing Your Personal Career Brand without Flouting Company Rules
- Personal Branding Toolkit
- Commercializing Your Brand
1. How Do You Manage Posting Across Various Social Media Platforms?
I understand that there are segments of my target audience who are on Instagram but not on Facebook or Twitter. There are others who are on Facebook but not on the others. I also have others on Twitter but not Facebook and Instagram. Then there’s the segment who follow me on all through. I know how important it is to reach all of these segments as much as I can. So I try to post across all my platforms at the same time.
For starters, I majorly use my IG insights to gauge when my followers will mostly be online then I post around that time. Once I’m done with that, I post on my Facebook and Twitter. This is because Instagram is the only tool that communicates insights of your business pages for free. You do not have insights for Facebook personal accounts (and I use one). I post on LinkedIn at peak periods like 1-2 pm where many business professionals are likely on break.
I just post at the same time (with the exception of LinkedIn) and I have noticed that it works great for me.
2. Do You Tweak Your Content to Adjust to the Tone of Each Platform? We All Know The Different Platforms Have Different Voices.
It depends on the kind of content. There are certain posts I do on Twitter that do not make it to IG or Facebook. There are also others that I post on my Facebook and maybe Instagram but they don’t show up on Twitter. Last week, I wrote a post on Facebook on why you shouldn’t resign from your work on the basis of salary increase without first asking for it. I didn’t post this on Twitter or Instagram. So, the kind of content I post and whether I adjust it to different platforms depends on the nature of the content, the length of the content too and the core tone of the content.
Let me explain: My posts on Facebook have a certain humorous undertone alongside storytelling. I am more likely to use humour to pass my message across on Facebook than on my other platforms. On Instagram, I maintain a storytelling style of providing helpful content for the people who follow me. On Twitter, I am mostly just sharing my thoughts in bits here and there.
Sometimes, too, if I have to cross-post, I tweak only a few things, reduce the one I post on Twitter and Instagram. And if I have to post on LinkedIn, I follow the same personal rules.
3. How to Handle Difficulty Settling for a Niche
I talked about this in my book, The Art of Social Writing. I also briefed on this in this Instagram post. I understand the struggles of people who have different interests because I am one of them. The truth is if you are relatively unknown, it is going to be harder for you to handle all the different things you can (and want to) do. So, I’d advise you to first focus on building awareness around your brand.
1. You can build awareness by:
- Consistently creating good content that people can share with others.
- Engaging with people in your field who have a wider reach
- Teaching in online classes
- Developing digital products for people
And a lot of these online classes and digital products will be free, let me tell you.
2. Start with one thing before moving to another
Decide what is most important for you to communicate and focus about 80% of your content on that. The remaining 20% could include other things you are also interested in but not as much as the dominant one. If you are unsure about the one that you are most interested in, you could focus on the one you are most skilled at.
3. Harness a skill that allows you to bring all of them together
Transferable skills like this help you to focus on different interests of yours while still communicating to people what your brand is about and what you can do for them. For instance, I am an amazing storyteller and because of this, I am able to talk about just about anything because most times, people love the stories.
4. Think about separating into brands
This is something you should do when you have built some awareness, though. Instead of lumping all your different skills and interests into your single personal brand, why not find a way to differentiate all of them into projects and brands that can have a meaning of their own? That way, you reduce your chances of being mentally overwhelmed and even when you have to drop some of them, you can do that without hurting the credibility of your central personal brand.
4. How do I Find a Differentiating Factor for My Personal Brand?
Sometimes, you will need to start the journey to building your personal brand before being sure about what stands you out. This is because the better your audience grows, the more they give you hints about exactly why they love you and follow you. They will be more open to giving you feedback about your person/personality. For instance, I have learnt that the major thing my audience loves about me is my writing/storytelling abilities. It wasn’t something I chose on my own. I only found out after consistently getting feedback from people who read my works.
As you develop your brand, don’t be shy to ask your followers questions. Why do you like me? What do you like the most about following me? What should I do more of? What should I do less of? This will give you ideas on your personal differentiating factor(s)
Finally on this question, sometimes you do not “find” a differentiating factor for your personal brand; you create it. “Finding” sounds tough. You can sit down, choose what you want your differentiating factors to be. It’s the same way businesses are supposed to create Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) that stand them out in a sea of other competitors.
5. Can I Still Build a Strong Personal Brand as a Career Person?
If you’re a career person, then it is all very important for you to build your personal brand even while you’re at that office, unless you expect to stay at the company forever without new opportunities. A good personal brand can:
- Expose you to new opportunities for growth and advancement within the company. A core part of personal branding is visibility, one of the skills you need to access promotion in most companies.
- Improve your visibility and credibility online, thereby giving you ease of access to different kinds of opportunities in your career.
- Help you cast a positive light on your organization, giving your brand a form of goodwill and reputation.
In fact, if you want to advance fast in your career, building a personal brand is crucial. It will set you apart and make the journey to the top a lot faster.
6. How do I Manage a Personal Brand without Contravening Company Policies or Regulations?
The first thing you should do is to be conversant with your company’s rules and regulations. Read your employment contract carefully and always ask your HR on further company policies. Most of the time, you being visible on social media platforms as a career person does not cause any issues with your company. However, you want to be sure that certain information you are sharing about your company is not private and confidential.
For example, you might want to talk about how your company won a particular client or raised a certain amount of money but it might be against company policy to divulge that to anybody who is not a member of the company. As a rule of thumb, stick to speaking about yourself, awards you win at work, commendable comments you get from co-workers, promotions, basically anything that has to do with you. But stay away from talking about anything that has to do with the company more than it has to do with you.
7. What Should Be In My Personal Branding Toolkit?
The key things in your toolkit should be your social media platforms (depending on the kind of personal brand you want to build and content you want to share). A website also helps to give you some form of credibility when you share quality content. However, if you cannot afford a website, you can use makeshift sites like Medium (if you do a lot of writing) and Disha or Linktree, to showcase your different skills and services. You can check out my Disha page here to see what I am talking about: Orifunke Lawal | Disha Page.
I would advise that you also start to build your email list so that you can send regular emails to your audience and build awareness that way. If you also have products to sell, having an email list makes it easy for you to do that, instead of struggling to find an audience. I use Mailchimp to grow my email list.
As you grow, you also need to consider having documents (e.g., PowerPoint slides) that communicate what you do and the value you bring to individuals and organizations so when you need to work with other people, it comes in handy.
8. How Can I Commercialize my Personal Brand? And When Can I Do This?
You can commercialize your brand at any time. You can even set out immediately commercializing your brand. There are no hard and fast rules for making this happen. It all boils down to your strategy. Commercialize simply means finding ways to make money (monetize) from the value you provide to your audience.
There are really different ways to commercialize your brand. Here are some ideas:
- Speak at relevant events
- Organize a class online for a fee or collaborate with someone else who is organizing a paid class. You can use WhatsApp, Facebook groups, Webinars to host your classes.
- Create digital products relevant to your field or niche and put a price on them.
- Organize paid webinars
- Start a consulting business
The possibilities are endless. The important thing is to understand what works best for your audience and how they respond to paid stuff. All in all, you want to make sure that you are providing value that people need and want before they trust you enough to give you their money.
So, what did you think? Was this blog post helpful? Do you have any questions? Please use the comments below to share your thoughts and do not forget to share with your friends.
Tosin Akingba’s Story on Gender Equality – #UnbowedVoices
“When I was 12, I escaped a traumatic abuse that left a great mark in my soul, I was scarred for life; psychologically and emotionally. I was exposed to a lot of negativity that was life-changing. I suffered abuse by a family friend, I was exposed to situations which made me very vulnerable and I was always faced with tough decisions all through my teenage years.
Facing all of these, and reporting to my parents, my guardians and older people (men and women alike), all I got were lectures – always cover your head, always wear big clothes to cover your body, do not play with boys. They were good lessons I held on to, but then, nothing or very little was done about the boys and men who molest and abuse women.
All of these put together pushed me into a state of depression and confinement, with no one to talk to. Those times, drawing was my only means of escaping from worries and depressing thoughts. From then, I began to have more and more interest in becoming an artist and sharing my thoughts through my drawings.
While growing up, I discovered my love for drawing and I thought to pursue it professionally. I got a lot of backlash on the drawings I made as a lot of comments were focused on who was actually making the drawings. Most people never believed a girl could be talented enough to make beautiful drawings. Most people did not believe in a young girl having such talent, they felt it was for boys alone.
This dissuaded me from developing my talent because not many people believed in what I could do. I still get such comments today such as, ‘You made this drawing?’ ‘You, a girl?’ ‘I can’t believe a woman made this!’ ‘How is this possible?’ ‘You are a girl!’ It is disheartening and demeaning to me that these still happen in our age and time
I advocate for Gender Equality which is giving the same rights, status and opportunities regardless of one’s gender or sex. Let us give our girls and women the same opportunity given to men to thrive and excel in every aspect of life. I believe the world will be better if men and women all have equal rights.” – Tosin Akingba
About Tosin Akingba
What is #UnbowedVoices?
Read more about the campaign here: #UnbowedVoices – An Orifunke Lawal Campaign.
Also Read: Oluwatomisin Akingboye’s Story on Gender Equality – #UnbowedVoices
Oluwatomisin Akingboye’s Story on Gender Equality – #UnbowedVoices
“What struck me the most while growing up was how people made it seem like it was the worst thing for my mother to have only daughters. Prayers and fasting were held for God to bless her with a son. Extended family members would berate my dad about spending so much on education for girls.
Female children’s rights to some things were questioned just because they are female human beings. I didn’t know it but I started becoming a feminist at that young age. I went through so many “you are a girl, you can’t do that” and its many variants in discrimination through secondary and university education that at a point, I couldn’t recognize it anymore and just took it as a norm.
Then I started working and went through rapid promotions. I felt great until a particular co-worker said to my face “The only reason you went through rapid promotions is that you’re a female and the boss likes you”. It hurt because I knew the work I had put in, it hurt because I knew the same colleague, who told me that, had gone rapid promotions before (based on his performance) as well. I just couldn’t understand why my gender had to come into play because I got something I truly deserved.
We can try to mince words as much as we want, but the truth remains that a lot of people do not view a male child and a female child as equal. I have put so much work into shaking off the social conditioning and have several times taken the bulls by the horn, but I am also realistic enough to know that there are so many women who are still held back by their upbringing, background and societal “norms”. These are women who grew up hearing that they are not supposed to take certain steps just because they are women.
It is not enough to create opportunities for women, we have to work towards destroying the conditioning that keeps them back from taking advantage of those opportunities.
My name is Tomisin; I identify as a woman, a passionate feminist and I believe in gender equality because I know I am equal to men and I deserve to have access to same opportunities and guilt-free freedom to choose those opportunities.
I believe in gender equality, because hey! why shouldn’t I?”
*****
About Oluwatomisin Akingboye
Oluwatomisin is an HR professional who has a number of achievements including:
1. Incubating the HR unit of a company in the financial services industry (setting up the unit, the processes, designing the payroll structure etc).
2. Successfully performing as an Accounts Officer, despite not having prior accounting experience. She also amazingly runs a food business on the side. You can find her on Twitter: @Marrgarritah
What is #UnbowedVoices?
Read more about the campaign here: #UnbowedVoices – An Orifunke Lawal Campaign
#UnbowedVoices – An Orifunke Lawal Campaign
Unbowed Voices – An Orifunke Lawal Campaign is a storytelling campaign which features the different stories of Nigerian feminist women doing amazingly in their various fields. The campaign is planned to celebrate the theme for International Women’s Day 2020, #EachforEqual.
According to statistics, it would take the world about 202 years to achieve global gender parity. This is a long time, no doubt, and in a country like Nigeria and Africa, it might just take longer due to factors like poverty and a lower rate of development when compared to first-world countries.
It is especially harder that many people do not see the need to fight for gender equality. Many people do not also believe that women are largely disadvantaged in many areas of the country and in the world. Therefore, while we still have a lot of work to do regarding gender parity, it is crucial to always talk about who we are and what we do, not for us, but for others who need our stories to be able to keep fighting.
This particular campaign will run from March-April 2020. Stories will be shared on my social media platforms as well as on my website.
You can follow me on social media here:
Instagram: @orifunkelawal
Twitter: @Orifunke
Facebook: Orifunke Lawal
All my love,
Orifunke Lawal.
Career Tips for Job Seekers in Nigeria | Orifunke Lawal
I decided to write some career advice for job-seekers in Nigeria, especially fresh graduates and fresh out-of-NYSC folks, let me give you a piece of advice that you might find useful:
See your job-seeking process as a business.
When you want to start a business, you don’t just jump into anything and expect to find customers. You must be as strategic as possible.
One of the things business consultants tell you is that before you start a business, you need to do a market survey. What do people want to buy? What are people spending their money on? What is selling in the market?
Then after finding that out, you can decide what you want to start selling. That way, you’re starting a business not based on how you feel or just what you’re passionate about but what actually sells in the market.
Back to your job search…
So, you studied, let’s say Zoology at school and you need a job now. The questions you should ask yourself realistically are:
1. Are there job opportunities in my field? There is no problem admitting that there are no/limited job opportunities in the field you studied. If there are no job opportunities in your field, and you still stick to it in the hopes of not giving up, you’re certainly not being realistic and you will keep searching for a job that either doesn’t exist or doesn’t exist readily to you.
2. What sells in the market?
You have to understand that certain skills are more searched for than others. Find some time and go to myjobmag or jobberman and see the different job vacancies so you can have an idea of what jobs companies mostly need. You can also google “jobs near me” and select a field in your area of interest or competence.
3. Your aim at this point is to do two things:
a. Research the most required fields i.e., fields that most recruiters or companies are looking at hiring.
b. Research the wages/salaries of these various fields.
The essence of b above is to ensure that you’re not just on the lookout for a skill that employers need but a skill that they can actually pay for. There are fields that are quite “popular” but don’t pay much. There are also skills that are not so popular but actually pay a whole lot.
4. After discovering what sells in the market, decide what you would like to launch a career in. If you really loved your Zoology course at school, you probably would find it hard. If you’re also religious, there is a high chance that you want to keep praying and hoping that a miraculous job in your field will find you soon. No, don’t do that to yourself.
Another challenge that you might have is you thinking you’re not interested in a particular field. Please, if the field sells, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to start learning how to code and don’t be surprised if I become a UI/UX designer in the next year. No, I don’t like to code. But like business, you don’t need to love what you sell before you actually sell it. You’re in business to sell. If that’s what the market wants, well, what are you doing for yourself?
5. After deciding the fields that you’d like to start to major in, the next step to take is to draw out a plan to start learning actively about it. There are four ways you can learn in this regard:
a. Online courses. There are tons of online courses that might be free or paid on Google and they mostly come with certificates too. Online courses allow you to grow knowledge in that particular field. Don’t take this for granted. Blogs and ebooks are also amazing but courses are more procedural than these so it’s easier for you to learn when you’re just starting out.
b. Find the top players in that field online and follow them. If you don’t know, you can ask on your timeline. Say something like, “Do you know someone who does SEO on your list? Please mention them.” People will mention those they know and then you can follow these people, turn on post notifications for their tweets or posts, send them a connection request on LinkedIn and sell yourself whenever the need arises.
c. Look out for opportunities to develop experience. You might be lucky to find a job that pays you without experience and you might not be that lucky. So look out for internship or volunteer opportunities in this field. If you can afford it, you can write to a company that specializes in that field and ask to do a free internship with them. This is not compulsory.
d. Start to build thought leadership around this field online. This would mean taking your different online platforms seriously and regularly talking about the particular field as you have learnt. Say you’re in SEO, you can start out by doing a post on SEO once a week. Over time, you’ll register in the minds of your followers as someone who can take up roles on SEO.
This might not be exhaustive but I really hope it helps someone out there.
* * * * *
Orifunke Lawal is a young professional living in Nigeria. She is a writer, content creator, editor/proofreader, brand and communications professional and a budding SEO specialist. She is the author of The Art of Social Writing, an e-book which teaches how to write for social media and make people love you while at it. She is passionate about processes, ideas, tools, structures and systems that are put in place for the establishment and development of brands, businesses, communities and individuals online.
You can connect with her on LinkedIn: Orifunke Lawal
The Art of Social Writing – Download E-Book by Orifunke Lawal
The Art of Social Writing is a guide for everyone who wants to take the bull by the horns and build their social writing skills. The book is basically me making the whole process as simple as possible for you so you can start to build your brand online.
Following my recovery from a terrific illness and enjoying the first few days of my leave from work, I decided to set out to writing something that a lot of people have asked me to teach them. As a social media writer, I get a lot of requests from people who want me to show them how I am able to come up with enlightening, audacious, sometimes humorous posts and how they can also implement the same for themselves.
I also took a survey early this year asking people what they’d like me to teach them if they had the opportunity to choose and more than a few mentioned they’d basically like to know how to write the way I write and have a loyal following on social media.
So, if you have always wondered what principles I follow when it comes to building my personal brand through social writing, how I get opportunities from social media and how I am able to get people looking forward to my posts, then this is for you.
In the 55-paged book, I have tried to cover major topics I get asked questions on a lot like:
– How to start writing on social media even if you’re not a pro.
– What kind of content to create and a few ideas for you.
– Why you should take advantage of storytelling and how to start.
– And more, really.
At the end of some chapters, I have also included a form of exercise sheet that you can download and print out to help you gain more clarity while reading.
Does this sound like a book you’d need? I gotcha! ??
To download, just click on this link: DOWNLOAD THE ART OF SOCIAL WRITING and have your copy delivered to your inbox. If you do not find it in your inbox in ten minutes, check your promotions folder and move it to your Primary tab. Cheers!
P.S: And oh, it’s free! Yes, I know it’s crazy but it’s absolutely free. You’re welcome!