by Doyin Jaiyesimi

On Wednesday July 25, 2012, yet another milestone was accomplished when The Future Awards held the extraordinary Online Business Master Class for bloggers and New Media entrepreneurs.

The training which held at the Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, brought together various individuals – bloggers, copy editors, IT enthusiasts, writers, and social media users together with some of Nigeria’s most influential personalities online.

“We are impressed with the training which everyone can see has been a huge success. We are grateful to our facilitators for obliging us their time and to participants for coming. The level of impact has been simply amazing,” said Chude Jideonwo, Executive Director of The Future Project.

The training began with the Chief Information Officer of Daily Times, Mr Cheta Nwanze speaking on the topic: ‘Getting your Technology Right.’ He outlined various tips for generating traffic such as consistency, building content with the intended audience in mind, and active Social Media updates directing users to the site.

Nigeria’s super blogger, Linda Ikeji stayed true to her girl-next-door persona speaking extempore. She traced her history in blogging and revealed the many challenges she had to overcome to become the established blogger that she is. She maintained that her consistency over the years is what gave her the edge. She spoke about her passion for blogging, the time and sacrifices she made to achieve success. When it comes to making money from blogging, Ikeji confessed, “Not many people can make money from blogging, but believe me, there is money to be made.”

Mr. Chude Jideonwo, Editor-in-Chief of YNaija.com and Executive Director of The Future Project speaking on the topic: ‘Standards Still Matter’ emphasized the need to adopt a high standard of practice in online communications. He explained that because New Media is still evolving, the standards for the platform were still being formed. He noted that even established and well respected traditional media such as CNN make embarrassing blunders, therefore it should be understood when new media practitioners also make occasional mistakes.

Jideonwo concluded by revealing some success nuggets: good grammar, accuracy, humility in accepting mistakes, correction, creativity, consistency, self-imposed limitation when in doubt of news authenticity, and observance of extant copyright laws.

Edidong Umoh, founder of Nigeria’s fastest breaking News Service @NigeriaNewsDesk spoke on the topic: ‘Location is Irrelevant’ and engaged the audience in a hands-on-training as he showed participants how to use Google Reader to monitor Internet content, while admonishing them to get ready for criticism as they launch online businesses.

Japheth Omojuwa, who spoke on ‘How to Build an Online Personality,’ explained that his online influence is proportional to the increase in his financial status. He urged the participants to strategize and take time to build a consistent online brand and stick to it; he also clearly stated that one criteria for success is to focus on out-doing self.

Founder of 360Nobs, Noble Igwe, was all business when he spoke about pulling audiences online and offline. He started by preparing the participants’ minds that there is no guaranteed way to achieve success in blogging. He went on to list some key attributes which aspiring bloggers must imbibe to succeed such as: strength, topic, speed to market, push, and consistency.

The event, which was streamed live on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #TFAMasterClass was trending on the former while the event was on.

“It gave us great pleasure to trend for hours on twitter, however we were more pleased that people who couldn’t be at the training for one reason or the other could still benefit,” Chude Jideonwo said.

The Future Awards Season 7 takes place on August 26, 2012 with a reception for the nominees taking place first on August 4, 2012.