Workshop

The essentials & power of Blogging and Social Media #MasakuTraining

Machakos training, #MasakuTraining, Blogging and social media
Participants during the #MasakuTraining

On Saturday the 23rd of July, we took the blogging training to Machakos county

Many of the attendants turned out to be people who haven’t started their own blog, but are keen to embark on this journey. The training was facilitated by Shitemi Khamadi and Kennedy Kachwanya.

We kicked off the training at 10am and the first part of the training was steered by Shitemi. He touched on the Do’s and don’ts of blogging – the need to create original content and avoid plagiarising and understanding the different social media platforms in order to be good at it. He mentioned that one does not have to be good in all platforms but to choose those platforms that will give them an upper hand. He cited planning how to create content as the core aspect of the blogging journey.

On the legal aspects of blogging, he took the time to explain the implications of using blogging and social media platforms irresponsibly. He cautioned the participants against retweeting and sharing posts as this makes them liable in a court of law, even when you have the popularly used “retweets are not endorsements” disclaimer on your profile.

Participants were encouraged to always post facts and not fabricated stories on their online platforms. They were informed that taking up the role of a group admin on social media, comes with a lot of responsibility – more than most people realise. He ended by cautioning participants to be careful what they put online. Because, if it is online it will most definitely be found.

When Kennedy Kachwanya took to the stage after the lunch break, it was to talk about the power of Blogging and Social Media. Running a blog is not enough. One has to work hard towards having it recognised if it is to have any impact on the society. Each blog post, each social media update should tell a story, he said. And not just a story but a compelling a story. This is the secret to building traffic whether on your blog or on your social media platforms.

Kachwanya also touched on the Marketing side of blogging. He highlighted the key ways of marketing ie use of tags, use of social media share buttons, commenting on other blogs and optimizing your blog as some of the most effective ways of marketing a blog.

Even as we came to the end of the training, it became apparent that the participants would not have minded having to seat for another hour or two just to learn more about blogging. The unfortunate thing was the limited time we had on our side. This did not however deter the attendants from asking numerous questions. What helped a great deal is that both facilitators made the sessions quite engaging and this made the training all the more productive.

The training came to an end at 6.00pm.

Some of the feedback we received from twitter during the training include the following;

Check out more tweets that were sent on the #MasakuTraining hashtag.