VOF WEEK 3 (A BREAKTHROUGH IN COMMUNICATION)
Jan 21, 2015
Story
I was introduced to the essentials of blogging during the March 2008 Women, Action and the Media conference held in Boston Massachusetts, USA.
During the introduction session almost all the participants were Bloggers. The conference brings together progressive women media professional and students to discuss ways to improve women’s visibility in the media. I started blogging by the end of 2008.
During the American Presidential campaigns, I followed a program where some racist with bias talked about Obama not being fit for the white house with reference to his color. I felt it was downright irritating to watch racist delve on the issue of color to determine his leadership prowess and ignoring his intellect, intuition and charisma. I was spurred to write an article captioned ‘Is Obama Fit to Rule’? I posted the story to the Obama for America website and equally created my blog.
Getting to blogspot.com I realized the procedure was not as complicated. In fact, the computer is an amazing toy with its tutorial tendency enabling one to play around with it- you ask questions and directives and get response. It equally inquires from you what exactly you need to perform. Cool!
I started exploring the dashboard bearing in mind what other blogs looked like but striving to make my blog unique in appearance. I now download pictures to add to my stories and I can edit and update old post.
My challenge was to improve on the aesthetics to make my blog attractive. I became acquainted with the customize tool and discovered I could add, arrange and rearranged page elements by adding basic gadgets like newsreel, digital clock and calendar and most of all display chips from Google video and You Tube. I succeeded in transferring my YouTube interview to my blog for readers to watch the interview and other downloads without leaving the page.
Personally, this blog stuff is like a dairy and archives that includes photo gallery too. Perhaps due to the critical nature of my views and opinions, like those that carries the despicable aspects of our president’s regime, stories that I could not publish through the media outlets I correspond with I publish in my blog and even those published plus my activities.
My next target is to monetize my blog by setting up ‘AdSense’ to display relevant ads in my sidebar and post as a means to earn revenue. I guess to captivate potential ads my blog should be accessible and interesting to appeal to many readers.
I have sent my link to some friends inviting them to visit my blog. A colleague in Cameroon was quite impressed and said he had wanted to create a blog but had no idea how to go about it. I schooled him on the procedure.
It is quite interesting the way after posting, the blog arranges itself in an organized manner and the contents are arranged in a chronological order thus, anyone visiting the post is able to explore and browse without hassle.