Nigerian Brand Websites Need to be on the Cutting Edge!

This is a real quick post. I'm even typing it while sitting in a car on the road out from Abuja. I was just going through "the web designer mag" a UK web design publication. You can check out the mag at http://www.webdesignermag.co.uk. And I realised how much Nigerian brands only care about having a web presence and they don't bother on being on the cutting edge of the web.

So the first question I think we should answer here is; "do Nigerian websites (brand and product sites) really need to be on the cutting edge?", "Is it worth it for them?" I would give a big YES as answer to both questions. Here are my reasons.

11 million Nigerians online, so as a brand in Nigeria, the web is a marketing and even soon payment channel you dare not neglect.

"So would an ordinary web presence do?" Nope sorry it won't do my firend!

As a company, brand or product, apart from web presence (making people able to find you online even if its only a single HTML page), there are so many messages you can use your website to convey to the consumer. One of them is having the consumer understand you or your product more. You can use web videos for this. Another thing is Interactivity, or being able to listen to your users and give them feedback and being able to improve your product and brand based on info you gather from consumer input.

The newest Mountain Dew drink was all made by users on the web. Mountain Dew makers opened up and listened to consumers on what they would love the drink to taste like. I believe soon, majority (if not all) products would be designed and built with direct consumer involvement in the direction and decision on how the product will be.

So as a brand, you have to have an interactive site that lets your consumers say what they feel about your product and also have them collaborate on some disscussions that you would fall back to when making product decisions. The easiest way to do this is by integrating already social platforms like Facebook connect or Twitter's @anywhere or Twitter connect.

In other news.....
Coincidentally, I just made a quick stop at Mr Biggs, UAC foods (I am not sure what their name is these days). We are at kaduna bypass, It's around 1:30 pm and I haven't eaten any breakfast. I walked into the Mr Biggs and I just couldn't stop my mouth from watering. The Eureka moment came when I thought, how could Mr Biggs use the web to give a customer (a website visitor) a similar experience to what I am having right now? Of course it's not easy for them to make every website visitor's mouth water like mine, but they can still use the web to make you want their product by designing their websiteon the cutting edge with the latest of web technology that would be able to allow for such experience. I am sure a great flash script with some sense of design would get the job done.

I haven't visited Mr Biggs' website before, neither have I searched for it, but I will try and check them out as soon as I have a connection (that is if they do have a website).

So, I'm just saying!

Nigerian Brands can use cutting edge technology in web design to get more people (11 million users online) interested in their products, give their product fans a great experience and a place to hang out online and ultimately make their product better by involving passionate customers/users of their product.

That's not all Nigerian Brands can use the web for. I promised this post to be short, but I promise I will find time to do a detailed post about ways Nigerian brands can use the web.

P.S just used my Effd Up Internet connection to check mrbiggsonlin.com. The site is pretty cool I must say, but can still do better. But UAC foods main site is not as impressive to me.

P.P.S. Thanks http://nigerianbrands.blogspot.com for the image. Had to rip it off your site folks because its the best fit I can find for the post. Thanks guys.

Nairaland Reaches A Milestone: Half A Million Users

Nairaland has been Nigeria's most visited website for a long time (though it has been losing ground recently to job search sites and news sites like jobberman.com and 234next.com plus some newspaper sites).

Recently, Nairaland hit more than 500,000 registered users. This is a huge milestone considering Nairaland allows people to view it's content without registering. If the content was restricted to registered users only, then I believe they userbase will grow bigger and almost double.

This is good news for Nigerian startups, it shows the userbase is there, you only need to smartly find a way to capture it. You can learn from Nairaland's strategies which we would be looking at on this blog. Make sure you subscribe to get the next post on how you can get 500,000 users for your Nigerian site.

You Need User Recommendation to go Viral. So Go Find Those Passionate Users.

The title is really long. But I will try to keep the post as short as I can.

My previous post is supposed to be part of a series I am working on about "Nigerian startups and how they fit in Globally". I will continue with the series shortly, however, I need to squeeze in this post in-between due to some recent happenings in my startup's social media marketing.

Back to today's post.

Today's post is focussed on the power of Passionate users (people that love your product or idea) and how it can push to the roof your marketing, the efficiency of your product development and your market understanding.

How do you find or make passionate users? The truth is, you don't even need to have a product to find people passionate about what you are working on, some people can fall in love with your product the moment they hear about the idea. And they will talk about and recommend you and your product to everyone they know.

To increase your chances of having such passionate prospective users, you need to be active on the social networks. Facebook, Twitter and may be LinkedIn. You need to engage and discuss with your target audience. Some of them will hit you with a conversation, while the rest you will have to talk to first before they respond.

So what makes users passionate and how can their passion help you and your business?
They are mainly your perfect customer. The perfect fit for your product. The people that reallyyy need your product. The people you thought about when you came across your product idea. They may be just like you with the same interest and same perspective on the market.

Above describes exactly what makes up a prospective passionate user of your product. But you need to bring out the passion in the users by connecting with them, discussing with them and getting to know them on a personal level(very important).

They can promote your business across social networks and the rest of the web, they can get you content from friends, may be, and they make good team members because they share your belief and enthusiasm.

Your passionate users will do a lot for you and every business needs them.

HOW TO GO VIRAL!!!!

Going viral is the ultimate peak of every marketing and the number one rule is, NO BUSINESS, IDEA OR VIDEO CAN GO VIRAL WITHOUT PASSIONATE USERS.

I don't believe there is another way around going viral than utilizing your passionate users.

To create a viral campaign, you have to have people (passionate people) that will share whatever you want to go viral with all their trustees and friends on the various popular platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and more. This will ignite the initial spread of the viral campaign.

(The post is becoming long, I need to round up).

Ok. Now, before you reach any conclusions, building a viral campaign can not be complete with only passionate users. You need more than that, You need to build a strategy. But you can't do it without passionate user.

Finally, the only thing that guarantees you of getting many passionate users is a much needed product (product with high demand and if you are a first mover), or any great idea.

Spend most of your time on making sure your product rocks before you invest your time in any viral campaign.