Bukola Opanuga, a digital marketing strategist, runs an agency called Modavate in Atlanta Georgia. She is helping businesses leverage the power of the internet to grow their businesses, engage and attend to stakeholders and also increase profits. Adetorera Idowu reports.
Though Bukie, as she prefers being called left Nigeria for the United States several years ago, she is visiting Nigeria to partner with Top Village to motivate women through a series of workshops in order to train them on skills and opportunities in the New Media space.
“I’m speaking on marketing of brands to the world and helping people think more from a global perspective. We are targeting not just those in media but also young enthusiasts interested in new media. Some young women have talents in speaking, writing and creating videos. I’ll be helping them take those skills to create original content, put it on the web and make a good income, or at the very least position themselves for great positions in companies they might be a part of,” she said.
Bukie’s agency Modavate, has overtime built a strong resume by helping brands like ZTE (Mobile device manufacturer from India) and the Nigerian Consulate of Atlanta to create strong digital presence.
Her aim of coming to Nigeria is to help women, especially those who are unemployed think outside the box. “We all have digital devices and sometimes you don’t realise the power of that thing in your hand, we spend a lot of time on facebook and twitter joking and having fun, but you really could have a career, if you have the interest and passion in one of these many things that you can do on new media,” Bukie explained.
Her passion for digital marketing and entrepreneurship started years ago as an engineering undergraduate. After taking a basic html class, she started designing websites for friends and family.
She later went on to get an associate in Mathematics and Bachelors in Business with a focus on entrepreneurship. To further hone her skills, she got her masters in Internet marketing. It was right after that she decided to set up her own agency and was successful at creating websites for businesses.
But her client’s growing concern with marketing and growing visibility for these websites created, inspired her to expand into digital marketing.
Commenting on the growth of the digital marketing space in Nigeria she said: “There are a lot of opportunities and there’s still a lot of room for training, education and awareness for business owners and entrepreneurs on what the possibilities are. I think if there’s a lot more awareness and people are seeing more results, they’ll be more interested in those opportunities.
“The statistics from last year is that 90percent of consumers in developed worlds make buying decisions after doing online searches, but even in Africa we are catching on very quickly as we now have websites where people can have reviews. It is growing rapidly and we are going to see quite a spike in the near future.”
She advised business owners, to try to harness the power of the internet, understand the opportunities and the fact that they exist and also employ the use of social media.
She also encouraged businesses looking to have better engagement online and a stronger digital strategy to look to serve mobile customers because a large majority of customers do not wait until they have access to their laptops or desktops to access the internet.
Bukie is not stopping, with her passion for helping women discover a career in New Media; she is using her agency, Modavate, to train businesses to create very strong digital strategy that can compete on a global space.
She encouraged women to harness the opportunities by learning programming languages and basic site development and also getting freelance jobs online, “There are market places online where you can enroll, take one or two tests and start bidding on jobs and I have had to do that in the past, when I was still freelancing. What happens in those market places is that if you do those jobs and do them well, you can get better reviews and you have more people wanting to work with you. If you’re very diligent you can buy a book, or get on websites where you can learn to code for free.
“If you want to go as far as learning php, you’ll even be hotter on the market bec
ause there are lot of sites and content management systems that are built on these languages and they are not going to go away anytime soon. If you are a designer and like to create designs in Photoshop there are a lot of projects that you can possibly get once you get those skills and the good part is that you can learn these things for free. Most agencies are not looking for a degree or certificate; they are looking for someone who can do the work.”
She advised women to take full advantage of the opportunities online by making a financial commitment to learn by going to cybercafés if they have to and soak in as much knowledge as they can.
And to those who still believe that the grass is greener on the other side; “If you want to be in New Media I think you have a lot more opportunities in Nigeria. You can acquire the skill and get freelance jobs without adding the extra cost of visa, travel and accommodation. If, you’re going there to get a job, you would have to get an education, even if you’ve already gone to school in Nigeria. There are many resources available to you with just internet connection” She concludes.
Source : The Nation
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