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Tag: Linkedin

  • Five great opportunities to explore on LinkedIn

    Five great opportunities to explore on LinkedIn

    LinkedIn is widely regarded as one of the most valuable social media platforms, known as the world’s largest professional network.

    Co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Vaillant, it was launched on May 5, 2003.

    With over a billion registered members from more than 200 countries and territories, LinkedIn is primarily used for professional networking, connecting job seekers with recruiters, and supporting career development.

    It offers numerous opportunities for personal and academic growth, allowing users to advance professionally by taking full advantage of the platform’s resources.

    Here are some of the opportunities to explore on LinkedIn:

    Personal branding

    You have the opportunity to increase the visibility of your brand on LinkedIn. You can build your brand exposure and connect with potential clients on the platform especially if you’re offering professional services that companies and organizations can’t do without.

    Employment opportunities

    On LinkedIn, you can find job and business opportunities as a lot of people have secured employment on the platform. Once you create a professional and well-detailed profile, and upload your CV which includes all of your certifications and maybe indicate the type of job you’re searching for, the platform will always notify you once any company or organization is recruiting in line with your certifications which will also grant you the opportunity of submitting your application.

    Motivation and mentorship

    Through the platform, you can follow professionals in your field. Following them grants you the opportunity of getting inspired which serves as a form of motivation to strive for the best. You also have the opportunity to learn from them and can have access to mentorship or guidance.

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    Build professional relationships

    LinkedIn allows members, both employers and employees to create profiles and connect in an online social network which may represent real-world professional relationships.

    Learn free professional courses

    There’s an app which is a subsidiary of LinkedIn where you can learn and study professional courses with approved certifications for free that can be added to your portfolio. The app is called “LinkedIn learning”. You have access to various courses in different fields and the learning is self-paced and flexible.

    You can also organize events, and write and publish articles. LinkedIn is a professional platform that offers various opportunities and its headquarters is in California.

  • Adequate preparation fuels great success – Ajayi

    Adequate preparation fuels great success – Ajayi

    LinkedIn Top Voice, social entrepreneur, and public health nurse, Oladotun Ajayi, has restated the importance of thorough preparation for students and youths during a networking event called LinkedIn Local Ogbomoso at the College of Health Sciences, LAUTECH, Ogbomoso, Oyo State on Saturday. 

    Ajayi, who spoke on the theme of the event “The future of work”, urged participants to prepare themselves for anticipated and unforeseen opportunities, stressing that such readiness significantly enhances their prospects for achieving substantial success and excelling in the competitive workforce.

    “Adequate preparation allows you to first plan ahead, and have an itinerary of things to do, having to understand what should come first and what should be next, preparing ahead is just the best fantastic way to have success in whatever you are trying to achieve in the workspace, asides that, once you’ve been able to identify what you need to do right from time, it’s actually going to make you understand how best to go about what it is you are doing,” he stressed. 

    Executive Director of Stanford Edge Limited, Olusola Owonikoko, emphasised the importance for young people to prioritise time management and imbibe valuable lessons during their school years. 

    He advised that cultivating these practices early on not only enhances personal growth but also lays a solid foundation for success in the workforce later in life.

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    “As young people we have a lot of time, and it is also the best time to maximize the time we have as one of the many we would have access to and one of the things I know is the habits that we pick up at this stage of our lives becomes our long-life habits, they become extremely difficult to break or change, so that’s why a significant part of our investments as young people, especially those in higher institution is to make sure they build good habits, habits like savings, reading, planning, understanding what socio and business etiquette means ahead of their professional life, all you do with all these determines where you’d end up after school, it’s not just always about what you studied, all other things you learnt will make you standout,” he stated. 

    He also advised that young people keep meaningful and supportive friendships, emphasising that one’s circle of friends can significantly influence their future outcomes. He said that it’s impossible to possess every necessary quality for success alone, these relationships, he noted, can facilitate smoother pathways to achieving personal and professional goals.

    “Friendship is almost everything, because your friends determines the kind of habits you pick up, your friends determine where you go and where you don’t, they determine the opportunities you have access to, so by all means, I advice that you are in a very progressive network, deliberately make new friends, and be very deliberate about cutting off friends that are not adding value to you” 

    Leadership coach, Tioluwanimi Obisesan emphasized that waiting for the perfect moment to pursue one’s dreams is fraught with danger and inevitably leads to wasted time. According to Obisesan, there’s never an ideal time to begin, the key is to take action and start moving towards set out goals without delay.

    “Out of my experience, the best thing I can tell you is just start, that dream, that vision you have, no matter how little, just start, as long as you have people around you that supports your dream, just start”

    Tech startup and Brand Design Agency founder, Victor Fatanmi shared similar insight with Obisesan, he emphasized that having a strong network and a prepared mindset are sufficient to begin their journey towards success.

    “You don’t have to be big before you start up your business or what you have in mind, just improvise, find something or someone who has what you need to start up, the company I own today started in a small container that doesn’t even belong to me, but due to the relationship I have with the owner, we were accommodated, and that was how we started, and look at where we are now, build good relationships with people” 

    In his concluding statement, Oladotun Ajayi expressed his profound gratitude to the speakers and attendees of the event adding that the gathering aimed to enlighten young minds and provide them with valuable networking opportunities to build a wealth of knowledge and start-up opportunities. 

    Participants departed from the event filled with belief and a strong desire to kickstart their dreams and aspirations with whatever resources they currently possess, confident that success is within reach.

  • Technology firm launches app that locates advertising targets on internet

    Technology Company, Dochase, has developed computer application software that is capable of locating consumers of certain kind advertisement on the internet and delivers it to them.

    Dochase is co-founded by two young Nigerian programmers, Chibuike Goodnews and Saint Germaine Onwukeme.

    “Over the years, we have discovered that 75 percent of media spending, especially on adverts is wasted, and this is because the advertisers are probably advertising to people that have no connection with what they want to project. You are probably advertising diaper to everybody in the society, whereas diaper is supposed to be advertised to nursing mothers,” Goodnews said.

    He said nursing mothers visit sites and consume media that talk about taking care of babies and how to handle infant issues. He said through the key words they use in their search; the technology can get insight of all the people who fall within the group of nursing mothers and push the diaper advert to them on those places they spend their time on the internet.

    He said when adverts are pushed out on the internet without identifying or having insights of the people the advert is intended for, it gets wasted.

    “We now looked at how we can solve all these things. We saw that a major way to solve it is let’s apply data to it. That is, we harness data of people who fall within that expected potential customer of each product and target them,” he said.

    Read Also: How innovative technology is driving retail industry

    He explained that while Nigeria probably has about 45 million people on the internet, “you cannot be advertising to 45 million people. You need a fraction of those people who are your direct and potential customers. And how do you know them, you need to get their insights. And that’s why we developed this technology that use data to bring out those kinds of insights,” he said.

    He explained that with the huge number of people on the internet, the technology is able to take it down to those people who have the potential to buy the products.

    He said an aspirant for instance who wants to reach people in his constituency in Lagos State, won’t need to advertise in Delta or the entire country because such advert will be misplaced.

    “We break it down, using our parameters to target only Lagos State.  For brands, it can be used to do media buying by getting insight of who should be your customers and creating campaign that will appeal to those people and using the right media that those people consume,” he explained.

    He said the technology can also categorize people into those who have the potential to do shopping, those who are likely to travel and other such groupings.

    “For somebody who has the potential to travel, you will be able to target your advert to them. For somebody who is doing real estate, you should be able to target people who have the potential to buy homes,” he explained.

    He said the technology is a win-win for all those involved in the chain.

    “Some media houses’ sources of revenue are dwindling. Some are moving online. This technology locates the niche people that are consuming your product. If the site is dedicated to probably real estate, the person that is targeting real estate will pay you more because he is targeting niche customers, that is real estate customers. Then the real estate publisher is earning more because he is getting more adverts that is targeted at specific people that his content appeal to,” he said.

    Onwukeme, on his part, said it is regrettable that a good number of publishers in Nigeria and Africa are still operating on the old form of media buying and media sales, while Europe and America are moving into programmatic.

    “Publishers need to understand that when you open up your website, which is like a piece of land you sell every day, you have 10,000 people that visit your website, so you have 10,000 people you can optimize.  Using Dochase, it helps you to open your inventory to multiple sources, whereby as we know the benefit of a free market, people tend to compete and get the best benefit,” he said.

    Dochase started its programmatic business two years ago as a Nigerian business, now becoming a programmatic influencer in Africa. It recently represented Africa in the global gathering of advertising technologies including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn which held in Germany.
  • Russia starts blocking LinkedIn website after court ruling

    Russia starts blocking LinkedIn website after court ruling

    Russia’s communications regulator on Thursday ordered Internet service providers to block public access to the website of social networking company LinkedIn.

    It said that the order came to ensure the company complied with a court ruling that found it guilty of violating data laws.

    Roskomnadzor, the watchdog, said it was acting to protect Russian Internet users’ data.

    Russian law requires websites which store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so on Russian servers, something it said LinkedIn did not do.

    LinkedIn, headquartered in the U.S., has over six million registered users in Russia.

    It is the first major social network to be blocked by Russian authorities, setting a precedent for the way foreign Internet firms operate.

    Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Ampelonsky said that LinkedIn’s site would become unavailable in Russia within a day.

    One Internet service provider, Rostelcom, was quick to say it had already blocked access to the site.

    However, LinkedIn could not be immediately reached for comment.

    It said in a statement earlier this month that the decision risked denying access to its site for millions of Russian members, including companies, who use it to grow their businesses.

    The law requiring websites which store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so on Russian servers was introduced in 2014, but never previously enforced.

    Critics see the move against LinkedIn as part of an attack on social networks in a country which has increasingly tightened control over the Internet in recent years.

  • Lagos Senator distances self from fake Social media account

    Lagos Senator distances self from fake Social media account

    The Senator representing Lagos East Senatorial District, Senator Gbenga Ashafa has dissociated self from a LinkedIn account reportedly used to defraud unsuspecting Nigerians in his name.
    The Senator on Sunday night announced that ‘the account in question has been sending private messages to unsuspecting people, promising them jobs’.
    Speaking through another social media account, Twitter, Ashafa said: “It has come to my attention that a LinkedIn account purporting to be mine has been committing fraud in my name.
    “I can assure you that my humble self has never or will never deceive or deprive people of their hard-earned money under false pretenses”.

     

     

  • Social media summit for journalists

    Social media summit for journalists

    Everything Journalism – a group on the professional network, Linkedin.com – and its adjunct, The Journalism Clinic, in collaboration with United Bank for Africa (UBA) plc is hosting a one-day social media summit to boost the capacity of Nigerian journalists to maximally use the social media for news gathering, building online communities and engaging with their audiences.

    Tagged: “Functional Social Networking for Nigerian journalists”, it will hold tomorrow, at the Amphitheatre, UBA House, 57 Marina, Lagos.

    “We have seen the creative disruption happening in the media space. It is important that Nigerian media professionals get a clear understanding of this process and how to take advantage of it. We hope that by hosting this high profile discussion for the media, a clear path way will be mapped for the Nigerian media industry,” said Phillips Oduoza, MD/CEO UBA Plc while explaining why the bank decided to sponsor and host the event.

    Convener, Taiwo Obe, founder and moderator of the EveythingJournalism group and director of The Journalism Clinic, stated that at the end of the summit, not only would journalists “be more social-media friendly and savvy, media owners, a number of whom have indicated their participation at the summit, should also have the zeal to change their mindsets to operate more efficiently, and profitably, in the digital age.”