I few days ago I read an article on Public Relations (PR), titled The Submarine. I was surprised to read that Public Relations is cheaper than advertising. I made an immediate decision to concentrate on Public Relations as a means of promoting the Nairaland Forum! It is the cheap smart thing to do.

Public Relations practitioners "make use of the media to convey messages to the public ... with the intention of influencing public opinion and action." (wikipedia). The underlying idea is that you're trying to influence a large body of people by selling your message to people who have access to those people. In other words, '[I]influencing influencial people'.

Press Relations is an important part of public relations, because people pay a lot of attention to the news. The typical Nigerian newspaper, sells 50,000-100,000 copies every day. Millions listen to TV news every day. If we can get people in the media excited about our site, we can get our message out to hundreds of thousands of people. I think that's nice.

The Internet equivalents of the newspaper editor include:[list][li]Newsletter Publisher; Owns an announcement-only e-mail list (e.g. Gsm-Today).[/li]
[li]Blogger; Someone who owns a weblog (a sort of online diary like this one)[/li]
[li]Webmaster; The person responsible for updating and maintaining a website.[/li]
[li]Mailing List Administrator; the person who manages a mailing list (e.g. yahoo groups).[/li][/list]

If a newsletter publisher gets excited about our forum, he might write about it in his newsletter. If a blogger gets excited about our forum, he [I]will[/I] write about it on his blog and link to it. If a webmaster gets excited about our forum, he might link to it from his site. A mailing list adminstrator who loves our forum will probably allow us to advertise the site on his list. These are all forms of Internet PR.

Cyber-cafe Attendants/Administrators:
People working in cyber-cafes have the ability to influence people who browse at their cafes. A lot Nigerians rely on cyber-cafes for Internet access. If we can get a lot of cyber-cafe attendants excited about Nairaland, they will start recommending the forum to their customers en masse. Cyber-cafe attendants are influential people too!

Here are some possible action plans:[list][li]Create content that is especially useful to cyber-cafe staff members[/li][li]Create content that advices cyber-cafe customers on how to solve common problems that they would normally refer to the cyber-cafe attendants. By directing their customers to our forum to reduce some of the stress their work entails.[/li][/list]

Special note: Please feel free to interrupt my monologues to give more suggestions.

Who Are We?

Is Nairaland Seun Osewa? Is Nairaland the House of Reps? Is Nairaland a not-for-profit group of people dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge among Nigerians, or is it a for-profit entity? We need to define who we are while relating with the press or other influencers. We need to invent and cultivate a consistent and attractive image.

[I]Here's what I think we are at the moment:[/I]
[s]Nairaland.com is an Internet discussion forum where Nigerians meet to discuss issues and share useful information about every aspect of life. It is managed by a Seun Osewa, a professional web administrator, and a dedicated group of volunteers known as the 'Nairaland House of Representatives'.[/s] [editor: this has expired.]

What will be the benefit for you apart from self satisfaction if the whole world visits your website and you do not make a dime from it. I am not asking you to go commercial against your wish but this prompts me to ask a question that has been bugging me for a while. How does yahoo break even whit so many free users? They are getting bigger and more popular and smiling to the bank at the same time! Sooner or later the traffic will be too much to handle.

What will be the benefit for you apart from self satisfaction if the whole world visits your website and you do not make a dime from it. I am not asking you to go commercial against your wish but this prompts me to ask a question that has been bugging me for a while. How does yahoo break even whit so many free users? They are getting bigger and more popular and smiling to the bank at the same time! Sooner or later the traffic will be too much to handle.

Delarontus, I have a plan to make money from the site. Let me assure you that my server setup is designed to be able to take a lot of load (website administration is what I do!)

[s]But I feel that it's best to have a group of users whos goal is to make the site successful in helping the users independent of whether I make money or not . That is what the reps are here for.[/s]

Update: See How Much to Charge Nairaland Users

(This post has been moved from the Reps forum.)

seun ow can somone's profil get deletd or some posts deletd?

You should read this before you venture into public relations:


Public Relation - On Overview: http://articlesng.com/public-relation-overview/

The Effectiveness of Public Relations in Service Industries in Nigeria: http://articlesng.com/effectiveness-public-relations-service-industries-nigeria/

Public Relations as a Management Function:
http://articlesng.com/public-relations-management-function/

An Analysis of the Uses and Abuses of Public Relation in Management: http://articlesng.com/analysis-abuses-public-relation-management/

The Role of Public Relations in Improving Nigeria Internation Trade:
http://articlesng.com/role-public-relations-improving-nigeria-international-trade/