When I read this article on bloggers in Kenya titled, “Bloggers seek to reduce defamatory content on social networking sites,” posted on Business Daily, I thought good luck with that. The blog-sphere is not privately owned and no one can really wake up one morning and decide that from today hence forth only content of your liking can be posted.
I understand what BAKE intends to do and their good intentions if actualized can go along way into promoting creation of better Kenyan content from local bloggers. What we seem to be forgetting is that I do not have to be geographically based in Kenya or be a Kenyan citizen to have a blog that spreads malice and hate amongst Kenyans. So how does CCK in all its wisdom intend to control such content from being shared on the world wide web.
Engage Bloggers in Kenya
Instead of policy makers spending sleepless nights thinking of sophisticated ways to gag bloggers, why not make good use of this resourceful group of people.
The National Cohesion and Integration Commission’s website has a dead forum, so how does it engage Kenyans online. Why not start a blog, you already know blogging in Kenya works.Get bloggers who already have a following to contribute on certain issues which you want to spread to the larger online community. This kind of actions will make your positive information be spread widely across the social media platforms
The only way any you can control what people see or read about your or your area of interest is by creating content constantly. This means that no matter what any body else writes about you, only your generated content will readily available in the searches. We all know that majority of us do not read search engine page results beyond page 1, so if I were to search for information on Kenya, then the only content I should get is that which promotes Kenya as a peaceful and vibrant business location.
Challenge Bloggers in Kenya to create and share more meaningful local content
Kenyan Bloggers themselves have to learn to support those amongst them who have great local content or useful content. Read, comment and share will be the best way to encourage others to contribute in creating more Kenyan content which we greatly need. I do not have to know a blogger personally to contribute to their blog, heck most of the re-known international bloggers we follow and religiously read their content we have never met them.
I read blog posts in my areas of interest, social media, business blogging, SEO, inbound marketing, and the list continues. So instead of being close minded why not think way outside the box and encourage more Kenyans to blog in their areas of expertise, interests and locality.
Let us see more blogs on beautiful places in Kenya, Kenyan Culture, Kenyan rich history, etc use bloggers in Kenya to promote national cohesion, through sharing content of national interest.
Yes, bloggers need to be engaged in national discussions and need to blog content that is relative to our peculiar Kenyan problems. Many of us don’t do this, but the few who do it have done it well time and again. Thanks for this eye opener. There is much we can do for our motherland. Top on this list is promote peaceful coexistence and national cohesion. We do not want to get back to the 2007-08 times.
Hi Emmanuel,
I total agree it is only through combined effort that we as Kenyans can avoid a repeat of 2007-08 dark days.
Thank you for contributing
This look like blogging tied in with SEO and I believe this puts the cart before the horse. There are many things that go into blogging, with that basics of things like – the Internet and How to blog – not being available to the people who actually need to have a voice.
Blogs are in many ways personal public diaries and they work because they are that way; that is what makes and keeps them interesting. So, my idea is instead of trying to get bloggers who have a following to contribute on certain issues, get the experts who know and can explain the issues to blog (as opposed to yapping for 10 seconds in the news), and the following will come. Trust me, I will not regard a national cohesion article from a tech blogger as serious or well researched…if you get my drift. And I believe in the west, it works that way because you rarely get bloggers suddenly getting off topic because of a certain national issue, unless the issue in some way directly affects the genre or main topic of their blog. You blog what you know and our issue is that the people who know do not blog. Any ideas on how to counter that?
The idea is to have the national cohesion guys engage guest bloggers for their blog. This way I dont have to go off topic on my blog, but on their site i can contribute and direct my readers to their site through social media.