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05.07.2021 Feature Article

How We Can Use Soft Skills To Generate Income On Social Media – A Personal Experience

How We Can Use Soft Skills To Generate Income On Social Media – A Personal Experience
05.07.2021 LISTEN

Early this morning, I set out from bed to empty my bowel. Usually, I spend some time to scroll and read content of interest on social media and on this occasion, it was Facebook. I logged in and I was immediately greeted with a text on Tell-It-All (a social media group page).

It reads:

'What is the worst thing you overheard while pretending to be asleep?'.

Having read it, a story hit me at once; it was as if I was taken by the spirit. I've harboured dreams of writing but I just didn't know what to write about. Sometimes I started writing the next moment, I tossed the script aside. This is where I'd agree with Manasseh Azure Awuni (an investigative journalist and author) that "Sex and writing have something in common.

It's called MOOD."

So this time, I entered that writing mood and recounted a story of a funeral I had attended. It was a simple plot. Then I posted it in response to Abdul Wahud's question on Tell-It-All.

As we speak, the story I narrated has received so much love, likes, care and laughter emojis - more than half a thousand of them and still counting! Besides, all the accompanying comments were positive - up to 270 plus. This is news to me because not even my best pictures have ever received 250 likes in a day, let alone weeks. My recent graduation pictures garnered about 289 likes and that was achieved after several days.

The most exciting part is that, I have received a lot of friend requests and a number of people wanting me to take them through writing skills. Three writers (one of which is a researcher and university Don) have made contact and already we have agreed that I proofread their works - one has even sent me his manuscript!

Even though I felt so encouraged, I believe the greater fulfillment is the feeling that I made quite a number of people's day, putting a smile on their faces through the narrative.

There is this old perception about us, Africans or the Blackman as a person who abhors reading - so they'd say 'hide important things in the books and the Blackman will never find it." I think this perception is erroneous partly because majority of us either enjoy stories with simple plots or something we that can identify with. Otherwise, if the perception holds true, we may want to cultivate a reading habit beginning with reading soft news or the human interest stories other than hardcore Shakespeare drama or Charles Dickens books and so on. Perhaps those who communicate for organizations that rely on highly technical words for their operations might want to adopt a simple story-telling technique to communicate effectively to the wider publics.

That's just by the way.

What I'm trying to say in all these is that social media is a powerful tool. Let's be wise about how we use it.

BY Francis Sanusi

Development Communications Practitioner

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