Lessons in strategy: The Ladun Liadi Blog [Another Perspective by Oluwole Leigh]

By Oluwole Leigh

Over the last few years, there has been a rapid increase in the collection of information from sources other than traditional news Media. The common trajectory is for a story to come out online, generate a lot of page views and eventually make it to the front page of the dailies. Most of these stories would ordinarily have been overlooked by traditional media because of their lack of ‘newsworthiness’.

But readers are no longer content to allow newspapers define ‘newsworthiness’ for them. They have the power to pick and choose which stories would grab their attention. Some of these blogs/online mediums include BellaNaija, Linda Ikeji blog, Ladun Liadi Blog, theNET.ng.

Based on Alexa rankings*, Linda Ikeji Blog could be said to be the most Influential of these platforms. The blog is named after the owner and it occupies a pride of place in fashion, lifestyle and gossip news coverage. The blog started out as an information repository for celebrity gossip but has morphed into a regular destination for advertising campaigns.

According to Alexa, The Ladun Liadi Blog is the 37th most visited site in Nigeria. Within a few years, the Ladun Liadi blog has come close to providing close competition to Linda Ikeji’s Blog. It is not uncommon for readers to compare stories on one blog to another. Since the level of fact-checking on most of these blogs is very low, readers are forced to believe that the appearance of a particular piece of news on both sites increases its credibility. How did Ladun Liadi build her followership? How did she get her blog to become a veritable rival to Linda’s blog?  Are there lessons to be learned from Ladun’s accomplishments?  I have summarized Ladun’s breakout Sstrategy under the following points

Who are you? (Personality)

Ladun’s blog makes no pretensions of being intellectual in nature. Ladun’s blog is built around her personality. Glimpses of her nature can be seen in the short commentaries that accompany her news stories. While Linda’s image is built around her beauty and humble background, Ladun comes across as a tough character who gives as good as she gets. Her image in the early days was that of one who would come out victorious in any street fight. This contentious nature is seen in a lot of her stories in the early days where she sets a tone for the negative comments that would follow. It was not unusual to see the comments on her stories end up as a slang-fest. Abusive words would be used on the character in the story as well as Ladun, the writer of the story. Recently, she uploaded a picture of herself in a post and one of her readers accused her of ‘reverse-bleaching’. Ironically, the continuous exchange of words became a key factor in driving user engagement.

Build Loyalty

In spite of the fact that Ladun came later than others to the blog party, her blog was able to quickly establish a loyal base. Her commenters had become used to the abuse sessions and constantly came back for more. Her loyal commenters saw her blog as a place with which they could make their influence felt instead of joining the hundreds of commenters on Linda’s blog. A certain commenter with the moniker ‘Lucabracee’ could be said to her number one fan. His comments remain hard hitting and non-conformist.  His comments are eagerly awaited by readers on the blog since they often change the tone previously set by other commenters. It is noteworthy that Linda’s blog also has ‘Bonario Nnags’ who is the equivalent of Ladun’s Lucabracee.

Stalk your subject (The Toke Makinwa effect)

Over the last few years, Linda has developed relationships with most celebrities and is able to get firsthand information from them.  In the absence of these established relationships, Ladun hedged her bets by following a couple of celebrities closely and consistently delivering exclusives on them. These exclusives were usually sourced from Facebook updates, Twitter updates and Instagram pictures. Some of these popular names include Toke Makinwa and Annie Macaulay-Idibia.  Annie Macaulay-Idibia was on Ladun’s radar while she enjoyed a spike in popularity witnessed by her marriage to 2face Idibia. After a while, the Annie Idibia popularity wave died down and Ladun concentrated her efforts on Toke Makinwa. Within the period of November 2013 and December 2013, Ladun published about 588 stories and Toke Makinwa featured in 21 of these stories.  In 2013, Ladun published about 70 posts on Toke Makinwa while Linda published 52 posts.  Since Ladun’s publishing output is only about half of Linda’s, she has to show consistency with her choice of characters. The consistency shown in the coverage of Toke Makinwa coupled with the rise in popularity of the subject herself has resulted in increased Page Views.

Charity begins at home

Nigeria is a complex entity made up of various ethnic groupings and languages. More often than not, identities are built around the part of the country where an individual is from.  An individual who is from your neck of the woods is seen as ‘your brother/ sister’. This issue results in a coloration of public discourse by ethnic/tribal sentiments. Ladun realizes this fact and makes sure that she is an authority on celebrity news from her ethnic group. Newsmakers such Iyabo Ojo, Fathia Balogun, Saheed Balogun, Oba Saheed Elegushi, Oga Bello, Bukky Wright, Foluke Daramola, Bisi Ibidapo Obe, Eniola Badmus feature regularly on her blog. The blog is able to source news directly from these personalities before stories break out in the public. The blog is also quick to make these links evident as can be seen in the story on Oba Saheed Elegushi in January 2013.

Do the Simple things

In the absence of major news stories on her blog, she reverts to the foundational concepts of celebrity blogging. Some of these simple concepts would include posting Press releases from celebrities, fashion advice and ‘Who wore it better’ stories.  The effect of ‘Who wore it better’ stories is such that user engagement is increased. Readers are able to express divergent opinions on celebrity fashion choices and readers are often found to engage in further discussions with each other based on the previous comments displayed.

Show me my Comments

In the early days of the blog, there was no comment moderation on the site. It was a free for all show for commenters. As web traffic to her site increased, comment moderation was enabled. In spite of the fact that comments are moderated, they often appear almost soon after the stories are posted. The practice of ‘comment harvesting’ often seen on the Linda Ikeji blog in which comments on major stories are delayed is not seen on Ladun’s blog. The story with the highest number of comments on the blog this year has less than 200 comments. It remains to be seen if she’ll continue to publish comments immediately when they start hitting the thousands.

Sex

Olamide in his hit song ‘Durosoke’ sang ‘Abi Soosi Dipa Laif lo n lo ni’? He was asking if the lady was a member of a particular conservative church because of her stiffness. Looking through the posts of 2012, one could safely conclude that Ladun was a ‘Dipa Laif’ member. Her posts were hard-hitting without any hint of sexual passion. In 2013, posts describing various parts of the female anatomy and male genitalia started showing up frequently. A lot of readers associated the new sexual tone with influence from the Linda Ikeji Blog. While the reason behind the change may be debatable, the effect is not. Her readership is able to relate to the new flavor of the blog and this is evident among the comments

Michael Porter defines strategy as the creation of a unique and valuable position.  The Ladun Liadi Blog has successfully carved out a unique position in the Nigerian Media Space.

* Alexa Rankings are not regarded as a fair representation of Website traffic because their analysis is based on traffic coming from Users who have Alexa Toolbars installed.