Blogging isn’t something that just came about within the last year, it’s actually something that has been around since 1994. While blogs became mainstream in 2010 with over 152 million blogs online, it is still a medium that hasn’t really taken off in the Caribbean and for good reason. It begs the question to be asked, is blogging relevant in the Caribbean? I decided to break this down into a list of 5 reasons why it is relevant in the Caribbean.

I am sure you have all heard of the phrase, “timing is everything”, haven’t you?

Well, to put this into perspective, here in Trinidad, we only got fibre internet back in 2016. I remember when I just moved here in Oct 2013 and we didn’t even have 1mbps of speed. Netflix was buffering for heaven’s sake…NETFLIX!

It might not be much but it’s a start. The dollar amount isn’t as significant as what it did for my outlook on business in the digital age. I’ve learned a heck of a lot since I began building the Droid Island brand since 2016 and the biggest paradigm shifts happened every time I converted apart of my business into something digital or used a digital strategy to push my offline efforts. The most important shift happened to me when I made $3000usd for 1 min video.

The reason why this was important is that it helped me realize a valuable lesson of value, time and the problems you are trying to solve for people.

When we have a job, we essentially give our skillsets to a company at a wholesale price. You could always make more money doing that skill on your own but chances are you may not have the systems, the infrastructure, the know-how or even the drive to figure out, how to monetize your specific skillset.

It’s 2020…arguing about whether you need a website or not because you have a Facebook account is so 2019. I know that one of the biggest reasons people do not have a website is because of the fact that they believe it is still too expensive to get one. Do you know what is expensive? Not having a website in 2020 and learning how it works. Having a website is merely step 1, developing a plan so that your website brings you business and generates money is another thing. So let me break this down as simple as possible and show you how to start a WordPress website in 5 steps.

The steps are pretty simple:

1. Find a host & buy your domain name
2. Purchase a Theme
3. Install WordPress
4. Upload Theme
5. Customize to your liking

I know, I know…it’s too simple right? lol. To be honest, this is the exact process to go about building your website. Now, this is keeping it as basic as possible, customizing your website can go extremely deep. But purchasing a theme is essentially giving you a ready built website that is good to go and no 2 themes are built the same.

As we step into 2020, more people will inevitably take the bait and fall for the trap of content creation. I know, I know, everybody is talking about how much content they need to produce in order for their business to grow. While creating content is definitely a must-do practice, people need to understand the purpose of creating content, how to actually do it and most importantly…understand the context as a base for content. I’m here to say that in 2020, you will need to learn how to not fall into the content trap. You will learn that content is not king, context is!

There are currently over 600 million blogs and over 1.7 billion websites. The digital world is crowded and noisy, nor will it get better anytime soon.

To put it simply, the reason why context is king is that it directs the narrative…the who, what, where and why of your content.