We had bookmarked some Ugandan blogs we know and occasionally check them to consume any new content that they post. After a while we were reading the same blogs over and over again. We then conducted a mini research to find out how many Ugandan blogs are out there and to our surprise, they were quite a number. We estimate that there are over 500 Ugandan Blogs with about 125 of them active and the rest not so active. In a country of 35M+ people, they definitely should be more blogs out there. In our research we also tried to find out why there aren’t so many blogs and why people prefer Social Media (Micro Blogging) to actual blogging. Among others, we found out the following: #1. Lack of readership/Audience Many bloggers we found were consistently blogging when they started but overtime, there was a decline in the consistency and finally a stop altogether. No one wants to write if people aren’t reading. If only bloggers knew how to build and maintain an audience, we believe that they would consistently engage and interest their audiences with fresh content on a frequent basis. #2. Not knowing how or what to write about Writing/Blogging is a skill that we all learn. Many writers write from inspiration and on some days experience a blackout where they aren’t sure what to write about. Writing can be a full time job and it’s a skill one has to master. There are so many free resources online on how to become a better blogger and if we utilized these, perhaps people would learn how best to blog. #3. Sustainable Blogging Since blogging can be a full time job and very demanding at that, sustainability becomes a key issue that needs to be dealt with. To run a successful blog, there’s a lot that you put into it. A lot of time and resources will get spent in doing so. A professional blogger has to look into ways of monetizing their blog or making money off blogging as a profession. If this doesn’t happen, many bloggers (except those running personal blogs) have no incentive and find it hard to continue blogging. #4. Not knowing how to Distribute Your content Lack of readership or an audience is also sometimes caused by not knowing how to distribute your content. There are multiple channels of distribution like Social Media, Feeds, Mailing Lists, Search Engines among others. Learning how to distribute your content can help grow your readership and audience dramatically. #5. No Community to encourage and Promote Blogging As always, there is power in numbers but more importantly, two is always better than one. A community of bloggers would foster and promote the interests of bloggers addressing challenges collectively while growing the blogging community. We then began to think of ways to solve the above problems and the first step was to reach out to all bloggers so we can discover more Ugandan blogs. We then hope to put all these blogs in one place where they are easy to find. These are some of the reasons why we want to curate all Ugandan blogs;
How You Can Help
Currently we’ve created a crowd-sourcing Google form for bloggers to submit their blogs here. So far, the response has been remarkable with over 150 blogs submitted in as of this writing. However, if you still haven’t submitted yours, now is the time. Please follow this link, we shall keep you updated with our progress. Update We are now at 188 Blogs from 150 as of today Wednesday 17th September 2014. We are continuing to look for more Blogs. Image: commonseoquestions.com
