Kimathi Ireri

June 5, 2023June 5, 2023

Navigating the Gig Economy: The Rise of Managers in the Digital Age

Kenya Institute of Mass Communication

As a student of online journalism at the esteemed Kenya Institute of Mass Communication, I have witnessed firsthand the impact of the gig economy on the media industry. Journalists, content creators, and broadcasters are increasingly embracing gig work, with managers playing a pivotal role in ensuring seamless operations and the delivery of high-quality content.

The Gig Economy has revolutionized the way we work, transforming traditional employment structures and opening up new opportunities for millions of individuals worldwide. As freelance and remote work continue to gain momentum, a new breed of professionals has emerged – the managers of the gig economy. These individuals play a vital role in shaping the future of work, bridging the gap between freelancers and clients, and ensuring the smooth operation of this dynamic ecosystem.

In this article, we delve into the intricacies of the gig economy and shed light on the growing significance of managers in this ever-evolving landscape. As a junior management writer at Kenya Management and a student at the prestigious Kenya Institute of Mass Communication, I have had the privilege to explore this phenomenon in-depth, analyzing its impact on both the workforce and the business world.

The gig economy is characterized by its flexible, project-based nature, where independent workers offer their skills and services to clients on a temporary basis. This structure enables individuals to pursue diverse opportunities and achieve a healthy work-life balance. However, the gig economy also poses unique challenges. With a fragmented workforce and limited direct contact between freelancers and clients, efficient management becomes crucial for the success of projects and the satisfaction of all parties involved.

Enter the gig economy manager, a crucial link between freelancers and clients. These managers are adept at overseeing projects, coordinating resources, and maintaining effective communication channels. They possess a unique set of skills, including exceptional organization, negotiation, and interpersonal abilities. Their role extends beyond mere project management; they act as facilitators, ensuring that freelancers understand the client’s expectations while supporting clients in navigating the complexities of engaging with a remote workforce.

One of the primary responsibilities of gig economy managers is to match freelancers with suitable projects. They carefully analyze client requirements, evaluate freelancers’ skills, and determine the best fit for each assignment. By utilizing platforms and technologies designed for the gig economy, such as freelance marketplaces and talent management tools, these managers streamline the matchmaking process, maximizing efficiency and minimizing errors.

Moreover, gig economy managers play a vital role in fostering effective communication. They act as intermediaries, ensuring that freelancers and clients have a clear understanding of project objectives, deadlines, and deliverables. By nurturing strong lines of communication, they enhance collaboration and minimize misunderstandings that may arise due to the remote nature of gig work. Effective communication also plays a significant role in managing expectations and maintaining high-quality standards, ultimately leading to the success of the project.

The rise of gig economy managers also highlights the growing need for specialized knowledge in this field. With the gig economy rapidly expanding across various industries, managers must stay updated with the latest market trends, technological advancements, and regulatory frameworks. They should possess a deep understanding of the specific demands and challenges faced by freelancers and clients, enabling them to provide valuable insights and guidance throughout the project lifecycle.

In conclusion, the gig economy has ushered in a new era of work, offering unparalleled flexibility and opportunities for individuals worldwide. In this dynamic landscape, gig economy managers have emerged as vital facilitators, connecting freelancers and clients, and ensuring the smooth functioning of projects. With their specialized skills, they bridge the gap between remote workers and clients, enabling efficient project management and fostering collaboration.

April 23, 2023April 24, 2023

How SEO helps in Reputation Management

SEO is an important component to shape and regulate your brand portrayal in the SERPs.

All forms of marketing play a part in good brand management.

Using the same tone of voice throughout your ads and emails and choosing the same photo assets for your website as your billboards contribute to the picture painted when a customer considers your product or service. Sometimes, however, your brand might be in receipt of some negative press or reviews that can alter the way it is seen.

If a potential customer wants to know if your business is reputable, they will likely search for you online.

Visiting your website isn’t enough; they’ll want more objective feedback.

So, online reputation management, is critical.

It is the process of shaping and controlling the history around your brand online.

SEO is an important step to consider in that process. Reputation management in SEO is all about ensuring that wherever a searcher encounters their brand in the search engine results pages (SERPs), they take away a positive message about it.

This often means ensuring that the brand influences the front page of the SERPs and the articles pushed in Discover feeds, as well as the News results.

Online reputation management (ORM) is critical for SEO because, no matter how good a website ranks, if the perception of its brand is negative, it will struggle to get clicks.

SEO professionals must stay aware of how the brand they are working on is perceived elsewhere on the internet. .If there is negative sentiment about the brand, it is unlikely that a good call to action in a page title will be enough to get a click.

It’s also important to realize that organic traffic that doesn’t convert will not be very valuable.

A brand’s online reputation can have a huge impact on conversions.

Research into a brand, product, or service often begins online with a search.

Your website will likely only be one or two of the results brought up when someone searches for your brand.

All those other search results will potentially say something about your brand that might not be as favorable as you would like.

Unfavorable comparisons between your product and a competitor can be made by an objective third party.

Bad press can be high-ranking.

If you aren’t actively monitoring what appears at the top of the search results for your branded keywords then you could be missing out on the opportunity to spot potential reputation issues.

Once a news story starts circulating about your company, or even incorrect information is added to a third-party website, it can be hard to repair the damage to your brand.

It is important that your brand’s message is what’s seen on the first page of the SERPs. Proactively working on your online reputation management can put you in a strong position to correct misinformation or outrank unfavorable content.

April 21, 2023

WORK WIFE MODEL’ HELPING WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS BREAK NEW GROUNDS

By Steve Ireri.

The ‘Work wife’ concept emerged a long time ago, when workplaces were beginning see the importance of having secretaries, who helped managers be more effective in their chores. Since then, the concept has greatly mutated to infer to unique, platonic friendships, between female work colleagues characterized by close emotional bonds, high levels of disclosure and support, and mutual trust and honesty.

Women should lay aside the unnecessarily tumultuous pursuit for equality and positively engage their fellow female colleagues to build better versions of themselves.

The phrase ‘work wife’ emerged a long time ago hence the struggle with most people to accurately understand it. There before, it was used to refer to secretaries upon whom male bosses mainly depended on. However, even with much fluctuations that have significantly seen the workplace become modernized, the idea did not disappear, but evolved in some incredible ways, to now relegate to, alliances between female colleagues who due to their close ties, commit to help each other out, so they can become better workers. For this, while secretaries have become widely popular ‘work wives’ can only correlate to relationships between work colleagues, more specifically, females ones, as they are more inclined to building lasting relationships that are more likely to spur progress unlike with their male counterparts.

The ‘work wives’ idea can be of a considerably big implication in this century given the much battles that women have found themselves into in the midst of their pursuits to uncover equality. While even the highly heated campaigns by women to fight for equality, alongside the influence of already successful women to prove that women truly have what it takes have become popular in the recent days, the progress towards equality remains quite uneventful.

Hence the answer to this imbalance lies not in seeking an outright equality against men but rather on women seeking to achieve the most in their areas of work, by endorsing each other, through the understanding that each of them can act like a secretary to the other and easily tap into bigger heights of productivity, akin to their male counterparts. The work wife’ concept was for the very first time, highlighted in publications in a book called, Work Wife: The Power of Female Friendship to Drive Successful Businesses. Although the book to a big extent delved much on explaining the history of the concept, it partly elucidated that because the idea has gone out of existence, it can presently be remembered with the reintroduction of ‘work wife’ and “work husband” to refer to anyone who serves as your go-to, can’t-live-without partner, in the workplace. This work spouse relationship is not a real marriage, but a platonic partnership with powerful prospect for innovation.

So far the many challenges women are facing continue to necessitate the urge of reinventing the work wife concept. For instance one of the commonly known challenges is that of funding for their startups, where they get a lot less investor funding unlike with their male counterparts. Ever since the late year’s, problem has on several occasions given women a headache. Early-stage investors who have female executives has increased from 5% to 15% since 1999. Their constant woe however has been that these women aside doing other errands so well, struggle when it comes to securing funding. According to reports, even though women-led enterprises bring in approximately 12% more revenue than companies run by male CEOs, less than 3% of venture-backed companies are run by women.

To overcome the funding gap, some women, have committed to become spouses of their fellow women through the ‘work wife’ idea and launched their own VC firms so as to not be left out. This, unlike when they are manning these startups solo or when they are working freely without accepting the fact that they need to lo join hands instead of struggling with equality campaigns, easily empowers them to garner the much needed skills on how to win funding opportunities with big companies or by allowing them to learn how to effectively apply for business grants and loans from organizations committed specifically committed to furthering the advancement of female entrepreneurs.

However, the biggest disadvantage is that the existing traditional corporate culture promotes a dog-eat-dog atmosphere in which female coworkers see each other as rivals. In the past few decades, however, huge shifts in teamwork and leadership belief are signaling a new—and by some measure more feminine—approach. The work wife books writers say that slow but steady progress toward dismantling male dominance at the office has carved out space for women to collaborate instead of compete professionally which sets the stage for change. Among other things, work wife favors women and especially entrepreneurs to succeed with forming healthy partnerships, because it highlights how balancing responsibilities supports individual “superpowers.”

Because women have a bigger tendency of being cooperative unlike with men, the new business reality built through work wife collaboration has taught them the need of supporting individual strengths toward a common goal—on a professional and emotional level.

Role models challenge.

One other major challenge barring the success if the work wife idea, is the fact that women face the scarcity of female role models especially entrepreneurs who can easily bestow the advice ‘don’t be afraid to make mistakes’. Truly women don’t get to higher heights over fears that embarrassments might come their way, if they made mistakes. However, although mentors would easily instill this lesson to them, women need to follow their passions so possibly they can become their own mentors.

Entrepreneurship or running a business is risky and entails unforeseen circumstances. But because women have the advantage of building very deep connections with fellow women in the workplace, they are more edged to reap the most from the ‘work wife’ model. Possibly the messages they should pass around everyday should pertain how they should never fear failure; and that one will never try if they keep on fearing failing. The fact that each of them dreads failing eventually introduces toxicity creating workplaces of hatred and envy. As a result, they will fail in business even when they were meant to succeed.

Work Wife was jotted down with the idea of such feminine dilemmas in mind. Avoiding burnout or even fearing that your startup won’t make it out alive and you will have to suffer the embarrassment of closing it down, will call for incompetency of women even in some skills they were built to handle way better than their male counterparts. Work wives are demonstrating that this is possible in myriad ways. Work Wife “is advocating for a reimagining of work.” If women in business can find their perfect business partner, it will not only help them realize their own career goals, but perhaps disrupt the greater business world for the better. Says the concept.

April 21, 2023April 21, 2023

When Micromanagement Fails to deliver.

Think of it when your enterprise isn’t taking that much needed stride, supposed to toss you into the world of incomes even after investing in it heavily. While at times executives in promising companies assume supervision of some of it’s slightest tenets and departments, these presumptions significantly accumulate into big mistakes, creating loopholes critical for the firms downfall. Assumptions like these often provide a breeding hub for concealed errors to expand, eventually marking the onset of the firms relentless hardships. With micromanagement however, administrators are able to realize the full benefits of their sweat as the majority of the problems are handled at a firsthand perspective and solved in real time.

Micromanagement seemingly offers a firm a sort of a facelift which even upon the tempest of other big hurdles, greatly oversees the prosperity of a firm. Business failure which is certainly the diagnosis of a business that is registering minimal profits, often comes along due to a variety of reasons including this notorious assumption that the smallest tenets, the ficklest of issues, are not detrimental to your dilemma.

However micromanagement is a double-edged sword and despite this extremely appealing perspective, has a shortcoming with extremely lethal and far reaching impacts. In business management, micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes, controls, and or reminds the work of their subordinates or employees. Micromanagement is generally considered to have a negative connotation, mainly because it demonstrates a lack of freedom and trust in the workplace. Rather than giving general instructions on smaller tasks and then devoting time to supervising larger concerns, the micromanager monitors and assesses every stage of a business process and evades delegation of decisions. Micromanagers are usually annoyed when a subordinate makes decisions without consulting them, even if the decisions are within the subordinate’s level of authority.

Micromanagement also frequently involves requests for unnecessary and overly detailed reports. A micromanager tends to require constant and detailed performance feedback and to focus excessively on procedural trivia (often in detail greater than they can actually process) rather than on overall performance, quality and results. This focus on “low-level” trivia often delays decisions, blurs overall goals and objectives, impedes the cycle of information between employees, and guides the various aspects of a project in different and often opposed directions. Many micromanagers accept such inefficiencies as less important than their retention of control or of the appearance of control.

It is common for micromanagers, especially those who exhibit narcissistic tendencies and micromanage deliberately and for strategic reasons, to commission work to subordinates and then micromanage those subordinates’ performance, enabling the micromanagers in question to both take credit for positive results and shift the blame for negative results to their subordinates. These micromanagers thereby delegate accountability for failure but not the authority to take alternative actions that would have led to success or at least to the mitigation of that failure.

The most extreme cases of micromanagement comprise of a management pathology closely similar to workplace bullying and narcissistic behavior. Micromanagement resembles addiction in that although most micromanagers are behaviorally reliable on control over others, both as a lifestyle and as a means of retaining that lifestyle, many of them fail to concede their dependence even when everyone around them observes it.

Because a pattern of micromanagement suggests to employees that a manager does not trust their work or judgment, it is a major factor in stirring employee disengagement, often to the point of fostering a dysfunctional and hostile work environment. Disengaged employees invest time, but not effort or creativity, in the work in which they are assigned. The impacts of this phenomenon are worse in situations where work is passed from one specialized employee to another. In such a situation, disinterest among upstream employees implicates not only their own productivity but also that of their downstream colleagues.

April 21, 2023

Under the umbrella’s veil : Effectiveness of National Health insurances is key to attaining universal health coverage

Under the umbrella’s veil.

Health insurance in Kenya has been strained for many years, due to the preeminence of factors like fraud, low income levels among the key consuming publics, cost of health care, lack of knowledge on medical insurance and a cumbersome claim settlement procedure. At a century when it’s need is so defined, medical insurance providers ought to develop affordable products to avoid locking out many would-be clients who cannot afford to pay costly premiums.

No one plans to get sick or hurt, but most people need medical care at some point. Because of the uncertainty in when one will get sick or hurt, the idea of health insurance was coined so it would help wrap these costs or offer one a variety of other benefits relating to someone’s pursuit for health.

Truly speaking, the idea of health insurance has despite the great advancements in healthcare not been we’ll adopted and has been secluded as a thing for people working in the formal sector. People who are not in any formal employment in Kenya don’t consider the incentives that spending on an health insurance scheme would bring. However, cumulatively, if a country is able to scale up its measures and have all people registered under such schemes it facilitates access to care for countless citizens, resulting in lower death rates and better health care outcomes. On a basic level, health insurance can mean the difference between sickness and health or even life and death.

Healthy people and young adults may feel they don’t need health insurance, believing it is an expense they can forgo because they are rarely sick and have never spent a day in the hospital. But accidents and illnesses can happen to any of us at any time. Without health insurance, we are responsible for covering all of our medical costs, putting us at severe financial risk.

Health insurance links people to a regular source of care, giving them access to an infrastructure and a network of providers who are able to work with patients in delivering comprehensive, continuous and coordinated health care services. Ultimately, people can live longer, healthier lives because of access to ongoing care. Most health care plans offer preventive services, providing many vaccinations and screenings at no cost, thus preventing illnesses and ensuing complications.

Unlike what many Kenya’s assume having an insurance covers preexisting conditions in the case that if you have a diagnosis before you enroll, you’ll still qualify for health benefits. With health insurance, it is much easier for both the patient and provider to focus on prevention and wellness as well as the management of acute and chronic illnesses, leading to better health outcomes and lower costs.

Universal health coverage.

Universal health coverage in Kenya is where the whole population has access to appropriate, promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health care when they need it and at an affordable cost. In the country it’s flagship which happened nearly a decade ago, was to attain two goals, the first being financial risk protection and the second, access to needed care. Yet it also includes objectives related to equity in access, quality services and broader social protection.

Health insurance has currently been utilized as a mechanism for promoting progress to universal health coverage (UHC) in Kenya. However the goal is still several inches away from it’s fruition, as some people still deem it as a new concept introduced by the government to swindle them and immerse them in deeper financial voids. However even the stakeholders are stupefied on how they modify the scheme so it can become more appealing to the Kenyans working in the informal sectors and who arguably form the biggest cohort of unregistered Kenyans. In this light, the government is seeking exclusivity to see how the scheme can cater for larger citizens. The efforts have yielded minimal results though it’s not wavering in it’s devotion to accomplish the UHC goal regardless of the slow pace.

Given that remote communities are now the priority of most insurance schemes, as insurance firms are working to see how they lure them in, Kenyans should understand the implications of health financing reforms and their preferred design features considered, to ensure acceptability and sustainability. For this, it will be of great value that communities are educated and engaged to ensure that the NHIS is acceptable to the population it serves mainly by eradicating the misleading perceptions and educating many Kenyans on it’s unseen value.

However the insurance problem is widespread and plagues many African countries alongside Kenya. But still, to sprout a first-paced African continent, the governments themselves should consider how they rehabilitate their health care systems to provide effective financial risk protection for all, as part of universal health coverage (UHC). The 75^th World Health Assembly which happened last year, urged member states to “ensure that health-financing systems introduce or develop prepayment of financial contributions for the health sector, with a view to sharing risk among the population and avoiding catastrophic health-care expenditure and impoverishment of individuals as a result of seeking care”. Following on this call, the World Health Report for 2019 focused on UHC and identified the important role played by health systems financing in making progress towards this goal. And in 2021, the World Health Assembly re-emphasized the urgency of implementing sustainable health financing structures and the need to monitor progress towards achieving UHC. Several other initiatives have been put forward to support progress towards UHC.

By collaborating with health care providers, medical insurance providers could negotiate cheaper health care costs for their members. Medical insurance providers should carry out marketing campaigns and should also open more branches in rural towns so as create more awareness on medical insurance and its benefits. Insurers should also introduce discounts for clients with few claims to encourage prudent usage of medical covers which are often misused resulting to increased costs.

April 21, 2023

SACCO MANAGER’S HASTENED MOVE TO JOIN NATIONAL PAYMENT SYSTEM, AIMED AT LOWERING CREDITS COST.

The move by the countries biggest lenders to stringently impose new requirements has greatly compelled credit cooperatives to join bank borrowers who they had earlier vetoed.

President William Rutos financial inclusion agenda is seemingly taking shape, after the countries sacccos and cooperatives joined hands with the national payment system (NPS) in sustained efforts to lower the cost of credits.

Erstwhile, while saccos overly depended on banks to get funding together with other commercial services such as cheque processing and issuance the move might affect, to a big extent, the countries banks which have relied on these saccos for third party business like issuing of cheques.

Furthermore if the agenda goes on to succeed, banks will stand to loose as saccos will now have the capability and clearance to lend money to fellow saccos through the central liquidity facility (CLF) which is an equivalent of the interbank market.

The process to have these saccos sheltered under mainstream financial services has for a period of over seven years been made elusive by the sheer absence of the industries players to join hands and get to consensus on the matter.

Now, it’s a hot button issue in the country amid the soaring cost of living which has in turn increased the cost of borrowing including with saccos.

According to SASRA Sacco societies regulatory authority which has for a time now been helplessly watching the hiccups facing the sector, externally borrowed funds are in most instances expensive and often owe to changes in interest rates.

Now President Rutos administration has moved to prioritize the admission of saccos into the National Payment system as part of the governments financial inclusion agenda.

April 21, 2023

To save future elections from apathy, let leaders commit to deliver on their work

Political Management Opinion

Crowds cheer at a campaign team during the 2022/general elections in South B. Leaders should aim at fulfilling their promises in bid to save future elections from an even more worse apathy. **Photos by Ireri Steve on assignment for Agence France Press. AFP**

Chogoria, Mountain region –“Wake up Steve, leli (not his real name) has won the election,” my mother roused me from my sleep on the night of August 10, after the announcement of the 2017 general elections. Those were the words I vividly remember that my mum let out as jubilation rented the markets’ air outside. The words I later on wished I hadn’t heard.

Leli, a leader with the excellence the people had been scouring for throughout the 2017 campaign period, had finally managed to secure the position albeit through thick and thin in a highly contested race. The people were glad that because of electing dishonorable people in previous elections, they had fallen culprit to the bonds of misery through abandonment and misuse of their money. The new leader was the ‘anointed one, a selfless, consecrated individual who wouldn’t buy to the appetites of a corrupt regime, -they believed and even confessed it.

Supporters of ODMs Polycarp Igathe jubilating in the streets of south B. Photo by Steve Ireri.

They expected happiness, but unfortunately their came suffering, accompanied by a brutal exchange of blames when the leader they had even called their ‘son, vanished deep inside the regime’s hidden chambers. He had forsaken them. No one ever believed he was capable of that. But he did it right at the front of their eyes.

The blame game tossed the country into chaos and into a war of words- and even worst, of weapons. The unforeseen neglect by an individual known as one with a gentle face, ‘who couldn’t even snatch a one shilling coin’ validated that the people had for sure mistaken on the best candidate for the position, the second or even third or fourth time in a row. His turnaround challenged the validity of the decisions most Kenyans made at the ballot. Hence most ended up convinced they made a blunder in their selections. Kenyans thereby proclaim the root of corruption and underdevelopment to the chronic culture of electing inappropriate aspirants. But is it?

In 2017, when Leli defeated some other bigwigs in the top seat he had been contesting for, he had exemplified himself as a helper, and a compassionate figure who even before vying for the seat had engaged in several acts of benevolence. And this made him a go-for, for many people as he had what they yearned for. Even his demeanor and his vows asserted he was eligible for the position. So, did the voters fail to elect a good leader?

They didn’t. Days later, while already in office, something mysterious happened and he changed. Although his sudden changeover might have been caused by some external factors of his new workplace, the fact remains that he changed and the citizens are not blame for it. Whether this transformation comes willingly or unwillingly, leaders must come into terms with one thing. They fail us. His appearances to the public became minimal just like the funds, and desperation begun to strike the people. Hence, while some would point their fingers to the election of unfit leaders, I disown it and point at the leaders susceptibility to the wave of transformation.

I believe my people had done everything to reign in a leader who would not have forsaken them. Given there is no means to accurately gauge whether a leader will stick to his vows once elected, the major task for voters is to cast the ballot and set a leader forward whether he is truly good or he is a hyena camouflaged in a sheep’s skin. Thereafter whether the chosen leader was good or bad, it should be the responsibility of the leader to rise to the demands and deliver. But that is afar none of their distressing concerns. Hence their grievous failure upon their most fundamental obligations.

Leaders in elective positions all this while are the rightful owners to the blames. They should feel the guilt for disappointing their people and their supporters, and think twice on the toll, their covetousness has fetched for Kenya as an East African powerhouse. When they allow history to keep repeating itself, Kenyans loose hope in not just an election, but one of the most important things in a democratic nation and proceed to deem their leaders as useless people drunk down by their greed. Presently, with apathy having donned the 2022 general elections people are losing hope in it at a fast rate and unless leaders bear the failure things might get worse.

Future of work as a Kenyan ruler.

Seemingly, it is so that aspirants who join the political elite with a pure attitude are recruited into the money laundering missions, purposely to create a safe haven for older and senior perpetrators. This is seen to by the circumstances of a workplace governed through dishonesty, which gradually gains victory over these submissive employees hence blindfolding them from noticing and getting bothered by the needs of their people.

The future of work for a Kenyan ruler despite being at loggerheads with the citizens at par, will get more tough and shadowy if it’s not rectified. Both the county and the National governments have been turned into a system where trustable leaders are intimidated to backslide and where the already-corrupt normalize duping peoples needs, to bloom their selfish ambitions. The future then will dock at a serious juncture where possibly citizens will never have a glimpse of the national cake, leave alone getting to lick a piece of it. And instead of growing to higher levels by day, the regime will jeep shrinking and through the leaders downfalls, end up costing the country a lot. Aspiring and incoming leaders should watch out on it’s corrupted climate even before they are in and prepare to withstand and rise over it.

The absence of trust with the countries calcified political elite, who are famous for their shifting alliances and endemic corruption, also is largely persuading many Kenyans to shun participating in election. And if elections will remain relevant in the future, leaders ought to commit to deliver in their duties.

Steve Ireri is a junior writer at the Kenya Management magazine . My focus is mainly on management and how well organisations are able to deal with the much changing workplace reforms.

April 21, 2023

How Managers can launch successful advertising campaigns

Advertising campaigns often use a series of advertising messages that share a single idea and theme which ultimately result in what is known as an IMC (Integrated marketing communication). While their sole purpose is to achieve a particular objective or set of objectives like establishing a brand or even raising a brands awareness, there is a dire reason why firms desperately need to come up with advertising campaigns. It being a strategy designed specifically to be carried out across all mediums it also serves the purpose of increasing sales, and even improving communication within a specific market. Therefore, these steps are paramount to the launching of a successful advertising campaign.

Set a campaign goal

These are advertising objectives to focus on. The most common goals include acquiring new client’s, promoting current products, and even launching of new products. You can also create an advertising campaign designed specifically to tackle on how brand awareness can be bolstered or even to help associate a certain brand with certain emotions. Whatever your goal might be, its twice as important to identify it before preceding to lay any modifications on it.

Define a target

Part of a campaigns success is directly tied to your target audiences if you have already defined target audience or market, it is much easier to accomplish and measure your goals. Defining points like age, sex, social class, marital status, education level, likes, habits and hobbies, by far, will help you understand who you are trying to reach through your advertising campaign strategy.

Segment your audiences

Once you have clearly defined your target audience, you should then segment the audience; dividing them into various groups based on the products or services you want to sell or according to their various demographics. Put yourself into the shoes of your potential customers and try to identify what it is that would spark their interests, if what you offer is useful for them? How will you grab their attention? Are they aware of the brand or the product and if they have the purchasing power to buy your products or services.

Define your advertising medium

There are many helpful tools at our disposal available to ensure your campaign message gets to your target audience as soon and as conveniently as you would expect. For example social media, allows you to create ads on social networks where your target audience is easily accessible. This means opening up a line of communication which allows you to easily reach your audience. The availability of platforms like these, offers personalized design strategies which yield a high success rate. Therefore, content cannot be exclusively personalized, you have to add value such as entertainment, new information, promotions etc.

Communication

The message of an advertising campaign is also fundamental even though strategies vary based on the type of company it is. However, the copy should always be natural sounding, well organized, clear, concise, fluid, and coherent. To communicate effectively, the message should always be brief.

Pay attention to your design

The design is just as important as the message, utilize responsible design and very friendly websites to win over your audience. Delight them first by sight and then through everything else you have to tell them.

Monitoring and evaluation

Measuring is important in many different fields, but in the world of advertising its absolutely crucial. If you don’t track your results, you won’t know what going on or what you could improve on. In an advertising campaign the metrics should make up for one integral part of the process. The only way to understand the campaign is to track and measure the metrics and data.

April 21, 2023

MANAGERS INVESTMENT IN DATA CENTRES, CRUCIAL FOR GROWTH OF AFRICAS DIGITAL ECONOMY

Recently, the United States injected $30 million into African data centers [ADC] to expand its facilities in Nairobi, which provides digital data storage services across east, central, and southern Africa, to support the African continent’s journey towards digital transformation and economic growth. As the world moves increasingly to the web, users and businesses demand quick information. The closer a business is to a data center, the higher the performance of the service. So far, the steps by most firms to eliminate their on-site infrastructure and in turn replace it with hybrid, public and private cloud infrastructure has to a huge extent defined how well data centers are thriving in Africa.

In 2019, only 28% of the population of Africa had access to the internet, according to the international telecommunication Union research. The continent had 34 mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants compared with 97 in Europe and 104 in America. It also lagged significantly in terms of international bandwidth usage per internet user.

A server room in one of the data centres in Africa. Photo| Pool

However, figures from 2021 show that there has been measurable growth, relative to that of the developing countries: where the continent moved from 28% to 33%. But still, with the developing countries financing for the upgrade of their broadbands willingly and very handsomely, the continent remains a hugely underserved market when it comes to internet connectivity and hyper-scale-ready tier 3 data centers. With the population of Africa expected to double by 2050 and again by the end of the century, and the internet driving economic growth and digitalization, there’s a growing need to host enormous volumes of data. Africa has 17% of the world’s population, 13% of the world’s mobile connections, and only 5% of the world’s broadband connections, and connections, and accounts for only 1% of the world’s data center space, according to cisco’s annual international report [2018-2023]. So certainly, the bolstering of data centers in this continent would significantly transform this continent

Even though Africa has been lagging four to seven years behind developed-world economies, the explosion in the number of data centers is now hitting the continent’s shores. There has never been a better time to provide organizations and countries with access to the speed, storage, and scale that these centers deliver and the United States is conversant with this gap. Through financial aid totaling $30 million, the United States through its ambassador to Kenya meg Whitman flagged the disbursement of the funds to the Africa data center ADC as part of a $300 million commitment by the US government to help ADC expand in the continent. The commitment whose part of the money was disbursed ate last year, is earmarked to aid the finalization of the construction of an additional facility to triple the previous facilities from 4.5MW to 15MW. According to Africa Data Center Market Report 2022: Africa is Attracting Significant Investments in Recent Years, Led by South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria, and Ethiopia – Forecast to 2027

Although ADC is one of the leading data centers in Africa, the continent has more than 9 data centers that have added a white floor area of around 30,000 square feet area or more each in 2021. Several country governments including Kenya are taking initiatives by developing special economic zones, and industrial parks, which provide tax exemptions for data center development. A data center’s main task is to centralize an organization’s shared IT operations and equipment to store, process, and disseminate data and applications. Because they house an organization’s most critical and proprietary assets, data centers are vital to the continuity of daily operations within organizations

While Africa’s biggest constraint from an effective transition to the digital economy mainly emanated from the usage of outmoded data storage methods and facilities even on the internet, data centers will provide the reliability of storage by eliminating these glitches of using portable technology. For example, some experts believe the U.S. economy loses between $200 billion and $570 billion a year due to power outages and other disturbances, a loss that would have otherwise been averted if there existed a more upright culture of adoption of data centers. In turn, this suggested that Africa’s loss was colossal as its financial capabilities can’t directly support the creation of several data centers. Components of setting up a data center include routers, switches, firewalls, storage systems, servers, and application-delivery controllers, and often are egregiously expensive to the extent that African governments would have to desperately rely on foreign aid to successfully launch and maintain data centers.

SIGNIFICANCE

As the world moves increasingly to the web, users and businesses demand quick information. The closer a business is to a data center, the higher the performance of the service, as the data centers provide the stable foundations required to drive the delivery of data services on the continent. Around the world, the elimination of on-site infrastructures by firms to invest in hybrid, public and private cloud infrastructure has led the majority of data centers to thrive.

Technologies such as the cloud, big data, and IoT generate more data through high-end applications and need more efficient systems for data processing. These technologies are growing the demand for advanced IT infrastructure in the African data center market.

Moreso, enterprises prefer servers that can reduce space in the data center environment without affecting performance. The competition between branded and ODM [original device manufacturer] server suppliers will continue because multiple enterprises opt for server infrastructure based on open community designs (OCP). The increasing demand for server shipments will continue to grow moderately as enterprises move to the cloud or colocation platforms for their IT infrastructure operations. Global cloud services providers such as AWS, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle are expanding their presence with new cloud regions. So, there is an opportunity for vendors to grow in suburban areas and fuel the demand for hyper-scale data centers in Africa. In December 2021, Equinix announced its plan to acquire the Main One data center with a sum of around USD 320 million to expand operations in Africa. The new entrants have a strong opportunity with new innovative technologies of infrastructure in the African cloud data center. In addition, the threat of acquisitions is to be also high since global data center operators acquire existing data centers in the region.

Key growth factors for data centers include growing of Smart City Initiatives, Government Support for Data Centers, growing Artificial Intelligence Adoption, migration from On-premise to Colocation & Managed Services, and adoption of Advance IT Infrastructure. The increase in submarine cable investment and fiber connectivity is likely to attract more data center investments in the region. South Africa has the highest number of submarine cable deployments, followed by Nigeria and Kenya.

April 21, 2023

How managers transgress employee rights in bid to micromanage .

In a workplace governed by far, by authoritative managers who never allow their employees let out a word, leave alone transgressing rules crafted by these managers to gauge how people work, it might be easily to forget whether one has a right to anything particularly when the workplace is mired in some never ending tasks.

Although one is employed and often experiences fear that demanding for something might be seen as nagging or might easily bring back memories of probably when they underperformed creating a precarious situation for them

The pursuit for productivity often places workers at a precarious situation – beneath their managers, hence making it so hard for them to make demands or even take action when one of their rights are violated.

But truly, is there something like violation when one doesn’t understand what can be or is worth being violated? employees need to understand their rights very well and even have the much important knowhow on how to wield these rights in shaky situation like when 5their relationship [s with the manager is not so smooth.