9mobile trains journalists on creative content creation, engagement

Telecoms service provider, 9mobile has reaffirmed its support for the Nigerian news media by facilitating various avenues 

for journalists to upskill in developing creative news content to expand their audience footprint.

The telecoms company gave the assurance during the 6th edition of its Media Capacity Building Workshop with the theme 

“leveraging video content to reach new audiences”.

Speaking during the session, the Executive Director, Regulatory and Corporate Affairs, 9mobile, Abdulrahman Ado, 

represented by the Public Relations Lead, 9mobile, Chineze Amanfo, remarked that it is extremely important for journalists 

to be in tune with latest trends that will help them attract wider news consuming audiences to their contents.

She said, “At 9mobile, we appreciate the efforts by journalists in ensuring that members of the public constantly get up 

to date information about happenings within and around the country. This training became necessary to help our media 

partners gain new insights on content leveraging that guarantees quality media traction.”

In addition, she noted that with the advent and growth of citizen journalism fueled by digital technology, it has become 

imperative for journalists to build digital reporting skills.

“We encourage today’s participants to take advantage of the training, leverage the use of video contents and, most 

importantly, continuously seek innovative ways to scale their reporting skills,” she stated.

The session, which was facilitated by renowned digital content creator, Tobi Ayeni (MissTechy), had in attendance 

journalists from both print and online news platforms.

In her opening remarks, Ayeni defined content leveraging “as the ability to use content in multiple ways to get the 

highest return on engagement from each piece of content created.”

According to her, as a content creator, it is vital to keep the consumer/audience in focus during the entire process of 

content creation. She emphasized that video contents offer a better chance of attracting new audiences. Backing up her 

claims, she highlighted that, “45 per cent percent of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week, 

while 72 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds and 92 per cent of mobile video viewers share videos 

with others.”

Consequently, Ayeni noted that based on the statistics available, video content is unique and attracts more engagement, 

which is important for publishers seeking to appeal to wider audiences and gain loyalty.

She identified various video types as including live action video, talking head videos, interview videos and animated/text 

overlay videos, which can all be used specifically, depending on what the content creator is seeking to achieve.

Theguardianng