Ingredients

Here is what you'll need to cook 'Turning Coco':

- Cocoyams

- Smoked fish


- Seasoning

- Palm oil

- Pepper (optional)

Cooking

- Peel and wash cocoyams


- Wash fish and add to the pot. You can open up the fish, take out the bones and cut it into smaller pieces like I did in this recipe. But in this one, I prefer to cook the fish whole.

- Add pepper, seasoning and water to the pot and boil.


- When the pot starts boiling, add some palm oil.


- Add bitter leaves to the pot when it's almost ready.




- You can add some more oil if you want it really oily and shiny like I did.
 - Serve when done.


Hope this recipe is easy enough for you to follow and cook the best Cocoyam Porridge ever.

Some people even ask: "Is blogging dying?"

To answer the big question let's examine why we are experiencing a change in blog traffic and engagement. Let's answer the following questions:

Why are people no longer reading blogs? 

Blogging just like any other career or industry experiences changes which could be positive or negative. When it all started, it was for fun, and then it gained more value and pulled lots of attention from readers and brands who wanted to work with bloggers because of their growing faithful readers.

As time went on many more bloggers came along with much more content to read. The tips and lifestyles they shared attracted lots of readers.

The readers began to have less interest in blogs as time went by.

Why do readers have less interest in blogs?

- Most of the blog content is similar and doesn't contain much information.

- Bloggers are no longer relatable to their readers.

Readers come back to blogs which they find relatable content. Over time bloggers no longer shared content that they could relate to and this made them no longer read as much.

- Reduction in readers' attention span

Readers no longer have a long attention span as before. They no longer want to spend much time reading one content so they tend to prefer very short content on platforms like Instagram and other social media platforms.

- Addiction to Instagram

Instagram has become an addiction and an obsession to many more people and the community over there is growing. Content previously shared only on blogs is being shared on Instagram and this doesn't encourage the readers to move to blogs when they know that they can see it all on Instagram.

Where are bloggers going wrong? 

Putting out empty posts/content.

Lack of originality. 

Most bloggers want to be like the successful bloggers they admire so they try to blog like them or blog about the same things as their favourite bloggers. Almost everyone is writing about the same thing using the same style and taking the same kind of pictures with the same kind of poses. Everyone seems to be producing similar content these days and readers are no longer inspired to read.

This is common with fashion, beauty and lifestyle bloggers. The same outfits, poses, flat lays, filters, places and topics are used by them on their blogs.

As I mentioned in another post, it's ok to learn from and copy from others from the beginning of your creative career. But it's smart to learn from others and then apply what you learned in your own unique way.

You show your readers that it's all about the money

Bloggers have become a lot more money minded. Which is not a bad thing at all. But the problem with this is that they let it show to their readers in a bad way.

There are some bloggers who only share sponsored content. Even though you have lots of people following your blog and you are monetizing it as much as possible, it's not fun for your readers who followed you originally for your non-sponsored content. They may feel used when they see you sharing only sponsored content.

You are micro-blogging on Instagram

Some bloggers now microblog on Instagram since they have a bigger audience there. This doesn't encourage readers to go over and read their blogs. They write the content of their blogs and refer readers to their sites. Fashion bloggers share their outfits on Instagram and ask readers to go over to their blogs to see the post they published about them. Most readers don't go to read because they've already seen the outfit on Instagram.

The effect of Instagram on blog traffic. 

Is Instagram stealing your blog traffic?

Are all bloggers experiencing low reader stats?

Not all bloggers have complained about a drop in stats on their blogs but most bloggers are experiencing this new trend.

Bloggers with a bigger following may not experience it much because they may have developed a very strong and large community of faithful followers.

But most growing and new bloggers are suffering from the low blog traffic trend.

Which blog niches suffer from this change in traffic the most?

- Fashion blogs

- Beauty blogs

- Lifestyle blogs

- Personal development blogs

These niches have the highest number of bloggers so there is already so much content on these topics for readers to choose from. As bloggers increase in these niches, the bloggers will have to share the readers' interest in these topics.

Does this mean you can't make it if you want to start blogging in these niches?

The fact that most bloggers in these niches complain about a fall in traffic to their blogs doesn't mean that new bloggers can't grow successful blogs in them.

It will need a lot of work and most of all original content. Something different, unique and true to you and your personality.

What should bloggers do to remedy this? 

Share relatable content with your audience.

Life and levels may change but your content still needs to be relevant to your audience in order for them to want to keep reading. If you know who you want to inspire with your blog then keep writing content that is relatable to them.

When your life becomes better or levelled up as a blogger, instead of making all your content only about your new property and achievements, also share content that you used to share before to keep your audience. Most of them are inspired by and happy with your achievements but may not be able to relate to all of them. So keep sharing content that will keep them around.

If you want to change your focus or your audience then make your content relatable to your new audience.




I read a blog post where a blogger explained that she was moving to YouTube because of the present low blog traffic trend and in her comment section, one of her faithful readers said that she doesn't read her blog as much as before because of her content was no longer relatable to her.

That could be one of the reasons why your blog traffic has been reduced. Find out how your blog content has changed over time and ask yourself if 70% of it is still relatable to your audience. It may have happened consciously or unconsciously.

Show your audience that you genuinely care.

Remember when all you wanted to do is a blog? You need to go back to those times, my dear blogger. all you wanted to do was to share great content with your readers and you were willing to go to any length to do so and even spend money to give them content for free. That's why they stuck with you because you genuinely cared.

Bloggers need to make money with their blogs no doubt but don't make your readers feel like all you care about is the money. Your readers have problems too and trust me money is the biggest one.

Share valuable content with them for free alongside your sponsored content. Be honest when you are making money from your blog or when a post is sponsored. It makes them trust you more and come back to read.

Start producing original content.

Don't make it a goal in your blogging life to copy and be just like your favourite bloggers. It's easily predictable and gives a feeling of deja-vu. Your readers are intelligent enough to spot that and trust me they also follow your favourite blogger. It can lead to them comparing you to the person that you are striving to be like.

Implement your own ideas no matter how insecure you feel about them. Let your personality show in your blog posts, develop your own voice tone and just be yourself because that's the only way that your readers will distinguish you from others, remember you and stick with you till the end.

Share longer, detailed and more informative content.

People are more used to shorter content but that is a trend that will fade away with time when people will need longer and more detailed information to solve their problems.

I realized that bloggers tried to compete with Instagram by producing content which is short and straight to the point. But that is not really working as readers somehow expect blogs to have more detailed content.

When the reader is in need, he will read the longest post as long as it solves his problem and is helpful to him. So don't be afraid to write longer posts, dear blogger. Make it easy to assimilate by breaking it into sections and making it entertaining and personal. They will love it and want to read more.

"We need to show our readers that blogs have their place and that it provides them with detailed information that Instagram can't provide."

Use catchy titles

Make your titles catchy to your target audience. To write a blog title that will make your readers click quickly, ask yourself 'what questions does my audience have in their minds about this topic, issue or problem. You can write your title in the form of that question or as a response to that question. Also, ask yourself what they want to know or feel when reading about what you are writing about.

You should also make sure to include the keywords they would use to describe or identify this problem or topic you are writing about. Let the reader think that he/she will find what he/she is looking for in your post. And make sure that you deliver and make him/her feel the way he/she expects to feel.

What should bloggers and future bloggers expect in the future?

Bloggers should expect the best in my opinion. Every career or industry experiences some regression at some point and blogging isn't an exception. Times like these help to redefine the industry and those who stay consistent and restrategize will succeed when the bad phase is over.

So what should we really expect as bloggers? 

- Instagram will become normal to people and blogs will still be needed for a very long time.

- People will need detailed and useful information in a place where they can find it anytime. Most apps don't provide that. They just pack up one piece of information over another and this makes people lose useful information on apps.

- People will miss reading blogs and connecting with bloggers on their blogs.

And what is expected of a blogger?

- To stay consistent.

- To make people fall in love with and value blogs again by providing original, valuable, relatable and detailed content to readers.

- To be more creative and diversify our blog content.

Here's what we can do during these trying times to revive our lovely industry of blogging, trusting that everything will turn out fine again.

One thing I've learned on my level up journey is that you need to be ready to work on yourself and do most of the work by yourself before you reach out to people to help you.

Levelling up is a personal journey because only you understand what you need, what you want and where you want to be in life. So when you ask someone to help you level up or become a better person, the truth is that for his or her help to be useful to you, you have to be ready for a change. You have to want the change to happen and you have to be ready to do the work and invest in yourself in order for your life to change.

I have made several attempts to change my life for the better in the past and this time I realized that I am more ready and willing to invest in myself and take the steps necessary to make that change happen. And now I'm getting more positive results.

I will talk more about how to invest in yourself for positive results in subsequent posts. This time let's talk about personal virtues that will help your life in general and career in particular.

It's sad how certain virtues are going out of style these days. We see people on social media who are being paid to have fun in five-star hotels all over the world and we think that that's where their hustle began. No honey. Their hustle began way before that. They had some personal values which helped them move to the next level of their lives. Values that we neglect a lot these days but which are still projecting people to higher heights.

These people you admire and want to be like had to humble themselves and work their way to the top just like you are doing now. They had to invest in their hustle to increase their value as a business or brand then get to the point where people saw them capable and trusted them enough to collaborate with them.

Here are the virtues that you need to have for success. It has helped most successful people get to where they are today.

Hard work

Like it or not the virtue of hard work never goes out of style. Nobody is born with any knowledge whatsoever. The only thing we know how to do as babies which nobody teaches us is to suckle, cry and poop.

We have to be taught everything we know today which has been hard work for our parents, our teachers and for us who have invested lots of time and energy learning something. So why will you think that hard work is no longer a virtue to apply for a successful life.

If you believe your parents did a good job with the way they raised you then their hard work paid off. It's the same with your teachers, mentors and your bosses. Trust me they went through a hard time to train you and teach you or build the company where you worked in order to help yourself.

If you think good of them it's because they worked hard to make a good impact on you which actually is a success.

I see people encouraging others to work smart instead of working hard. But I wonder how one can become smart without working hard. No one is born smart. We learn to be smart. And if you train your mind to be smart, you will be smart.

And you have to work hard to be smart. Because being smart requires learning and being good at something.

Have the virtue of hard work instilled in you. As the term signifies it's hard but that's the best way to achieve the sweetest success. Be ready to put in your best and do what you want to do well. Be ready to learn all the tricks. Because that's how you will learn. And with time you will discover that you will not require to work as hard as you did in the beginning. That's when you start to work smart. Because you already understand your work and you have all the skills and experience necessary for it.

Patience

I can't count how many times I heard the phrase "patience is a virtue" while growing up. From movies (like The Mummy 1) and so many other people, I came across. It took me a lot of time and failing at trying to go ahead of time to realize how true this phrase is.

I have felt late in life for such a long time so I know what I am talking about. At some point, all my friends seemed to have and achieve something I was lacking and this made my self-esteem issues worse. Coupled with the fact that I had set goals like getting married at 23, having my degree in three years and controlling a successful business which none happened as I planned.

I got into the greatest phase of disappointment in my life. It took a while to begin to get things right or back on track. I was forced once in a while to be patient for certain things to happen but all I wanted was to catch up on the time I had lost.

I focused so much on the fact that 'I was supposed to be further with my life and not be at this lower point where I found myself. It hurt me and killed me every day and I put in all my energy to make sure I jump at least five steps ahead to get to where I was supposed to be.

When I didn't catch up I felt even more discouraged and blamed myself for it. I compared myself with my friends and even with strangers on the internet who are younger than me. It made me think "this is where I would have been if I didn't have this or that obstacle that slowed me down".

Now I have come to realize that patience is really necessary for things to work out. Some things do take time to happen. You need to be ready when it happens and have the ability to maintain it if not you will not manage it well and you will lose it.

You need to have patience as you work hard for what you want. You will fail and meet obstacles on your way some of them will even take you back to the point where you started, but in all this, you have to apply patience to your courage to move on so that you don't go astray.

Positive attitude & Self believe

Staying positive is very important for success. It can be hard to remain positive when you don't see results but only a positive attitude can attract success.

Make efforts to believe in yourself no matter how hard it is. Your confidence may fluctuate every day, your self-esteem may not be on top every time, you may feel discouraged and sometimes nervous. Know that this is normal.

Don't focus on how low you feel, but focus on how you can boost your confidence. Most people are not always confident in themselves, everyone has done at least one thing afraid and experts still say they still feel nervous while doing what they know how to do best. So don't let your fears or lack of confidence affect you to the point that you can't do anything to make your life better.

Kindness & Selflessness

Be kind to people with your words and actions even if you disagree with them. Be respectful and help others. It's important to have a business relationship with people but shows them some extra kindness because that will make them to always remember you.

Being kind to people is a great way to build a solid network. A kind compliment or a selfless action can build trust and open up conversations which could lead to a job or an opportunity that will help you. Practice kindness.

Integrity & respect for your work ethic

For the sake of your reputation or brand, you need to have integrity and respect your work ethic. This will take you far because every action that you take will contribute to your reputation with time.

If you show more integrity and respect for your work ethic then you will build a good reputation for yourself which will guarantee more clients for you in the marketplace.

Vigilance & Prudence

Stay vigilant and prudent as you interact with people and make decisions because not everyone has an agenda that is also favourable for you.

You will meet selfish people who will ask to work with you but will only want their own desires to be met. Stay woke. Develop an eye that decerns such people. Make sure that you define and defend your own interests in every deal.

Take people the way they are and find ways to deal with them as they come for your own good. Be wise.