SelarContentMarketing

Selar is an e-commerce platform serving the African creator economy. When I joined in August 2022, I started out managing Selar's Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

The immediate job was straightforward: create content, grow the audience and keep the brand in conversation with creators.

But there was a bigger opportunity. Selar had a strong product, but much of its communication was understandably focused on selling the product. I saw an opportunity to make the brand feel more like a participant in the creator economy — a company that understood what creators were talking about, cared about what they were building and could teach them something useful.

I started with social media. Then I moved into content marketing, where I learned SEO and began building content designed not only to entertain and engage, but to capture search demand and drive people towards the product.

When I joined Selar, I was responsible for Twitter and LinkedIn. Twitter was particularly important because it was where a large part of Nigeria's creator and tech ecosystem was already having conversations.

I didn't want Selar to sound like a company broadcasting announcements. I wanted it to sound like someone you actually wanted to follow.

That meant experimenting with Nigerian internet culture, humour, commentary, storytelling and conversational writing — while still finding ways to educate people about the product. The basic principle was simple: if creators were already talking about something, Selar should be able to participate in that conversation.

Within roughly six months, the Twitter audience grew from 5,000 to 10,000 followers.

After about a year in social, I moved into Selar's content team. The transition changed the way I thought about content. I was now writing technical and educational articles for the blog, with a target of roughly five articles a month.

I had to learn SEO quickly. I learned how to use search data to answer questions like:

• What are creators looking for?
• What information are they struggling to find?
• Where does Selar have something useful to say?

My work covered keyword research, search intent, content briefs, competitor analysis, on-page optimisation, internal linking and backlinks. I was responsible for the process from research through to writing, optimisation, publishing and distribution, with editorial review from my manager. We tracked performance using Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

In my first year learning SEO, more than 30 articles ranked on Google's first page. It was my first real proof that content could work as an acquisition channel, not just a publishing function.

SEO answered one question: what are people searching for? But I was interested in another: what would make people actually want to hear from Selar?

That question led to Learn with Selar. The idea was to take things people were already paying attention to — brands, pop culture, internet phenomena, campaigns and creators — and turn them into lessons for people building businesses online.

Instead of creating another piece of content telling creators how to market themselves, we could look at something happening in culture and ask: what can a creator learn from this?

I created the name, concept, format and editorial direction, and handled the research, writing, design and distribution. It became a way for Selar to participate in culture rather than simply advertise within it.

There was another way to make the brand feel human: let the creators speak.

I contributed to Selar's creator storytelling initiatives, including Creator Stories — identifying and reaching out to creators, conducting interviews, developing content and supporting distribution. I also managed the content pipeline for Season 1 of the Selar Creator Video Series, produced in partnership with RiseVest, handling creator sourcing, outreach, interviews, production, editing and distribution.

The goal was bigger than simply creating interesting content. Creator stories gave potential users something product marketing couldn't: proof. Instead of telling creators what they could achieve, we could show them people already doing it.

Not everything I worked on was designed simply to build awareness. I also contributed to content and campaigns that connected education and storytelling to user acquisition and product adoption.

Selar 100

I contributed to the 2023 and 2024 editions of Selar 100, a campaign celebrating creators across Africa. My work included identifying creators, reaching out to them, creating campaign assets and distributing the campaign across social.

The campaign turned the people already using Selar into part of the brand story — creating recognition for creators while giving prospective users visible examples of what was possible on the platform.

The Ultimate Digital Product Manual

I contributed to the editorial and content work behind Selar's digital product education initiative, alongside creators and industry experts.

From Student to Cashflow

I also contributed to the content and execution of the From Student to Cashflow initiative, helping translate the broader promise of the creator economy into practical education for aspiring creators.

By this point, my work at Selar had expanded well beyond making content. Different pieces were doing different jobs.

• Social created attention.
• SEO captured existing demand.
• Learn with Selar created affinity.
• Creator Stories created social proof.
• Educational content built authority.
• Campaigns created moments of attention and participation.
• Email helped maintain the relationship.
• Product-led content connected all of that attention back to Selar.

The interesting part was learning how these pieces could work together, rather than treating each channel as an isolated task.

Selar taught me that content has two jobs that can sometimes appear to be in conflict. It needs to perform. But it also needs to mean something to people.

SEO taught me how to follow demand: look at what people are searching for, understand the intent behind it and create something genuinely useful. Social taught me something different — sometimes the best way to get someone's attention is to talk about the thing they're already thinking about.

Learn with Selar was where those two lessons came together. I learned that a brand doesn't become human because you put a casual tone in your captions. It becomes human when it has something to say.

When I left Selar, I had gone from managing two social channels to working across social, SEO, editorial, email, creator marketing and product-led content. More importantly, I had learned to think about content not simply as things a brand publishes, but as a system for earning attention, creating trust and moving people closer to a product.