This African blogger from Cameroon used a pretty simple, cool and innovative way build up her brand and launch her blog’s new website. Her name is Yefon Kathleen Mainsah, creator of I Rep Camer, a blog that showcases fashion, lifestyle, culture, travel and more focusing primarily on Cameroon and Africa.
Mainsah created I Rep Camer in 2009 when there were very few bloggers from the English speaking part of Cameroon, making her one of the first female bloggers from Cameroon. She stated blogging around the same time as Bella Naija which is now one of Nigeria’s biggest blogs.
Despite Cameroon lagging greatly behind in the blogging space compared to other African countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, her drive, passion and persistence to promote the positive side of Cameroon and Africa has kept her going for over seven years, despite the little support she has received from Cameroonians from who she thought might be as excited as she was in putting Cameroon out there. Mainsah has not made any money from blogging.
Time have changed in the last seven years since Yefon Mainsah started I Rep Camer and with the emergence of social media, a lot has changed in how we access and share information online. Unlike before, blogs are a lot more accessible as bloggers can share their blogs website url on Facebook and on other social media platforms. Bloggers now have various options to stand out from the highly populated crowd and showcase their work.
All photos by: Christian Sankeur. Makeup: Anyi Asonganyi.
One thing worth noting is blogging in Cameroon still has a very long way to go in terms of opportunities provided to bloggers for partnerships and brand deals to with big brands.
In 2015 she decided it was time to take matters into her own hands and take it up a notch with her blog to re-brand I Rep Camer by revamping her blog site with a brand new and more modern design, by switching from a blogspot dot com to a dot com and by changing the I Rep Camer logo and revamping the website for I Rep Camer was the way to start.
Once the new iRepCamer.com site was ready to be launched, Yefon Mainsah, a lover of all things “Made in African and Cameroon”, decided it would be a great idea to do what most bloggers in Cameroon haven’t done before which is to have some very talented Cameroonian females to be a part of the launching of her new website and emerging as a newly rebranded I Rep Camer.
