My Journey Towards Building A Community-Centered Newsletter
The Newsletter I am building, Weekly Round-Up is part of Community Talk, a community news site.
On the 1st of January 2022, I began my journey in the inaugural Entrepreneurial Journalism Training and Mentorship Program (EJP). Having been honored to be in the program’s first cohort, I am looking forward to building and sustaining an online newsletter, Weekly Round-Up which is part of Community Talk, a community news website.
The online website whose stories are to be shared through a weekly newsletter focuses on disadvantaged communities in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province. Major beats that we focus on are community stories, investigative and data-driven reporting.
Community Talk and media business has always been my dream. As some lamented the subsequent COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, for me it is something that gave me ample time to build and shape my project. From simple Facebook posts and tweets, the project grew into a website. Gradually getting a following since then, my dream is now to make the venture profitable so as to sustain operations.
Since I launched the venture, I have won two pitch contests: Content Creators Network and Youth Connekt, and these have helped me grow my network and acquire the gadgets needed to produce content. As an emerging content creator, I have encountered a number of challenges including restrictive legislation. These, however, have not deterred me as I soldier on.
The Weekly RoundUp is inspired by the need to build a product that is sustainable in terms of reach and revenue growth. The newsletter that I wish to share via MailChimp seeks to initiate the inevitable migration from hard copy to digital at the same time making it more accessible so that our goal of facilitating access to information is not jeopardized. I have since opened a MailChimp account and going forward, I wish to experiment with templates.
MailChimp has been an application of choice considering its ability to flight adverts, therefore, making revenue out of my product. Moreso, I anticipate that traffic to the MailChimp newsletter will result in the publication making a profit from Google Ads. The major challenge so far is that I have not really devised a way how I can build a following. Generally, people have little trust in the news they find online.
Therefore, I am hoping that the EJP program will furnish me with skills on how to make my product trustworthy and in the process gain subscribers. Failure to gain followership and engagement on my product will probably result in its failure as advertisers will not be enticed. However, with the nation seeking knowledge on how they can penetrate social media spaces to make business, I am confident that my project will gather fruit given enough support.
In the coming weeks, I will leverage the EJP program to refine my venture while I learn from my peers in the cohort. If you would like to reach out to me email me at muzondoitai@gmail.com.
