The importance of branding in the journalism creator’s world venture
Designing a logo for my community newsletter, ‘Weekly Round Up’, has managed to give identity to my work and further brought an unimagined result of giving a sense of ownership to targeted audiences.
Being part of the EJP Cohort has been nothing but a privilege towards building my online community newsletter.
Turning an idea into reality, the program so far has taken me through stages that include establishing a niche audience, aspects of product development and now, giving a brand identity to my newsletter, ‘Weekly Round Up.’
The tasks sound easier said but are a challenging process and even more difficult if it had to be done outside the EJP Fellowship program where guests come not only to encourage you but to share skills needed to build a sustainable media start up.
According to Nigel Mugamu, the director of 263 Chat, creators should not just implement their projects without looking at how other players managing similar initiatives locally, regionally and internationally are managing their work.
“Also, make it a habit to open your work from more than one device, even a friend’s device, so that you see if the outlook is presentable and compatible with all software.” These were more than words of encouragement I got from Nigel Mugamu.
The conversation made me realise that in whatever I do, there is a need for brand identity. This, coupled with going through some online media startups like Community Podium and Impact Stories Zimbabwe gave me insights on the importance of branding for visibility.
The branding also came with a tagline, ‘Amplifying Community Voices’ which in this case helps audiences to have an insight to what I do and what I stand for.
Having added these developments to my project, I have since realised through comments coming in, that through branding one can give a project a more human side which audiences can relate to more than a company that’s strictly all about business. In many ways, the project now appeals to people’s emotions and makes them feel more connected to Weekly Round Up.
Hiring a graphic designer to do the work was not feasible as costs never matched the pockets of a startup. However, that did not stop me from pursuing my intention of branding. Driven by the need to create an identity and observations derived from seeing work of similar startups, I therefore went straight to YouTube tutorials where I created my logo under the instructions of a bot.
Great, isn’t it?
Going forward, my target is now to create more content and distribution platforms so that my work is able to reach the most remote parts of Zimbabwe. Achieving that would fulfill my dream of bridging the information gap between rural and urban dwellers.
I am glad that the newsletter has already managed to bring stories from rural communities to the mainstream thereby facilitating debates for rural communities to question accountability and transparency issues from duty bearers.
The newsletter, in the future, will be shared via online platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram to ensure that it reaches even the online audiences. This is advantageous in a dual sense, that is, through social media I can reach communities both in the country and abroad.
My long term goal is for my product (newsletter) to be a brand well known within the Midlands province. A brand which community members can associate with, feel like it is their own and proactively contribute content to. In turn, this will create an organic base reach for my product enabling me to boost advertising reach with the possibility of introducing a subscription fee at a later stage. The newsletter has to attract advertisers who will feed into my sustainability model.
Building a team will also be key in the future so as to further develop the current template and to complete imitation of the hard copy newspaper into our online newsletter.
