 So before we start, I would want all of us to slightly, I mean, take a minute each one of us and introduce us. And then I'll start putting out questions and I'll start putting out the flow of the session and then please feel free to interrupt, ask questions and give your ideas because that is what it's all about today. So let me start with Cicero, would you like to give it a go? Like, would you like to introduce yourself and let, because you're also participating with the rest of us? I mean. Okay, so yeah, my name is Cicero and I'm a small digital agency called Pressure Interactive. Also, I run what is called the Sleepwear Camp Boa. So basically it's kind of a forum for people who want to learn coding. I myself am not a hardcore coder, but I've always ended up working with tech companies. So that's like, you know, just a passion and I enjoy teaching. So that's something which I do. So this letter is one of the things that I generally, you know, not really done at full flow because like I said, it's something that you have to really plan out sort out a whole lot of things. But yeah, that's something that I do. So that's about it. Lalita, would you like to introduce again because we're live now and we are more people that was an informal introduction which we had. So we run a trust called Plus Trust and we work on micro incubation of women's project ideas from rural areas. So obviously it's not a tech product. It's not an app. You know, it's not fashionable in that sense. Yeah. Most of these women are located in remote villages and most of the work they do is around either schooling or perhaps sometimes health issues and sometimes skill development for people in that community. So the idea is they work more on services and they do it in their own community and it's an experience of thinking through the whole cycle of building an enterprise from idea generation clarity of purpose to a point where they're actually implementing something. Do you happen to use newsletters in any way? Yeah, we do an annual newsletter. So once a year it's one effort and we always are late. And for us it is more like, you know, keeping a record of what we are actually doing. So we are a 10-year-old organization and if any time anybody wants anything in our history, they find it in that particular year's newsletter because our work was simple. But this year we are thinking of scaling and so we started, you know, regular posts and Facebook and LinkedIn and all that. So when it came to doing the newsletter, it looked like, oh, we're already said all this. Why do I put this all in the newsletter? But then if you wanted the human element, you wanted some of those stories. So the challenge was to, how do we separate out the purpose of the newsletter and the purpose of our social media presence? All right, and so who is your typical audience when you, who are you talking with when it comes to newsletter? Because I know that this is more like a report card that you print. Is it a physical newsletter or is it an... Usually we have not printed it. It's always been electronic. And it is first to people who are interested in our work, you know, our alumni, our supporter network, mostly individuals who give donations. We don't have funding partners. We raise money from individual donations. So it goes to them. And then, you know, people who are in this line of trying to improve education in rural schools, that category of people whom we are in touch with as well-wishers or, you know, advisors and so on. Your own fraternity. Yeah. But this year, we thought that we should send it out more widely to more individuals. And we also use it whenever we approach somebody for a funding support. I understand. We see our newsletter. This is what we do kind of stuff. Okay. Thanks, Lalitha. We'll talk more as we move ahead, because I remember Amartya saying that we are trying to build a country on the back of unhealthy, uneducated side of people. And we will never become so-called super power just because we have some shiny tech companies in the country. And so what you're doing, I think, that is what we should be doing more and less of the everything else which we say. Yeah, it's very important, I realize. And it really makes a difference for the women and the children in that location. Yes. And the money needed is very small. People ask for, on an average, 6,000 to 8,000 rupees and for six months. And that's it. We exit after six months. So that makes the, it's a make or break difference for them, you know. So thank you, Lalitha. Hi, Nitin. Can you hear me? I see you're there. Will you like to speak for a second? Hi, Abhishek. I'm Aadipan. Yes, Nitin. Hi. Good morning, everyone. So I'm Nitin. And I run this little initiative called Project Bibliotherapy. Been running since day one of the lockdown. And it's basically an initiative to make people read more. So I've been like, I started out on Instagram. And then I moved to Strollstack, a new platform for creators which just got out of beta last week. Yeah. And that's on the content part. And to state the word, I just launched a newsletter this Thursday along with a WhatsApp messaging service of sorts where you receive a daily nudge to read more. That's been my reason of surviving this lockdown, pretty much. OK. OK. Is there, I think we, I know your presence on Twitter that I've come across that look at this Project Bibliotherapy and you're doing something. So you already have a small audience like who's following you when you're talking with? A little audience, yes. Yeah. I mean, that's how it starts. That's how it starts. That's how it starts. Yeah, because I start out with zero on 22nd March. So yeah. Anything specific you wanted to talk, discuss, know, explore today? I wanted to understand the whole ecosystem of newsletters because that's brand new for me. They've now been creating content and have been publishing it and promoting it to social media. But I've just started building a reader list as of a couple of days ago. Yeah. That's why it's like a login. So the best playbook for newsletter I've come to realize because I've been doing it for three years now and before that I was doing it for other branches. The playbook of religions, the playbook of Babas. That's what should be the playbook for religion recruiting more readers and exact playbook. How do we build that into a written document? Because they exactly know how to increase their followers. And they are not just followers. They are repeat followers. They will devote time, money, everything, effort. And that's what we want for our newsletters. Exactly. That would vote it like. But the content might be slightly different. Yes, yes. I mean, you don't have to promise the stars all the time. But yes, it will change. Exactly. As long as people need more, that's it. My job's done. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Nitin. We'll talk more. So please ask. I've written down all these things what Lalitha wanted to know, what you want to know. I'll cover that in a while. And then please interrupt me. Please ask as many questions you want. Because it's a very informal session. There's no one is going to present anything today. Sure. So we have Ryan. Is that right? Could I pronounce your name right, Ryan? Yes. Hi, Abhishek. My name is Mohamed Rayan. So I'm a journalist based in Chennai. I've been into newsletters for the past three to four months now, been trying out with a different type of media content, especially focusing on explanatory journalism. So I am active on Substack and I'm also on Scroll Stack. So literally I've been trying in different platforms just to see where I can reach more readers. Yeah. So my point is hopefully one day to start my own independent media startup that relies only on newsletters. And in fact, I've been participating in so many newsletter sessions. I even participated the one which you organized previously with Rajamalika from News Minute. Yeah, that's about it. That's fine. That's fine. That's great because we need more people like you who want to start something interesting on new media outlets because the reason I think the problem in our media ecosystem is not too many people are wanting to start things. And that's the right way to go because if you know how to build an audience and it does take a lot of time and effort, it's a good start. But give it time, give it more effort. It happens. It happens. It just takes time and effort. That's it. You are on the right path. We'll discuss more. Ask me questions. I don't know everything, but yes, I have explored newsletters for very long. And I've been doing it for three years now. I've built a small audience. Others have built very huge audience. But you also have Indian ecosystem has our own constraints. You may want a lot of audience but the kind of content you want to put out there, like English in itself puts constraint just because you're writing in English. That in itself is a constraint thing. Just because you can go local or in Hindi or in Tamil, that also does not guarantee you a good audience. So the problem is elsewhere. We'll talk, we'll discuss more. Thanks so much for coming because, and please interrupt and ask all the questions. So we have, next we have Vikram. Hi, Vikram. Can we have a minute of yours? Will you introduce yourself to us? Sure, and apologies for having my video off but I'm on a poor connection. So, you know, I'm trying to deal with that. Head of Strategic Communications and a junior fellow at IDFC Institute. We are a think tank and a former journalist as well about a decade's experience. We're a think tank based out of Mumbai or as we like to call ourselves a things slash do tank because we look at a number of focus areas. There's urbanization, there's the criminal justice system, there's data governance, but the commonality in all of those, the common thread running through all of those is that we look at it from a state capacity perspective, which is very often when you look at all the governance problems in India and civil society organizations go to government, I mean, not everybody to be fair, but, you know, a fair pool, they will go to government with perspective that look, you guys don't know what you're doing, which is not actually true. You know, bureaucrats are not idiots. They know what needs to be done. The problem is that there are many political economy and capacity constraints which prevent them from executing properly. So they have to look for workarounds. And that's what we focus on finding out where those capacity gaps and how state capacity can be built up to actually allow the intent of governance to be translated into proper execution. So that's where we come from. Audience is fairly diverse. We sort of, starting from central and street level governments and bureaucrats to civil society organizations, donors, philanthropists, private sector corporates. So we have to speak to a lot of different people and put across the central message, essentially. Is there anything specific that you'd like to know? Yes, because I wanted to know, I'm aware of IDFC in suits. We kind of read a lot of stuff which comes out either in business standard, I think Vivek Gayeja used to be there in some capacity. Yeah, he was a senior visiting fellow. Yeah, so there are various publications which you publish so many papers and they're very full of good, informative pieces. So why I'm curious is because IDFC Institute already has access to the best of the media in the country. Right. So what makes you want to explore newsletter? So okay, there are two or three different sort of objectives here. Number one is that we already do send out newsletters but the way I look at it is, when you send out a newsletter, you're not doing anyone a favor, you're asking a favor, right? You're asking for their time which means you have to give them value for that time. Now when an institute like ours which does a lot of diverse work across areas, when you send out a newsletter as we do now updating people on what you are doing is fine. I mean, it serves a functional purpose but it's not really delivering value as it should be delivered, right? I mean, everybody who sent the newsletter who might not really care to keep up with what the institute is doing, they only want the stuff that pertains to them. So what we'd ideally like to do is build smaller, more focused audiences around certain specific areas like data governance or urban governance and send them special focused newsletters. They can be informal newsletters, you know, say using a substack sort of model which go more in depth about developments in that area with start conversations which actually deliver content that gets people involved, that gets people talking. So there's the sort of meta newsletter which is just like, hey, we are the institute is what we're doing. But I mean, the way I see it at least we also need more substantive engagement. Okay. From what I understand that your team or your institute already has people who are subject matter experts and they are writers, researchers. So that part is like, in fact, that's what most people find difficult to do with which is to have the right people doing research, writing and thinking. That we don't have a problem with. So there are a couple of examples which I know of. I mean, you already know, Takshila is doing something interesting in this field and since they have been at it for very long when no one was doing newsletter they were doing that meta newsletter. They are also trying to hear towards this direction. I don't know how successful they are except there one, Pranay does that newsletter which is we had him here and we talked with him. So I can understand a bit because I have done a small course at Takshila so I get what you want to do slightly. I mean, you guys do some great work. So I've written down your questions. I'll come back to it. We'll talk more about it and we will explore. This is interesting. I mean, since you have been a journalist so your half of your job is done. All you have to like the other part is like very repetitive, very repetitive stuff. You don't have to worry for the rest. So let me move on to Ekta. Ekta, hi. Welcome to content web. Would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, Abhijit. Hello to everybody. So I'm Ekta and I'm working with the Citizen Matters. We are based out of Vandor and so we are a civic media news platform and we have been doing newsletters for quite some time and I think my colleague was, he attended the session by Raghun Malika and we were a little hesitant to actually join and we told Xenna because what we have been doing so far is really mechanical. So we have a template and we feed stuff into it which is more like our, you know, like our highlights stories or top stories and but the idea is also that, you know, we are community funded. So there are like the newsletters actually use a tool which one is of course informing the citizenry of the work we are doing but the other is also informing them about what we are doing and why they should support us. So there are like two things that we want to really build on and I think we have like a mailing list of about 11,000 people which is great but again, like the clicks we get and you know, the opening and all of that is, I mean, those rates are, it's very decent but I think given the age we are living in, there's a lot of design aspects that can be addressed because that template is really old fashioned and I think it doesn't appeal at least the current, the younger generation. So yes, so there's one design aspect to it and the second is also about once you have a newsletter, how do you put it out then? How do you get people to subscribe to it? Because I think like very similar to what you would discuss with Vikram that content is not really an issue because we are publishing stories. We have a lot of information to share but what exactly to share and how do you package it is something. So for like many years now, every Saturday at 12 noon, our newsletter goes out and sometimes you modify it, you know, we add like some special, something we have. So yeah, looking forward to learning from everybody here. What is the platform you guys use to send out the newsletter? We're using second group. Okay, okay, okay, okay. And is it a team which takes care of like someone drafts it and someone just sets it up and publishes it, how does it happen? We have, so there are like three stages. One is like the editorial team who recommends what content should go in and then we have our tech lead who basically feeds it into like the send and do template and then it's scheduled a few hours before and you know, that's how we publish it. And besides that, like we have on our website, like we have subscribed to our newsletter button. So other than the, other than what you're, you're taking the already published articles and sending it to your audience, you also repurpose it for the newsletter or you just take that article and put it in. But when you say modify, what do you guys modify the design part or do you just modify the content part as well? The content part, so for example, we like, usually we have like three chapters in focus cities. So we used to put like two articles, top articles, you know, so there like six, like six image boxes along with like a text box with about two, three sentences. So, and then now we have like, we have also ventured into Mumbai. So we have like, we have limited to four. But at the start, like for example, when we launched in Mumbai, the introductory, we give like an introductory note to our readers, like this is what we are doing or we had like a special series on women's safety in, you know, in Indian cities. So we give like a background note to this is what has been happening in the last one week. So that is where we modify in the text part of it, but not really the design. All right, all right. So fair enough, we'll discuss more and I have some interesting examples which I can share with you. I'm aware about Citizen Matters very briefly. I was in Bangalore. I was working from a co-working and I had someone from Citizen Matters sharing the desk next to me, isn't that? That's when I was, I became aware. You guys do some great work. Please come to Delhi as well. So we are actually, but we haven't like launched a chapter formally. But yeah. Thank you so much. So we have a question. Yeah, please, please. Just had a question, she said she had about 11,000 people they send it out to. Yes. Do you all get feedback from the people who get your newsletter or do you ask them specifically, like maybe one, you know, on a regular basis? So like, we don't ask feedback about the newsletter, but for example, for instance, we have a website redesign in place right now. So we put out a survey like to our readers, like, you know, we are designing a website and here was like a quick short survey because we want them to also have a say in what we are doing. So we put out stuff like that, but we haven't really had any concrete feedback on our newsletter, other than our team itself and some well-missions. Yeah, okay. So sort of from my limited experience of doing, I mean, you would run a digital consulting from digital marketing from probably, the best feedback is the outcome which you want from anything you want to do. It's like you're selling detergents and if it's not selling, no matter how much feedback you take from the users or is it cleaning your cloth or not, if it's not selling, that's the best feedback. Same is the case with the newsletters. We, the single largest achievement at times when we publish newsletters that we just feel good about publishing it, I mean, then we forget about it. And we don't, and we don't have any outcomes to it, huh? So, yeah. I was looking at it from a redesigned point of view because what happens is sometimes when you get it, like it's nice to take a live perspective of the audience because they'll say, okay, this article, maybe it was pouring out. Like we said, I think Vikram mentioned it that, you know, they want to kind of specialize or be very specific. So it's only the person who's actually reading it who's going to tell you that, okay, this is the article which I would want. And like, you know, that would probably be one way of getting down to specifics. So it's a similar concept for both, like what Vikram wanted and what Citizen Matters is also doing. So that's how I was asking from that perspective. Yeah. I will very briefly share a model of framework which is, which people have borrowed from marketing communications. It's been in practice for ages for like, at least for decades. And it kind of works for the communication firms. It works for marketing brands. It works for also like a lot of NGOs have also used it. Non-profit organizations have used it to communicate. It's very basic. It's called POST, which is called POST. P stands for understanding your people, audience, product, what your product is, what you want to say. O is you have to have a very definite objective. What are the outcomes you want from your newsletter for what audience and for what particular kind of thing which you want to say. S stands for the strategy. Your strategy should be only about the kind of audience you want to reach out and to achieve that objective. At times you feel that, oh, we are publishing some great content, but if it's not for that specific audience and not trying to meet an objective, it is of no use. It's like, if you want to go anywhere, then if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. And last is technology, which is at times we kind of get stuck. No, my newsletter should be designed well. It should have the best logo. It should have this layout. But at the end of the day, a majority of the newsletters are read within the email client, which is just text. And depends like what email client renders in what particular kind of way. So a lot of time we want, so there are two ways to use newsletter. One is to let people read whatever is there within the email client on their phones or on their desktops or laptops. Or you want to like, you want to send them to a website. You want to send them to an article elsewhere. So those are the two approaches. So typically post means that you start with understanding who your audience is. And this is where a lot of feedback research comes. You go out or you meet personally or you call them up or you already have a secondary data about a particular audience set. That's what I started. Most of the people, if you go and break down, see what they have tried to do with their products and how they're, Paul Graham, someone from startup world says that know your audience. Marketing says you should have marketing orientation knowing your current and prospective needs and behavior of your prospective customers. Typical communication also says who is your audience. So that allows, you can have a very specific approach to it. You can ask 10 questions. Demography, what is your usage pattern? What do you guys read? What is your behavior? What are your likes, dislikes? And so Facebook gives you a whole lot of information or you can just speak. Oh, this is the kind of audience I want to speak. Let me just call up 10 people and know what they want to read. Objectives, there are various frameworks. There are objectives and key results. You can just write down, oh, I just want people to read and respond to this particular survey or this particular quiz. Or they just want, I'm sending out a question. They should reply to that. That can be a simple objective. Other objective could be to reach out to make more people aware about your work, make more people join your organization or join a particular initiative or they should start donating more. Or at least the query should be there. Okay, how can I do something? So these are the various objectives. Strategy is where the interesting thing happens. So we see that everyone wants to start a sub-stack. There are people who are using something from Amazon, SendGrid, there is campaign monitor, there is constant contact and there are endless tools out there. But as people say that your tool can't be a strategy. Just because you're in sub-stack or scroll stack for that matter, people will not be reading you. Because this is this, that's still the age old thing that you have to do the knife fight. For every single audience for the first couple of years, you add to your list, it will be a lot of hard work. You may reach the inflection point in the very first year or in the first six months, but till then it will be very difficult. You have to do the street fight, you have to go and fight with each and every person, recruit them for your audience list. And the last bit technology, yes, it is an issue because now you have to figure out, should I have like most of us have our own domains? How do we map the domain because then we can benefit from a bit of SEO from it? We get discovered more often because if you just publish within the MailChimp's ecosystem you're caught up there, you're not able to reach out to more people. It's not working when you're not using it. And then there is social media. Like everyone has this magical vision about social media. If you're just publishing there something, millions of people will be listening to you. But there is a way to it, which is social media at best is just like another channel like television, like radio, like newspaper, magazine and you work on it, which is you use it the way it has been designed. Now it's not designed to just publish and people, millions of people will read it. So let me again go back to Lalitha because what the best way would be like, I'll take up a question from each of us and I will introduce you to some examples and references. Lalitha, I remember you asking that you are now trying to move more towards publishing more number of, not just an annual newsletter, you want to do more newsletters and you want to use social media for that. So what is it that one problem which you would want us to like, all of us to discuss and see if we can all contribute there? See my audience changes because right now we are in the middle of trying to scale up and so far we were writing to audience who are English, tech savvy. Now I want rural women with some being their bonnets to be able to read it or if they can't read it, at least listen to it, see it. So we have to come up with a completely different way of presenting our work if we are to increase our pool because if we talk to, I mean, if we get 100 women to think about our workshop maybe it translates into five people actually taking up this project which is a rate for any kind of entrepreneurial activity. Not everybody who dreams of an enterprise is actually ready to do it and we see it in the failures rates and startups and so on and so forth. So we have to be, we want to be growing fast in the coming years and we have to really think through our strategy for reaching a completely different layer of the population. But this is a different problem Lalitha because this is more of an operational issue but what you were trying to discuss before was you want to do more newsletters and you want to use social media because yeah, these newsletters we want to be quarterly and it should inspire people to look at our work and it's not inspiring people to contribute to us it's inspiring people to actually take up this kind of micro incubation particularly women. So you have to like, now newsletters can only do as much you can't have newsletters doing everything for you so what I would suggest and if I were you in your team I would take the newsletter and try to do more of what it is capable of doing as of now like if you want, which is you have your element eyes you have your donors you have general public reading your and then your own fraternity or educators and so if this gives you more benefit and this is where you're lacking in terms of reaching out to them more often that is what I would aim that would be my first step because maybe they do a half-yearly newsletter instead of an annual, even that will be a step up. Yeah, that would be a step up and since you're also trying to use social media so just by publishing on social media without knowing who your audience is because what social media does these days is it only allows you to reach about 5% of the people who follow you say if say 100 or people follow you only five of them would be able to read it won't they won't actually they won't even read it will just appear in their timeline doesn't matter if they read or not say something appears if you're doing if you're reading your Facebook you go and log into your Facebook countless things come in your timeline which you don't read exactly so imagine only six people get your content in their timeline and all of them whether it is LinkedIn or just social Twitter they will not even read it so even if you're publishing very now and they're on social media the guarantee that it will reach at least even like 10% of the people is like miniscue unless unless you are or your organization is like a celebrity a very famous people really want to read so that is the problem so the first step should be to be able to do more of what has already given you some results and do it better which is have a clear map of your audience like define your alumni who are your alumni and you start getting some more interviews from them hey we send you the newsletter do you want to read more about something can we can we give it can we send it to you more often is there more which you want to read same same as with the donors that okay we'll give you a yearly report card anyways but do you also want something quarterly something half yearly and also with the general public because that's that's a step number one and that in itself will give you a great number of ideas maybe they'll say hey we just don't want early quarterly they want to send you something monthly to us or fortnightly but then maybe fortnightly you won't send like a huge newsletter which you do but maybe a small update so that is that is what I would think if I were to do the newsletters for I mean I want to do the more of what works and do it better yeah exactly yeah so these are the things which I can share more we can have maybe more sessions around that in the future wherein someone like some organization an organization like plus trust how can they use newsletter in a different way and in a way that it maximizes their impact on the audience they want to reach out to and like your alumni will give you a different outcome donors will give you a different outcome general public will give you a different outcome and your fraternity will give you a different outcome and that has to be like fairly written down like these this is what we want from our newsletters like we send 10 newsletters in a year or 12 newsletters or six newsletters and then we have to like map the decision journal these are the decisions we took these were the outcomes that happened because of those decisions whether they were right or wrong we can assess it in the future that is that is how we'll we should go I mean I've taken it down anyone anyone else wants to ask Lalitha something interesting or they would want to contribute and offer an advice no shall I yes that's okay no what I was saying is that I think she mentioned that she was looking for people to maybe attend their programs or sessions so for that I would generally say that maybe when you're sending out the newsletter I've been having worked with an organization that has been in the entrepreneurial space it's very very difficult to get people to just come into a program of a newsletter you always need that personal touch of like you know talking to someone and then getting convinced about it so maybe you could just like when you're sending out the newsletter you could just put something which says like you know that if you know anybody or if you're interested in joining this program this is a number to call that would work because it's kind of work with the organization that I was working with and that would kind of get people to like you know maybe call in and then you would get to convince them that you know maybe you can go into the program so it's just a small thing which you can do because it's just one line which are adding to all of these letters but that would probably work towards converting people into attending your programs or sessions Yes, hey Nitin coming back to you we'll discuss more about project bibliotherapy because yes and since you just joined scroll stack and you also joined sub-stack and WhatsApp ecosystem and you wanted to know what they how does the entire ecosystem work like um so Saru would you want to answer like would you like to talk with Nitin and share something which if you take it over I'll just drop it okay so so Nitin can I ask you a couple of more questions sure go ahead who is your typical audience like I mean I give you the framework it's post POST you'll just touch each of these like very briefly and then maybe think of doing something interesting okay so my typical audience is pretty vast I haven't done segmentation per se but for me I consider myself to be a champion audience because I am not targeting anyone any specific genre per se I just post whatever I like to read and a lot of all the things I can say I'm good at the only thing I can say with surety is that I read a lot that's all I've been doing most of my life and I come across articles dating back 20 years from the inception of the internet to stuff which are long reads and just escape people who have like minimum attention spans myself included just disappear from twitter time lines so what I've been doing is I've been collecting all those links and I've been repackaging them in the form of magazines so this sub stack which has just started is called bibliotherapy zine I've already been publishing on scroll stack since July but the email model is something which I've just started exploding as you mentioned I started off with Instagram all the social media algorithms have gone cave ahead everyone yes yes way too much clutter even so I don't read 90% of things which come upon my time and I consider myself to be a reader that's what I'm trying to do right now is I'm trying to migrate my social media presence my Instagram towards a model where at least I deliver whatever I have to send be it in an email format or the WhatsApp message so that it's there with them whenever they want to check it out whenever whenever they want to read something which Douglas Adams wrote 20 years ago they can access it it's not like lost in a sea of quitter yes I mean we can I mean we can like have this entire session that how a publisher who is kind of publishing what you're publishing should be approaching this and how so they are I don't know if you're aware of maybe five books they do something similar or browsers sends you a mail browsers sends you a mail as Kulul is doing it they have got like the same books every week yes yes so my and then the endless people are doing it not that this is but the great the great thing about what you are doing is it's always the context it's not that oh everyone else has been doing it so why should I do it everyone reads book they have been sending recommendations since ever there's good reads and so on so forth my my my understanding is the context which you have and every every media outlet every media platform has a place like for Instagram or say you run a small ad on Instagram say for 500 bucks or on Facebook for 500 bucks the chances of you finding your core audience is increases many times and that's that's how it should be used most of the times which is a paid search model and then there are some independence things happening like someone discovers you and they like you so much and they start following you that will keep happening and that at times just happens out of the blue and all visited there is a mention in the media and there is a news there's a there's someone is written about you profiled you and then you have to be present on those platforms to harness that and shepherd people towards your how to build your audience with the single thing is you have to have a place somewhere on the web very clearly defined what you want to do it can be anything that you want to do for the kind of audience you have to have some idea it can keep changing over time can keep like okay you want to reach out to people who are from 24 35 or 45 or 55 and then you have a rough you can have like three or four person was in your mind these are the four kinds of people I want to read and that will drive your copy on the news on the website hey this is what I am sending every week every Friday every Saturday it will be this and let me know that is I mean we can have we'll have more to discuss that's how so tools don't matter you can be on substack you can be on mail you can be anywhere yeah but the distribution channels basically yeah and if you can also tap into existing networks like if you have a friend who sends a newsletter and it goes out to 5000 odd people or 10,000 odd people you can't do like you can say hey this is what I'm doing would like to give me an introduction you have to like beg and borrow and you have to be shameless about plugging yourself you have to repeat yourself that's how you sell and if you if you are since I am from Delhi if you ever been to a small like I'm also from Delhi as well you're from Delhi if you went to large sales background so a little background about me yeah working in sales at a seven year sales career till 2017 August yeah and then I decided to take a sabbatical which carried forward to more than the original planned year yeah and then a pandemic happened and so what I'm doing right now is basically creating a publication of sorts where I'll be posting original stuff as well okay so that is the ultimate game plan but I mean I don't want to be writing and just putting it out there yes Instagram and Instagram ecosystem for people to find it in the blue so sorry to break this to you but you you haven't left your sales life behind it's still actually I'm trying to use that to sell my stuff rather than just ads yeah I don't think at least sales guy leaves his password behind it's like once a sales guy always a sales guy and yeah we have given it a name but we can call it by some other process but yes it is important to not just put exactly spreading the word asking people to join your community as I told you you have to follow the religion of formula that become the Baba and you can be a good Baba and not a bad Baba but yes that's how it is you have to convert people and it takes time the other thing is that and the easier option is to figure out where people are already wanting to do this you know and that is the like in marketing it is always said don't try to convert people like if you're selling if you're a gym brand don't go to fat people and say you should lose your weight try to find people those who are already excited about working out exactly and that that's the first audience which you should reach out to that's what I've been doing on Instagram like yeah yeah looking out to fellow readers fellow give your files yeah but the whole Instagram I'll go as been messed up so that's yeah okay let us next so Vikram will talk a bit more with you that's if you're still there um yeah Vikram you wanted to you wanted to discuss the whole you wanted to discuss how you want to like slice the huge amount of content which you guys produce which you have and then reach reach out to the more specific audience right so that's that's the broader question but also within that how do we make sure that what we are delivering is of value because you know the since the entire idea behind these more targeted newsletters is that you're offering something that is really worth the reader's time now I'm given how diverse our audience normally is you know we might I mean as you said we have a lot of content we might put content in that we think is fantastic but you know you never know if that's something that the audience actually wants to read so how to sort of bridge that gap and yes also slicing and slicing the audience so those are those are the two main questions they're also you know smaller sort of operational questions which I think everybody here I'm sure would be facing which is so for example one of the areas we work in is data governance right now you know best practices best privacy practices sort of mandate that all newsletters should be opt in not opt out but if you do that then given that people generally you know if they see if they see another email saying hey we're starting a newsletter if you want to you know if you want to sign up click here you're really you know not going to get much much traction or much feedback so it's tempting to take the easier route and you know your contact your mailing list the existing mailing list just send it out to them and give them an opt out chance but that's not really how it should work ideally so just small operational questions like that so I'm not a big voter of opt out because I would never do that even if I have so since I have mostly worked in worked with worked with brands and they had always like shady they had given us their shady mailing list which they were also okay to use with if you wanted to when I started my publication and I decided not to so I had lakhs and lakhs of people who I could like see exos I could have sent my newsletter to and because my newsletter is about small businesses and independent brands I did not choose to do that and it is very difficult because you have a huge mailing list lying next to you and you're not using it right right but the the good part about not doing that is that you actually build your community from ground up even if you have like 100 odd people in your newsletter like on your mailing list they are invested in what you're doing the kind of feedback which you get from them is priceless and they force you to do some interesting content they ask you questions so that part you would miss out if you're like using that's an interesting way to look at it yeah that's definitely a perspective so yeah even in real life like if you imagine I mean if you think you have like only those five people who kind of always push you to do better you don't like always meet like 500 people to get the best the best ideas I know people want to speed up their community like they really want to bring but to tell you the truth it does not it will take you at least three years to build a good community of any reasonable size it's it right like off so people say oh we have 50,000 people we have 50,000 people who subscribe to our newsletter and if they haven't gone through this route the chances are it's just a number right and they may they may report what sort of like metrics or these are the open rates because you tend to open the newsletter at that time whatever the first thing you do in the morning is open in email but if you're not going through it you're not spending time on it it does not matter yeah coming back to what you were saying that okay these are the things you want to build so think I when I so I have I've always been a news buff I'm not a journalist I've never been but I've always been a news buff I always try to follow how they I've tried to read their books how they write their articles how they build the entire thing how Bloomberg tries to come up with articles or how Washington Post writes their articles and they've written a book how so the same approach applies here which is you have to have a manual a style guide a content strategy for the audience and you publish that part of it when you say that you want to build an audience around data governance or you want to do something around say policies government policies and you want to empower them the first the first rule would be the first thing would be to imagine any 10 odd people who would want to subscribe that and then reach out to those people and just ask the very basic questions I know it comes because since you have been in this field forever for you it will be easier but when you go back to your team who is not doing this who has not been a journalist it will matter to them it will help them right here we want to start a newsletter can you reach out to 10 odd people and ask them what is it that they read and what is that they want to read right it it's very cliched it work because for you it is very automatic it's like inbuilt in your but for others who are not there it takes time to understand this no fair enough so that that is one thing which I mean and whatever you have discussed demands like more time for us to dwell each one like how how would you so when you say donors and you say corporates and you say these are the kind of audience you want to reach out to there has to be a you know trade-off that you cannot just be saying that hey like you're already sending out newsletters and there's nothing wrong in asking people hey we have another newsletter would you like to join because there you're not forcing them to do something right you should do that repeating yourself often if you I mean that's a that's that's something which is said in marketing if you look at a campaign which happens on a television you at times wonder why is this guy showing the ads of mdh masala every day but such is the human psyche that you it's very like as you watch it it the impression it leaves on your mind it reflects it manifests like three days later right or when you are in the market trying to buy something so when you record yeah exactly top of the mind recall comes in at that moment yeah so these things are being I know I have some journalist friends and they really don't want to do this what they they always look I mean they always like crack a joke that you are a marketer you always talk like this but we can combine best of both the words and try to build a good newsletter right no I mean yeah no sorry I was just going to say that you know one of the ideas that we had discussed internally was you know talking to people to figure out what they wanted and we weren't sure if that was a good way to go about it so it's good to hear that that's you know to get the validation that that's something you are suggesting as well that that is an effective way to gauge what what delivers value to your readers and you know what what would be worth that time yeah one of the things which I have used all my in all my professional career and then borrowed it from investors they maintain a decision journal and decision journal is very simple these are the decisions I took on the basis of these facts and then you don't really have to have a template and then go to the future and see did it work out or not so if it worked out and it did not work out because of the decisions you take there's something wrong with your decision and if it did not work out and you know why you already know why it did not work but because you've taken those decisions you listed it down the same I applied to my newsletters in one of the newsletters I wanted to seek their views about something which I wanted to launch and there was no interest whatsoever from anyone so then I figured out oh that no one has replied but then I changed the question then I changed the style tone and their replies for it so I otherwise I would have thought oh no one is interested right but then it figured then I figured out no the problem was something else right right so maybe we can talk more about like if you want to build a smaller audience you can start with something which is generic like a sub stack and if you start to see a ramp up then you can shift to more domain mapped you're within your own domain you can map it and turn that into a better thing you have to use social media also to get more people I mean you can use LinkedIn because you're more focused towards different audience you don't have to be on Facebook you don't have to be Instagram you could be LinkedIn and Twitter but it's a small it's like POST stands for like okay this is my strategy would be to also to reach out to people right right and the advantage here is that for these sort of domain specific newsletters we are not looking for huge audiences we're looking for good audiences yes so I think that that fits well with what you're describing so Pranay had shared on the on the talk with us that their audience is not more than like they don't have more than two thousand three thousand odd people subscribing to their newsletter yeah so we were discussing with Vikram about your newsletter that Vikram don't want to build a huge audience around our newsletters because these are like small around data governance and something like that but I had mentioned that yes the newsletter which they send out does not have more than three thousand more than three thousand odd subscribers and it works for them because in the policy sector is there and people want to read more about but you'll be surprised that in fact people who are clued into the newsletter they are the guys who refer others with similar interests right they tell me there's this cool newsletter called anticipate the unintended and you should look at it they like the content and all of that and like you were rightly saying Abhishek I think it's not just about the numbers right the curation and even if 10 people find it meaningful you should go ahead with it because our experience we have about five newsletters from Takshashila going out on a weekly basis our audience is completely different for each one of those type the China interest guys will never end up looking at something on the tech and policy side and people in tech and policy will not consider the health one but you should be okay with the numbers and I think a steady organic growth is useful because these are the guys who will participate right to you and say hey you didn't send something this weekend what happened or you know can you cover on this topic so a lot of times we have got inputs from the audience who kind of consume the content rather than us thinking this is more relevant so I think it's important to kind of get those signals right because our conversations with our own alumni has led us into doing things because they feel oh I've researched enough about this I don't find good content out there which is curated because most people don't have the time right and recently I started something for Takshashila which is the alumni newsletter and in a week's time I got good response from our own community of people saying that hey this is one place where I can see the job openings and I think somebody in in between mentioned about donors and organizations and that mind space to occupy right there are a lot of people in corporates always telling like I don't have one place to go to and find all this useful information so if somebody is helping you curate you know good reads combined with you know what different organizations are doing plus you know job opportunities or you know just stories of people which could inspire others to take such a call I think that's useful but there was I don't know Abhishek if Zainab had actually sent a couple of questions that you guys had more in terms of audience development I think for us moving to substack has been useful I don't know what's your experience may which impose a little painful at least for me to operate on and I feel substack is a better platform to use it though there are some glitches that need to be fixed overall I think it's seamless in terms of how the content gets displayed and even getting the CSV file on it and simple you know administrative hassles that I used to go through with mailchimp I see substack is a lot more easier that way I don't know if you guys use any other platform okay I mean for me platforms I mean others I think Ekta had mentioned they use sacred I guess Vikram I don't know if if you have already started using you have started building newsletters I still are with the meta newsletter we are we are still at the planning stage and the meta newsletter is using Mailchimp but for the smaller newsletter we are thinking of substack okay yes yes so that's pretty much now this I mean everyone is using Mailchimp as their so-called formal newsletter and they move on to substack I don't I'm agnostic I don't care whatever is the platform I can use constant contact there's campaign monitor they're endless and then and since Hasgeek hosts these sessions which is like part of content web and they would be like Shavik and these guys they understand newsletter from the point of view from the back end they say that at times you can build your own newsletter people are already building those newsletters I mean so ease of usage is secondary in terms of I would rather go for if even if Mailchimp is painful and if it is getting you more uses maybe that that that will help us because our outcome is to increase the audience and build the audience but yes substack is far easier to use in Mailchimp and I use Mailchimp I don't I mean I I don't use substack but that but I understand it's easier to use Mailchimp will allow you to map your domain Mailchimp will allow you to also create landing pages Mailchimp can allow allow you to also do surveys within the same ecosystem and so on so forth so that's it's a trade-off when you do Mailchimp there are few things that you will find useful if you do substack there are few things you will find useful anything that you would want to like no more saw me about news doing newsletters and you've done five of them there's something that you want to like you think that it will help you more in terms of specialists right I've really come across a lot of people who specialize in these domains reaching out to us because they've stumbled upon the newsletter and that giving opportunities to you know broaden the horizon right like being in relevant forums for conversations or inviting for round table so that community grows not just in the increase of newsletter but being in relevant places where such conversations are happening like like the PLA newsletter is a very technical one on the geopolitics side but who's who of the country looks forward to it because again one place to go to right and look it's it's a lot more easier when you have a curated set of links to go through so that way I think the reach has maximized in some sense I wouldn't say it's literally attached to the newsletter numbers but the places that you get to be and with similar interests and the community of people who are invested and interested in it so that's been very useful for us is there something that you that you're grappling with which you want to solve a problem that you have a problem these days with regards to newsletters which you have not been able to solve other than the love for the mail team which a lot of people have in this group including Zainab she's not here but that's something which we can all like creep about but yes it's there we can so there are ways to take care of that problem as well I can I'll come back to it later but is there any other problem which you want to solve no nothing for now so what you what we can also do is so many we can have one of these sessions where we discuss what are your best practices in terms of from your point of view not like when I say though this is how I write a newsletter yeah but since you're doing most you have been taking care of the community and this is part of your profile how you so you have to like give because Ekta has been trying to they have a huge mailing list of 11,000 odd people they're trying to change things they're trying to use social media they want to change design so maybe they will get a perspective hey we don't maybe need to do all these things but they're probably already working for us we should just keep doing this Ekta are you still there yes I'm here anything specific you wanted to ask since Somya is here and you guys are obviously in the same city but in the same kind of domain as well and you guys talk with you guys you talk with common public and anything that you are struggling with which you want to like take us up in the future and do specific sessions about it yeah yeah I mean one is like this whole non-profit space and you know it's something because we aren't selling anything we just want more like the whole idea is that people read more and they're empowered to take action so that's like the whole idea so that's like one aspect of it and the second is those who actually feel empowered and they want to support because some people cannot go on ground and contribute like other citizens do so probably they could support us you know financially you know and whatever it is 500 rupees to anything like you know so from that you know receiving donors perspective donations perspective so these are like two things but again like you know it just clicked to me like you were saying that we might realize that what we are doing already is working for us so do we really need to revamp everything and you know spend that much time and resources on it so yes there are two things but I think what one takeaway has been like I don't know we want to know more about this how do we exactly engage with the readers or those that whole mailing list that we have that you know what would you want to read like what do you expect out of this newsletter because the perspectives not to I mean again not all 11,000 opened right very few out of that open but how do we because it's a wide audience out there so how do we really get their perspective and then design something come up or you know curate which appeals to them as well as well as it takes care of our interest so that is something I'll be like interested you know because just put a survey link is easy I know but it's the work after that you know how do you analyze it and great because we will I mean we are not going to discuss the solutions today but we will definitely get back because I see a common thread with you Lalitha and also Vikram was discussing few things this is how we want to take which is like okay this is a great tool we have what is the best way to use it for you I see a very clear outcome that you want people to participate with Lalitha she wants more people to join the program and maybe more people to also donate with Vikram they want to engage more people from that particular domain Nitin is mostly about building the community at this point of time and maybe subscribe to the newsletter Ryan wants to do the future media upstart so his approach would be different so so we have like I can see like three or four broad sessions in the future which we can do and work around and we'll come up with in the future David Cesaro do we need to discuss more or we can like call it a day and then come back and discuss more and invite like think of future sessions Cesaro are you there he's on mute yeah sorry just try to keep it because there's a little bit of noise in the back row exactly yeah so I mean unless maybe we could just check one last thing with Ryan if he has anything specific that he wants and but overall I think we can cover it and walk up something for the next session Ryan are you there yes yeah so actually what I've noticed is ever since starting my own newsletter I've been trying out with different content strategies one thing I'd like to know from Abhishek and other participants is how do you you know maintain consistency in producing your newsletter so do you keep it weekly or is it you know once in a week or is twice a week twice a week so about that maintaining consistent consistency producing a content so I believe in doing things with the lowest common denominator which is like a do something so do something which happens smoothly like slow is smooth and smooth is fast so if you are able to so you may get very enthusiastic and say I want to send newsletter every day and you send it for five days and then you stop doing it this is what I've seen people do is like they start sending newsletters and then they disappear after four months or three months or six months I have been my my ideas start with whatever regular like if you want to send fortnightly or monthly start with that be on it and send it on the same day same time and then if you want to ramp it up to fortnightly and then weekly and then twice a weekly and then weekly take it like that but your readers if you know if like I send my newsletter every Friday at 7 30 a.m. in the morning come rain or sunshine or whatever it has to go at 7 30 a.m. in the morning and the benefit of that is my readers start to expect that okay 7 30 is going to be there there will be a newsletter there will be a mail from Abhishek so they don't so in that in that crowd of like thousands of emails from the receives in the morning you will always stand out because they're expecting your mail to be there so start with something very doable like because if you already have a job or if you're already doing something else start with something like okay I will send something fortnightly and it's always like over delivering and under promising so you start doing something monthly and then all of a sudden you say now I'm ready to do fortnightly your audience will love it and you say I want to do it weekly then they will love it even more so that's that's how you should go about content strategy is very simple start with like six things you would again again it's about being consistent if you're changing your newsletter every time your readers will kind of start to get confused so if you remember like their presentations which every slide is like a new thought process which becomes like very confusing by the time it ends but there are few people who just say okay on the law on the top left they'll always be an index the number the number the slide number or the topic so the audience knows I'll read topic on the left and this guy will write something on the right and there will be an image below so that consistency I'm just giving you a very basic example so if you maintain a basic consistency with regards to content strategy it helps for your audience you can always announce in advance okay I'm going to change something and then you keep doing it they'll love that as well so consistency is the key and this is I mean imagine all of us didn't republic publishing something like NDTV you will get confused you know maybe you will not even watch it no no matter you like that content right the audience will be put off they don't want to see that happening I'm just kidding I mean they can do whatever they want but the idea is you choose a persona you choose a tone you choose the content and you stick to it for a while and then change it slowly but don't be very over enthusiastic just because you have the best content today and you can repeat yourself also every now and then it's perfectly fine but be consistent like every Sunday if you're sending a newsletter do it for three months analyze it if you want to change the day then you can announce and announce advance in advance hey I want to shift it to say Tuesday from now onwards but then stick to it for a while so your audience will love the consistency part of it right yeah probably go with like a longer period initially and then once you look back and you have like maybe a whole room full of contents that you have then you can say that okay I'll lower the frequency so because what happens is the main thing is the content if you start with a regular pudding it's like oh god what do I put in the next that's where it stops so if you have a longer term you have enough time to put content and then gradually once you have a whole bunch of content which you can just say okay I can just pick and choose then you can because that breakfast and make fast move fast thing does not work in non-funded world unless you have all the money in your pocket you can do that but boss we don't have that kind of money in our pockets so we'll have to like be very patient with building our communities so I know that people tend to be impatient or they can't because like so many audience all of a sudden but they had money in their pocket they could spend they can buy their audience they can rent their audience okay anyone else has our interesting information idea to share which we should work in the future work on in the future yeah Rishik one last thing like yeah I know okay this is mostly the news like this but everyone out there is basically about getting the word across before that WhatsApp business is working very well for me so it's also like Facebook is now shifting its focus towards WhatsApp as an expected thing so just like for everyone out there if they want to just get another G or something sign up and you could like send a message to 26 people with a single click that works well yes yes yes yeah so that's it that's another thing I mean because people are already using WhatsApp very often these days open weights are like 95% that's like personal research as well as secondary so when you hit 256 you buy another sim no no no when you hit 256 you just create another group so you can create labels out there and a label you could add 256 people and can create infinite labels so just multiple clicks or you could just have to telegram telegram you have to download another half WhatsApp already is there no I don't know I have this kind of relationship to telegram where I have a whole bunch of people joining in and nobody messages me on that so I'm like literally like you know every week I think should I remove this but then somebody has just joined in and then doesn't message me so that's it so now the thing about WhatsApp every message is sent in a private chat window so it's a direct one-on-one connection so if somebody wants to send feedback to me or like mentioned like what's their recommendations on their own it's a direct communication with the audience so and more people use WhatsApp in our community in our country because being what's and what it is so it because it's like everyone's even someone like someone like me who hates WhatsApp has to use WhatsApp thankfully they've made a mute unlimited I think now yeah which is a good thing for me because I have around 150 groups which suddenly in one hour you'll have 400 messages and I'm like I'm not sure I guess same with me like I've joined a few reading groups out there I get a lot of very cool stuff today but they got lost in like 500-600 messages which great so I think there's another session in the there's another session where Nitin and Cessero can help us with the hacks of WhatsApp and Instagram but we don't know because I am like I'm a noob there I just don't anything about it we'll have another session