Dr. Noela Mogga shares entrepreneurship lessons in creating a blogging platform Taste of South Sudan
Taste of South Sudan is a journey borne of love. Love for my mother, who was the first to introduce me to traditional and modern South Sudanese foods, and the first to teach me how to cook.
I left my ancestral home at the young age of 16 to pursue a career in medicine. With it, I lost a big part of my culture, which was the foods my palate was accustomed to. 20 years later I decided to reconnect with my roots through food. I also made a decision to share my knowledge with individuals who would find themselves in the situation I face. I made the knowledge accessible in the form of online recipes and how-to videos under the company Taste of South Sudan.
Taste of South Sudan is a journey borne of love. Love for my mother, who was the first to introduce me to traditional and modern South Sudanese foods, and the first to teach me how to cook. Love for my people as I give back selflessly to them. Love for my country as I present as a goodwill ambassador placing our foods on the worldwide map through Taste of South Sudan. Love for me as I honor my roots and my being through self-expression and acceptance of that which makes me whole.
A lesson in entrepreneurship:
Taste of South Sudan is primarily a media company. Media thrives on content. One must constantly create content. We at Taste of South Sudan create a multitude of content: short form via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and now Tiktok content. Our long-form content includes blog posts on tasteofsouthsudan.com and Youtube videos on the channel Taste of South Sudan. The next addition to our long-form content will be our cookbook titled Taste of South Sudan cookbook.
Lessons I learned building Taste of South Sudan
It is easy to get confused on what your primary mission is. And to be spread out too thin. If you ever own a blog, you know that as annoying as they are: google ads pay peanuts. An advice I would give my younger self is to identify early what your monetization plan is, and to execute from that framework.
Another advice is to take your intellectual property rights seriously early on. Your unique talents and vision are not universal. And without recognizing your value early, you may lose your intellectual property through a dilution of your brand through copycats and straight plagiary of your content. One piece of advice is to watermark all your images. Do add a description and alternate text to all the images that you upload to your blog, so that it is associated with your brand. Because while you may know those images belong to you, can you easily win that fight with google when your plagiary re-uploads your image the day you release it? Fighting off plagiarists is a game of wack-a-mole, as any publisher will tell you. But what you uniquely own is your connection to your followers. So cultivate that, and honor it, so they follow your journey as you shift into different realms.
A premier fashion brand has to release new designs each season to stay abreast of the copycats, and so shall you.
As I continue to shape the future of Taste of South Sudan, I invite you to share your commentary on what you would like to see us offer. Is it more food videos, more products, more live share?
