The Excel Club STEEM Business Plan

2019 is nearly here.  Is this going to be the year for STEEM and businesses built on top of it?  Well for me, I hope its just the start of a new journey. 

Most of you are aware that I teach Excel and Power BI online for a living.  When I came to STEEM at the start, I was looking for a possible new audience for my content.  I was also looking for a way I could integrate cryptocurrency into my business.  Now over a year and a half later, I now have a plan to take this forward.  Getting to this stage was one of my goals this year. 

Business diversification can be difficult.  Cryptocurrency is still not main stream.  STEEM is still rather experimental. But with all that said, I see massive opportunities for businesses to run on STEEM.  One of my hopes and aspirations for this venture is that this will will become a ‘perfect’ use case for blogging businesses to use STEEM. 

So, without further delay, I present to you, The Excel Club STEEM Business Plan.  I look forward to your feedback, your comments and your questions

 

Overview

The Excel Club is an E-learning school providing courses in Excel and Power BI. Established in 2010, The Excel Club was the first to provided accredited E-learning Excel courses. Aimed at Accountants, these courses were a popular choice to complete annual CPD requirements. 

In 2015 The Excel Club branched out from distributing online course to accountants and began to focus sales on the wider online market. To achieve this, The Excel Club established a blog and put in place a content marketing strategy. A social media plan was also in operation as I became an influencer in my field across social platforms.

To broaden my reach, I also published course on course marketplace sites such as Udemy. I held a best-selling course on Udemy for some time under the topic of Data Analysis Expressions (DAX).

In June of 2017 I found STEEM, and being my thing, I began to blog about Excel hoping to find a new audience. This did not work as STEEM did not have the audience for my content. Instead, I flipped my skills and used Excel and Power BI to analyse the blockchain and show off my skills. Now, instead of looking for an audience for my content on STEEM, I want to bring my audience to STEEM.

How can The Excel Club add value to STEEM?

Content consumers are in short supply on STEEM. 

Microsoft Excel is used by over half a billion people worldwide.  On Udemy Excel has been in the top ten selling topics year after year.  The Excel Club has the ability to introduce STEEM to main stream content consumers with a highly topical and popular subject.  

 

 Taken from Google Analytics – Search for Microsoft Excel (blue) v’s STEEM (red) over the last 12 months.

How can STEEM add value to The Excel Club

STEEM can provide The Excel Club a more attractive proposition for content consumers. Excel is a very popular topic and there are many blogs and online course teaching the same. By using STEEMs Proof of Brain and upvotes, The Excel Club can reward content consumers with the STEEM token (or maybe an SMT). These tokens would be a reward for engaging with the content and activities. This would add more value than just content and knowledge transfer.

In turn this will increase traffic to the website.  Traffic is like footfall for a high street retailer.  The higher the traffic, the more sales you can make.  The overall aim is to increase course sales by having a value-added sales funnel.

The Excel Club blog is the first part of the sales funnel to our premium courses and will continue to work this way. 

With the use of community features from Hivemind we can move content consumers to phase two of the sale funnels. A community. In our sales funnel, the community servers to build further trust. By using STEEM, this can also be a place of value.

Consumers can then choose to make payment for premium content with STEEM. By using the tokens earned while on the road from consumer to customer will bring the STEEM token full circle.

How will The Excel Club achieve this?

There are several options available to The Excel Club without having to engage in additional development work on the website.

1. Integrating Steempress.io into the blog so consumers that wish to engage with the content can leave comments using steem.

2. Create a create a community using hivemind to replace my current google+ community

3. Implement a payment option so users can pay with STEEM to purchase premium content (e-learning courses)

4. Explore other options as time goes by.

What is The Excel Club STEEM Revenue Model?

As with most business diversification, investment in required. The Excel Club will be purchasing STEEM to back this project and then powered up. 

The overall aim is to increase organic sales by providing a value added blog with the use of STEEM.

As this is a rather experimental venture, we expect a medium-term investment period. Our targets include a 3 ROI on cost of the STEEM purchased.  This is based on an increase in sales.  We will not be relying on STEEM as an income.  We see STEEM as a asset that can be leveraged to propel our existing revenue source. Therefore we will continue to power up to bring this project to its full potential. 

Rewards, via up-votes, will be given to those that engage on the comments in the blog post. Upvotes will also reward the posts for social proof. Interaction with in the community that we create will also be rewarded with upvotes.

Consumers will be encouraged to use their STEEM rewards against the price of premium training. This will make a cycle of STEEM from upvotes back to The Excel Club and will be converted to SP. 

Where we are now and what we are currently working on?

Now that we have steempress.io integrated with the blog, we plan on an initial soft launch. New content is being designed in such a way that it entices engagement. We are now adding practice activities on each blog post as a trial. Previous blog posts from the Excel Club aimed to show expertise and subject matter knowledge. This new format is a slight change in the form of content.

The soft launch includes tradition online marketing for the blog with no specific call to action on signing up for a steem wallet. The aim is to get people familiar with the new look comments section, while we increase the traffic to the blog.

After The Excel Club invests in STEEM to back this project, we will then do a harder launch. We will achieve this by making a a formal announcement to The Excel Club users. This will inform them about STEEM, how the changes will benefit them and, how they can go about obtaining a wallet and learning more.

Future Items to explore

• Hivemind and community features were something promised by Steemit Inc. Right now, I don’t know where we stand on this and when communities will be possible. I am open to other suggestions and would be keen to have a community up and running by the end of the first half of 2019.
• Integrated payment option to buy premium content with STEEM. I currently have a manual work around for this and its something I hope to have automated by the end of 2019. If anyone is already working on some sort of solution that I could use here, please do let me know.
• @Dtube and IFPS backups for free video content currently published to Youtube.
• Explore the options of for onboarding.
• Explore options with @steempress.io and others for partnerships
• Explore the option of cross advertising other steem apps on The Excel Club website.

How you can help

Right now, the best way you can help is by providing social proof. 

Follow, upvote and resteem posts from @theexcelclub. Social proof is the backbone of many social media marketing campaigns.

But you could help even more. 

Every week we will publish a new educational blog post around the topics of Excel and Power BI. These posts will include an activity. Complete the activity and post a comment under the blog. It is easier to engage on a blog when others have already commented and engaged. By gaining community support here, I could have the social proof I need. In turn this will attract more non steem people to engaging on the posts. This also gives the opportunity to showcase, before the hard launch, the token value behind upvotes. When I do the hard launch, people will be inquisitive and more inclined to sign up for a steem wallet and account.

If you have a good following on traditional social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and so on, you could also help by sharing the posts across your social media platforms.

I am open to further suggestions and help. If you think you can add value to this project, even if you think the suggestion is small, please share it with me. Not being a developer myself, I am sure there is also much more possible than what I have considered already. Don’t be shy with your ideas. Please do comment below.

Disclaimer

The Excel Club is a registered trade name of The Professional Training Academy Limited, registered in Ireland. We are not a financial adviser and none of the above is financial advice with regards to investing in steem or any other blockchain cryptocurrency.   

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