idioki, Building In Public

As I mentioned elsewhere, my entire life has felt like a spectacle for others; and this is a consequence of both adoption, and my specific adoption experience.

Ergo, the idea of building in public does seem to come rather naturally to me ... though with certain peculiarities, I suppose ... if I'm going to build something ... I want to have direction, with a higher-than-not probability of success.

Ok ... so what am I going to build ?

A web-application of course ... a web application that makes money?

Well, that's the idea ... so first ... what does the web application do?

We'll get there.

Content

Content is king ... not content creation, but content ... let's reduce this down to economics and widgets.

The content is the widget ... but the widget needs to do something useful; or it needs to impart something useful. This applies to both advertisements, and arguably more importantly, products!

So the first job was/is creating primary, scale-able, product-content.

The outline of which is available at https://www.instagram.com/la.casa.ingles.

I've spent nearly ten-years teaching English, with a focus on pronunciation.

Within the space, this can be considered a premium niche.

How-to Go-To-Market

This is where content needs to be able to scale, and not get dull; it needs to be evergreen, en masse ... how the heck does one do ...?

I found a way; and using Buffer am able to schedule unlimited posts for $6 per month.

Four memes, two comic strips, and two poems Monday thru Friday.

That's 40 pieces of content each week; not impossible, though made more feasible by the power of coding.

Automation

The memes, and additional content, can be created using a script that automatically weds an audio file with an image file, into a video.

Step 1: Record the audio track, inject it into Reaper DAW;
Step 2: Export with audio enhancements as separate files for each meme.
Step 3: Run script to join audio and image files into video files.

And presto, you've got how ever many content videos you want to create in one-sitting.

Again, we are returning to basic economics; time spent creating content at X with level of quality.

Quality Control

Though how do we measure quality?

We begin with context, what is our content strategy/objective?

To immerse our followers in English content.

Reposting the subtitled content with others is dependent upon our individual use of the app, which we want to keep to a minimum, and the content creation of others.

These posts are like way-points, or deviations from the road we're paving.

And so, in context, our automated content needs to be like dirt; common, stable, useful and durable. It doesn't need to be fancy; doesn't need to be a Hollywood blockbuster production. It just needs to be consistently, and reliably, useful.

I believe I've found that in the aforementioned process; by using classic American English literature from which to draw my daily piles of dirt.

Where's the market?

So many internet fantasies are founded on a field of dreams ... which is all well and good; but most should be building like a storefront, and may need to consider building the road that brings clients from where they are to your desired destination.

And that is no different with idioki ... we've built a wonderful product, we've got a wonderful social media system ... but no followers.

How do we change this?

And if you asked the Zuckster, Felondra or any other diamond encrusted zeiteist, they'll tell you to buy ads, buying more advertisement is the answer.

Though we have a superpower that eludes them ... we have the power of art and music.

And this is how we connect with people off-line, in order to connect them to us, online.

And this is copy of the business card that gets handed out ... immediate value.

And we're not directing them to a website, but rather an Instagram account, where daily content is provided ... to immerse one's self in an all-English environment.

Once per day we'll publish a story advertising our classes; we we're already publicizing the classes through in-person interactions. Clients know the opportunity is there; our job is to gently remind them, not overwhelm them.

Numbers & Statistics

The first objective is to be a sustainable business; and this happens at 40 clients per month.

A schedule has been created that contains space for 48 student seats per week; working 16 hours per week.

Bogota is a large metropolitan area; and I need to find 40 people who want to improve their English pronunciation. Or rather, I need to create an accessible and easy to use system for those who want to improve their English pronunciation.

Being sustainable at 40 students pays for the time to expand; while there is a small team on-deck to support expansion.

The primary product we are selling is access to premier educators of English pronunciation; and our job is to curate, and nurture such educators.

The other aspect of scaling requires us to be able to organize class schedules, teachers, students and wait-lists.

Regardless, with a base of 40 students each month, the work of continuing in-person outreach is subsidized.

Expansion then becomes inevitable.

In Theory

Or rather, that is the idea; we have yet to see how it all plays out.

The idea being to use organic outreach to identify the strongest content candidates for paid-advertising; and in this way, leverage digital to exponentiate scaling, rather than simply rely on it.

As stated elsewhere, the overall go-to-market plan feels very unified.

Through Comuna Colombia identify and interact with local businesses; if there are events, connect with DigiSnaxx.

And if people want to improve their English, idioki.

That's the theory ... let's see how it works.

I've obligated myself to renting a room until January 20th; so we'll use that as our target jump-off.

Our goal being to have a classes packed with students, and an overflowing wait list.

Vroom vroom, here we go!