- Duration: 16 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J5XJ2Z5JK60Y2TWJ56AV1S4M (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01J5XJ2Z5JK60Y2TWJ56AV1S4M)
Transcript
[Max Palmer]: Hey Cassy. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hey, it’s Cassy. [Cassy Aite]: Hey Max. Cassy. How are you, man? Good. Good. How are you? Good. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good. [Max Palmer]: Uh, thanks for bringing a call. Where are you? Where are you calling from [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’m based in Vancouver. [Cassy Aite]: I’m based here half the year and then the other half the year I’m in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Oh, you were in New York. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, cool. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. Nice. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Puerto Vallarta sounds incredible. [Max Palmer]: I’ve been to Sayulita a couple of times. I’ve lived in Mexico City for four months. But yeah, you just down there during the winter? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, just the winter. [Cassy Aite]: I get out of here. It gets too cold. I’m from Ottawa originally, so just winters are brutal there. I was done with the crazy winters we get. Yeah, absolutely. [Max Palmer]: Awesome, man. Well, I’m curious to hear why you booked a call with us and kind of where you’re at with Hop here right now. [Cassy Aite]: Yeah, so I think I saw something on ShipFast. It was like Mark Liu on Twitter. And then I saw you guys were like at the top of the list for growth. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. Like, what do they do? [Cassy Aite]: And yeah, that piqued my interest. And then the more I learned about what you guys do, I thought it was more interesting and applicable, something I could use. So our history is, Hopier is kind of the main business I run. I’ve been running it for eight years, started it with my brother. We make it easy for companies to send prepaid visa cards and gift cards to 60 plus countries. A lot of companies use it to send gifts, rewards, incentives to their clients or to their employees. And we have over 1200 customers. And the interesting thing is most of our new clients Find us through our blog. So our blog gets about 60,000 monthly readers now I think like the the blog is really powerful, but I’m looking at investing in other channels. So We’re starting to do a lot more YouTube stuff So we’re investing more in that Personally, I never really took LinkedIn seriously and posting on LinkedIn seriously until the last couple of months and I got a badge recently and then I’m trying to post at least once or twice a week and And yeah, so and I think there’s a big opportunity there to like build a following and hop here is is like the main thing I do it’s like the but I’ve got I’m working on a few other things That are like BB sass and I want to bring build my own network and build my own community. So cool. [Max Palmer]: I Great, man. Well, yeah. So Megaphone’s a creator engagement marketplace. So we have users like yourself who are looking to either build their own audience or build the audience of a company to acquire leads and sales. And then we have creators who have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of followers and are in a variety of different niches. Everything from AI and SaaS to health and wellness to marketing and whatnot. There’s a bunch of different niches. [Max Palmer]: Basically, users will post content, and then creators that are in your niche will engage with that content. And that will boost you within the algorithm of Twitter or LinkedIn. So we’re both on both platforms. That’s how it works in a nutshell. So yeah, if you’re looking to grow on LinkedIn in particular, and it sounds like you’re doing this in a space where, I mean, we have plenty of creators in the B2B space, in the founder space, entrepreneurship, the startup space. So there’s absolutely a creator fit here. Yeah. And if you’re consistently posting content and boosting some of those posts with Megaphone, you can grow fast. [Cassy Aite]: The general idea is just I post, the network gets a notification, they go, they comment, they like, and then of course it gets boosted because of that. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: So basically you’ll set a budget for each post. On average, people are allocating $30 to $50 post, but it’s entirely up to you how much you allocate per post. And we send your posts based on three criteria. First and foremost, we want to send it to people that are in your niche, right? We don’t want someone in a health and wellness space commenting on your posts about B2B SaaS, right? Second, we want to send it to a creator that’s online at the time you’re posting so that they can engage quickly and that helps. And then third, we want to maximize your budget based on a follower to cost ratio. So the creators set their own costs. And this part of the budget is what goes to actually paying the creator. The subscription is the other part of the pricing. [Max Palmer]: But the creators charge their own price. So typically creators will raise their prices by $10 for every 100,000 followers they have. So for example, we have a creator with 370,000 followers and they charge an engagement. [Max Palmer]: Whereas, you know, we have creators with 50,000 who might charge five or $10 engagement. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Got it. [Cassy Aite]: And engagement, does that specifically mean a like or a comment or a comment? [Max Palmer]: Yeah, it’s typically going to be a comment. There is a you know, when you when you onboard the platform and are posting making a post, you can you can toggle to to to get a repost or repost with comment. Those usually, creators usually charge more for those and they’re kind of less likely to do those than just a comment. And also comments are kind of the highest form of engagement on these platforms because the algorithms are built to get conversations going. So comments do really well. Yeah, so typically it’s gonna be a comment. And there’s a little box where you can provide context for the creators on what you want them to comment so that they comment something relevant. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Oh, I see. That’s cool. [Cassy Aite]: Yeah. [Cassy Aite]: Got it. [Cassy Aite]: And yeah, OK. I guess I would know then who the other people are. [Max Palmer]: Yeah, so for kind of obvious reasons, we don’t disclose the identities of our creators. But yeah, once you see comments popping up on your post, you’ll have a good idea, right? Yeah. Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Very cool. Interesting. [Cassy Aite]: Yeah, so got it. So and then that you said 30 50 average per post, and that’s per engagement. Typically. I’ll propose, got it. OK. But then you said each, like the different creators in the space will have different rates. Got it. And then you’re deciding how to distribute that to them. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Got it. [Cassy Aite]: That’S cool. Yeah, cool idea. Smart. [Cassy Aite]: I feel like I would pay for this for if you could do this for Read.AI too. Like that’s something I’ve been thinking about more. Like I’ve got another business and we, we do like 80,000 monthly visits and most of the traffic actually first, I’d say 20% now comes from Read.AI, but, uh, like initially like almost all, now all the direct traffic is as a result of rough Read.AI. [Max Palmer]: So, so I’m really curious what that business is. Um, and, And also, I, you know, I don’t know if this would work on Read.AI because Read.AI, the communities are so touchy about self-promotion, as you know, probably. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Cassy Aite]: Yeah. I think you have to be careful, but I do think like on some of these communities, there are, even though you’re like anonymous, there are people who have flair and they are like influencers, even though they’re anonymous. Right. Yeah. Um, And, and yeah, I think it goes a long way when you get comments from different people who are leaders in those communities. And I’ve seen it firsthand with like this other business, how much like how valuable it is when we get high quality people interacting with posts. So yeah. And plus now with all these generative search models, I think that’s one way to rank higher, get backlinks, get domain authority, whatever, right? Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. There’s something there. [Cassy Aite]: I would pay for it. So if you guys, you know, build something there, I would, you know, I’d be interested. Cool. Um, cool. Um, so how can I get started? [Max Palmer]: Yeah, just right on the website. So megaphone.network, um, you can sign up right there. So two tiers, either or 89. Um, the only difference between the two is, uh, with the $89 month tier. [Max Palmer]: we're gonna send your post to creators as soon as you send it to us. Whereas with the $49 a month tier, we’re gonna delay an hour until we send that post to creators. [Cassy Aite]: Got it. Okay, I see. [Cassy Aite]: You think that hour makes a big difference? Like what do you see? It does, it can. [Max Palmer]: Instant engagement on, on tweets and post is important. It signifies to the algorithm that your post must be important or noteworthy, whatever. So it can make a difference for sure. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Cool business. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: Really cool. You’re one of the founders? [Max Palmer]: No, I’m the chief of staff. [Max Palmer]: So we’ve got a few small businesses. Megaphone is one of them. We’ve got a newsletter with 75,000 founders and startup operators in it. So that was kind of the first business. And then, yeah, we spun up this software, a little software tool called Megaphone and then got a ghostwriting agency and starting a couple others as well. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Cassy Aite]: Cool. Okay. Any advice, like as I’m creating my first posts or to, to be successful off the bat. Yeah. [Max Palmer]: I mean just general, um, you know, audience growing advice is if you, if you’re really committed to it, like post two to three times per day, post two to three long form posts per week. [Cassy Aite]: Um, This is LinkedIn specifically? [Max Palmer]: LinkedIn or Twitter, it applies to both. These platforms reward consistency. So if they see your posting every day, they will reward you for that over time. Only once or twice a week is just, it’s not going to be enough to grow an audience quickly. [Max Palmer]: So, you know, we recommend two, three short form posts per day, and then two to three long form per week. And vary your posts. Try video, try, you know, static. Try a thread. Try carousel photos. Try different types of posts. See what works for you. [Max Palmer]: And yeah, just be consistent with it. And just make sure your content quality is high. That’s another thing. The way we put it is we’re pouring gasoline on the fire, but you still have to make that fire. So megaphone’s not going to help your content perform well. [Cassy Aite]: on it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. Okay. [Cassy Aite]: I will try it out. See how it goes. I got to post more often. I think also I’m posting like twice a week now. So yeah, I gotta go. I gotta be more consistent. Cool. [Max Palmer]: Yeah. All right. Thanks, Max. Appreciate it. Nice meeting you, Cassy. Just shoot us an email if you have any questions. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, cool. [Cassy Aite]: Thanks, man. Awesome. See you.