- Duration: 34 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JYPNXY0VS9HF582AHNGB0CVZ (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JYPNXY0VS9HF582AHNGB0CVZ)
Transcript
[Jenny Nova]: you Hi there, I’m sorry for the delay, I had some other calls run over. [Michael Houck]: Hey Jenny, no worries, it happens. [Michael Houck]: How are you? [Jenny Nova]: Doing well, how are you? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, good to meet. I think had a good chat with Ryan a couple weeks ago and glad we were able to find some time. [Jenny Nova]: Yeah, I’m excited to learn more. I don’t know that much about your services. I mentioned that you’d be a good person to talk to as we’re thinking about for us specifically at Topanga, like what we do with our LinkedIn and like what kind of potential external support we would bring in to make that a more valuable platform for us. So that is like the perspective that I’m coming in with. And I am currently a product marketing manager on the Topanga marketing team. Ryan probably explained that we’re like super small, just a couple people. And I like we might be expanding our team a a little bit, and this would become someone else’s area of ownership, but it’s all still very up in the air. So I’m basically keeping the lights on, keeping it going, and doing what I can on LinkedIn right now. [Michael Houck]: So that is my Excel term. I totally get how the early days are. I’ve been a founder for a while, so I 1,000% get it. But good to know, yeah, Brian basically said you were the marketing right now, or at least the person I need to chat with. [Jenny Nova]: So yeah, it’s myself, Ryan, and then Kristen, who’s a senior brand manager. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay, cool. [Jenny Nova]: Yeah, who’s responsible for LinkedIn for the past, I guess, since like late January. Oh, wow. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Houck]: So you’ve been you’ve been holding it together for for a while now. I’ll give you a brief background on me and on us. So next, I was part of the early Uber Eats teams are very familiar with the food space. I was in Santa Monica loading burritos into people’s cars myself in the very early days. And then helped grow that business, jumped over to Airbnb where I was a product manager for a bit, and then started a company called Launch House. We ran co-living houses for startup founders all over the world and invested in their companies out of our venture fund. We raised an A from Andreessen and built a membership offering on top of that. It was a great business. It’s still kind of part of our fund, but the fund is now the focus there. For the past two years, I met a lot of creators through my journey, I guess, and built up my own audience as a result. So I have 44,000 on LinkedIn, 56 on Twitter, 200K on Substack. And I realized it was a lot easier to grow because I knew these creators who were commenting on my stuff. So I built this platform to let other founders do the same. So we now have a platform 500 creators, 60 million combined audience size, who can sort of amplify content from startups in their niche. And we match them with the right ones for partnerships and for in-the-moment engagement. And then a lot of people were using that, and they were like, well, I need my content to be better too. So we started a content agency, Armor the Business. And for the past year, we’ve been growing that. It’s now actually the biggest part of the business. And we work with everyone from early stage companies to billionaire VCs who’ve been doing it for 40 years. And we do LinkedIn, we do X, we do email newsletters, and we can also do video content on Instagram and TikTok through like AI and AI digital twin that we could build. Our process is lightweight, we know we work with busy people, so it’s all async through Slack and voice notes after an initial kickoff call. And I’m your primary POC, you know, we don’t have some big org that you’re paying for, internal meetings and things like that. We try to keep costs low to work with early stage founders and teams. So I’m happy to go deeper into the business, but that’s sort of the TLDR, content distribution, two sides of the same coin. [Jenny Nova]: Okay, gotcha. And just to make sure that I am following, when you’re talking about creating content, is that primarily for, like, are you focused on elevating a specific founder profile? Or is this just as applicable to like a company page? [Michael Houck]: It’s a thousand percent applicable to both. We have clients who do both with us. We have clients who do one or the other. [Jenny Nova]: That doesn’t make a difference. Gotcha. And for the like creator match, is that also equally like B2C and B2B? Yeah, we have creators all over the spectrum and all over the world. [Michael Houck]: I assume you guys are targeting markets within the US. I know you work with like I know your customer profile, so I assume it’s within the US, but Yeah, so we’d match you guys on certain posts. And we can either include that as part of a package with like credits to use on the network, or you can sort of engage the network more ad hoc, as you guys see fit. Okay, gotcha. [Jenny Nova]: So I mean, I can go deeper into sort of like what the process would look like, [Michael Houck]: But I think first, just want to get a sense of like, with LinkedIn, and also just with content in general, like a how much of a priority is that for guys? And B, like, what’s the story been so far? Where’s the focus for the next six to 12 months? [Jenny Nova]: Yeah, it’s not something that has had like, super strategic backing behind it. To the extent that we have a focus, it’s definitely like, LinkedIn, and have really just like not, not been seeing much value in Instagram. That’s also like, I was feeling to where I was like, it just doesn’t feel like unless I have a lot of capacity to be making that like Instagram is really gonna get anything, like do anything for us. But it does seem like there’s potential for quite a lot of our ICPs to find our content on LinkedIn and like engage with their content. And we can definitely see it being a real lead driver for us. And like, that’s definitely personally what I feel. I think that there’s a lot of opportunity and also just like, especially in our industry, many companies doing it super well. So I think that like, even just something that’s like a little fun and creative seems to go a long way. [Michael Houck]: And I just feel that way about like LinkedIn as a platform overall to it feels like it’s, you know, what we see pretty consistently over the last couple months in particular is that people who lean a little bit more into a personality, whether it’s their brand account or their own personality, just like not, not fully unhinged, but like somewhere, on the kind of fun spectrum that’s standing out a lot more on LinkedIn right now. [Jenny Nova]: I totally agree. And I definitely also see a lot of value of founder-led content. And that’s something that I know that our exec team is wanting to do more of I don’t think that they’ve necessarily done as much as they wanted to do, but they at least know that it is a priority and can be very valuable. For them I think it’s just a matter of does that get prioritized and like is that time set aside. So that’s kind of like the thinking on our side I would say is like we see this having a lot of potential for us. It’s currently not something that is necessarily like a revenue driver and so for me a lot of the time it’ll come down to like do I need to be like should I be spending time on on a social post or should I be spending time on like sales enablement collateral? And it’s like usually sales enablement collateral that wins out. There’s not as much of like a time commitment ROI justification currently there, but I do think that there’s a consensus of like, this is something we should focus on and be intentional about and put time behind in order to have it become more valuable. [Michael Houck]: It’s just like, For you guys at your stage, the time is probably even more valuable than the money that you would invest, right? So it’s like, you know, every hour is super, super critical for you guys. So it makes sense if something’s not driving immediate ROI, it’s tough to prioritize. But I mean, as you know, social is a compounding game. You build trust, and then people talk about you, and you get known, and then people come in waves to be customers. So that’s what we see time and time again. Maybe the founders get invited to speak at conferences and things like that. Yeah. So we can solve the time problem for you. You know, we can take it all off your hands. And yeah, I mean, in full, so I can give you some context on what that would look like, And then also, we can we can chat through what what the right structure would be. Also, drop a link in here. We’re doing a workshop, my my partner on the agency and I this afternoon on how to maximize leads from LinkedIn. So no worries, you to attend, but figured I’d drop it in because it’s you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Are you going to record it? [Michael Houck]: We will record it. Yes. If you RSVP and even show up, I’ll see the recording. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, I’ll sign up. [Michael Houck]: I’m not sure if I can join live, but it’s short notice. But yeah, so basically, as I said, we work with busy people, so it’s all async except for except for an initial kickoff. If anyone wanted to do content interviews with us, we could do that, of course. But that’s not what most of our clients want to do. So we set up interviews. [Jenny Nova]: Is that something where it would be to create video content or to even create like written posts? No. [Michael Houck]: So basically, we like to get the client’s unique POV in any content that we create for the written or or video. And so what we usually do is every Monday in a shared Slack channel, we’ll send over some questions that came up during our research. And all we need is you or someone on the team, maybe one of the founders to reply with a two- to four-minute rambly voice note just with the POV. If we get that, we hear the intonation, we hear the thought process, that comes through in the content, it sounds like them. And we get batches of content over every week. We’ll work to get a few weeks ahead so that we’re not always scrambling from week to week as well. And we handle all scheduling, hosting, metric reporting. We’ll even go into the account and do engagements on both proactively on people in the niche who have the audience that we want to capture and also reactively on people who engage with our content. So we do all that. And then, as I said, we can engage the sort of creator network as well. We’ll go through a profile optimization sprint at the very beginning, pretty lightweight. But there’s usually some small tweaks that we can make to improve things, whether it’s or a company page. And then we just sort of get in a weekly flow from there. We’ll report metrics and talk strategy and go from there. [Jenny Nova]: Okay, awesome. And what form does the content typically take? Is it like visual, video, text-based? Or is it you have a focus there? [Michael Houck]: It depends on the client and like the strategy that we decide on the kickoff call, honestly. But generally what’s working best on LinkedIn right now is medium to longer form text with maybe some unique imagery, like maybe AI generated with a brand thing on it, like a branded thing, or if it’s founder-led content, we’d create AI images where we have the founder’s head show up in scenarios about the content. It’s fun stuff. And video works well too, but that’s obviously more of a commitment in terms of creation. Would be lower, I would probably recommend that we start maximizing shots on goal, seeing what works, gathering some data for the first few weeks, maybe even a month or two. And so I’d recommend a higher volume of medium form content, I would say. And that can be, you know, we can do packages where it’s lower volume, longer form, or we can do short to medium where we’re doing 7 to 10 posts per week from the account. [Jenny Nova]: Okay, gotcha. And if like do you in terms of how you approach Like plans and pricing is that something where? It’s on a like per profile basis or you can kind of split content creation between like a founder profile and a company profile It depends on how different the voices would be, right? [Michael Houck]: And so if we’re talking about the same topics and the voice is basically the same then sure we can post it wherever we want If it’s like the founder is very specific about what they want and the brand is different than that in some way more, I don’t know, open or fun or whatever, then we’d have to split them up. [Jenny Nova]: Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. I think that for us, like we’re very much still in the experimental phase. I feel like our voice is pretty accessible and more like lighthearted while still remaining professional. We haven’t done anything that’s like that crazy. I’m personally like very pro taking some more creative like content risks. Honestly, I think that that’s like what gets you noticed and like grabs attention. And again, like no one else is doing it. Everything is very bland in our industry overall. So I see it as a lot of opportunity. I don’t know what the like team consensus is on that. [Michael Houck]: If you want, I’m happy to speak to any doubters about why that is the right way to sit down, because I think you’re spot on. [Jenny Nova]: Yeah. It’s just, it’s something that is a lot. It’s something that’s very easy to say you’re pro. And then when it comes to like, rubber meets the road and be like, Ooh, actually, like 1000%. [Michael Houck]: The way to combat that is just showing results, right? So we can show difference of posts from, we can’t share who other clients are, but we can say, hey, here’s a client who embraced this a little bit more, here’s a client who maybe didn’t, and here’s like the metrics that they’re seeing on their content. [Jenny Nova]: Okay, cool. Sweet. Voices are similar. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so if the voices are similar, like just to give you a sense of pricing and packages. If we were to include everything, so that’s like credits for the creator network, that’s full content operational support, that’s full, you know, seven to ten posts per week coming out from the account, that’s 4k, that’s our standard package. If we want to say it’s per month and we’re totally month to month, all we say is 30-day cancellation, so it’s effectively a two-month commitment to start, that’s it. But if we wanted to say, hey, let’s engage the creator network more ad hoc, which I think for a very sort of niche industry where there’s not a ton of content happening, it probably makes sense to leave the creative network as more of an ad hoc thing in this case. Yeah, I would agree with that. We would bring the default package down to 3k. And then if we wanted to sort of do smaller content batches, so maybe instead of seven to 10 posts per week, we’re doing four to six posts per week, then it would be 2k. And that’d be like our lowest entry point that we start just because of research. And things like that. [Jenny Nova]: Gotcha. 7 to 10 does feel like a lot of posts. Is that a number that you’ve seen, like, be a sweet spot? Or is that something that it really just depends on, like, the account, their existing audience, et cetera? I mean, look, when you’re trying to make a name for yourself, the more shots on goal, the better, because you’re going to get more data about what people want. [Michael Houck]: You’re going to be able to narrow in on the voice faster. And also just build a following faster too, right? So that’s one thing, especially if we’re doing a company account. So on LinkedIn, company accounts and personal accounts are a little different because on a personal account, if you post more than like 1.5 times per day, they can nerf the account, at least for like a specific day. [Jenny Nova]: Yeah, I know I’ve heard that too, which is just like, you know, you have to be careful about like not inundating people because the algorithm will punish you. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so if you were gonna do the personal account, I’d probably say, to only do one that was a personal account, I’d say like, let’s do seven or eight posts per week, but make them maybe, you know, more researched and things like that. If we’re going to do the company account, we can be a little bit more flippant, maybe and do up to 10. And we could do, we could do more, there’s no limit on that for company accounts on LinkedIn. Another thing I’d say is that you’ll collect more leads. So one thing we’re launching with our platform with the creator network platform pretty soon is anybody who engages with your content we will get their name, job title, email, location, and map it directly into your CRM. So that will be available in the next couple of weeks. So that can be useful since lead gen seems to be apparent. But yeah, I would say, in general, more posts are better, but definitely not opposed to starting with a smaller package and seeing how we do. Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, though. [Jenny Nova]: just like, it’s better to, again, shots on goal, go at it full force, then do something like a little bit, I don’t know, bluster and like not see the results you want, or the traction that you’re looking for. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, look, we have clients who are on the 2k plan, like one client in particular, you know, she’s in a similarly like not content forward industry. And we started with her at 1100 followers in January. And now she’s at 17.5. And she’s just doing, she does really long form posts. So it’s like two really long form posts per week. And that’s enough at the 2K, at the 2K packet. So if we’re gonna do sort of more medium form, shorter form, medium form, then four to six will be more than enough for sure. [Jenny Nova]: Okay, gotcha. So you’re saying, and then 2K with four to six posts per week. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Good to know. [Jenny Nova]: Um, and then probably my final question was, especially for those like longer, longer research posts, or even honestly like this, the not like a full article on LinkedIn, but just like a longer post. Is that a situation where you need like a voice note, but then also like links to internal docs, existing resources, that kind of thing, or does that require a team? We’re never going to press you guys to like share stuff you don’t want to share with us. [Michael Houck]: We realize we’re an external partner and things like that. What I will say is that the more that our writer has access to, and you don’t even need to share with the rest of our team, but the more the writer has access to, the more unique insights we’re going to be able to put through in the content and also talk about what’s actually happening, what you guys are actually talking about in the business. It’s not required. We can do our own research on the niche, like we always do. But the more that you guys give us access to, A, the faster the content will be, and it’ll be more unique to you. [Jenny Nova]: Okay, gotcha. So it’s just like the more the better, but it’s not something that is required to pull the most together. Okay. Definitely, definitely not. Awesome. Okay, that was a lot of great information. I know that we’re also over, I temporarily forgot this was a 15 minute call. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: You’re fine, you’re fine. [Jenny Nova]: Is there Anything else that you had wanted to Talk about that. We didn’t cover it I don’t think so. [Michael Houck]: Um, if there’s any lingering questions on your side, let’s let’s talk through them. I got I have a couple minutes, but um If not, then I can also just share a notion doc um Just covering everything we talked about basically, um, and I’ll send over an email Uh after my calls wrap up this afternoon and we can um, we can go from there I guess what what is the next step for you? Like is this talking internally? [Jenny Nova]: and then we follow up or what’s the what’s the next step yeah I know that there’s a lot of things being figured out on the budget side right now and just like aligning where our spend is to some of our like newly honed in business priorities so would have to probably have a chat about this I know they are our founder like our CEO who if we were to be elevating a founder profile would be definitely hers. And I know that she’s already willing, like we’ve talked about this beforehand, she was like, I’ll do what you guys need me to do and like what is helpful to do. But I think that she’s out of office next week also. So would want to check in with her when she’s back and just get a sense internally of like, making sure that this is the priority that like, I do think that it is and kind of like needs to start being now if we want to see results online. I know that like very aligned on that, but yeah. [Michael Houck]: What do you need from me to make that case as strong as it can be? [Jenny Nova]: I think that’s what I was going to ask actually was if you can send examples of like, if you can send profiles, like examples of the kinds of posts. [Michael Houck]: I can’t send people’s names and like their profiles, but I and anonymized posts that show like engagement metrics. Yeah. [Jenny Nova]: Or even just to understand like what that, how that content comes to life and like the kind of posts that you’re creating. I think the kinds of things that I am hoping to stay away from on LinkedIn are the like the posts that just feel, they feel like very chat GPT written. They feel very like preachy listically. And that’s like what I know we’ve talked about, like, to not do with just inundating LinkedIn content. So being able to see what approach you’re taking is really helpful for us to understand what the feel of that is. But totally, you can’t link us to specific profiles. But yeah. And any other ROI that you can share around lead gen, that’s definitely something that we’re evaluating every year. Spend against right now is just like, what do we think this could bring in for us? And like, is this the best use of those funds? [Michael Houck]: So I think that those two things would be most helpful. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Yeah, I’ll share that in the email. I’ll just quickly say now is that same client who I was talking about from January to now, as she’s built up that following, she actually launched. So she works as the CEO of a company within a larger holding company, and they launched launched a new vertical, I think it was in April, March or April, as she was sort of building up this audience and they’re already in, I think it’s like two or 300K ARR just from that. So yeah, I’ll share more detail, but that’s sort of a TLDR proof point. [Jenny Nova]: Okay, cool. And is that, I guess actually follow up question on that, is that primarily like for them lead gen mechanism like people booking a demo or is that more reliant on one-to-one messaging coming off of like post engagement or something like that? I don’t know if you’re getting into that if you’re like handling any direct outreach to potential leads or like people on LinkedIn and that’s where there’s more lead gen happening or if it’s just like for her we’re actually not doing that, but we do offer that to folks as well. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So we could include that in a package. [Jenny Nova]: OK, good to know. Perfect. [Michael Houck]: OK, I’ll write that down. [Michael Houck]: But yeah, OK, I’ll follow up with an email. I’m sorry we went over. Oh, no, I was free on my end, so sorry to you. No, all good. I always try to do these 15-minute calls, and it ends up being that the good ones go 30 minutes anyway. Okay, I’ll follow up and we’ll go from there and when she’s back after next week, let’s sync up and chat more. Okay, perfect. [Jenny Nova]: Thank you so much. I’ll pass everything along in the interim to the team. Good to meet you. Good to meet you too. Thank you for the time. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Of course.