- Duration: 22 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01K0Q8MMXZNZ98V6KQX30W84CN (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01K0Q8MMXZNZ98V6KQX30W84CN)
Transcript
[Keith Newman]: How you doing, man? I’m good. How are you? [Michael Houck]: Good. Good to meet. Hope you don’t mind me bobbing up and down on my walking treadmill over here. [Keith Newman]: No, that’s cool, man. I’m actually to get out of a couple meetings this afternoon to get my workout in. Well, we can we can move faster. [Michael Houck]: So don’t hold you up. That’s always important stuff. You’re definitely not holding me up. [Keith Newman]: I look forward to catching up and chatting. So I think you have an understanding of what I do. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: If you want to give me sort of it from your POV, I think that’s always gonna be more helpful than me sort of doing research on my own. But Yeah. [Keith Newman]: No, but it helps if I have a running start to no pun intended. So I think my POV is, um, I’m looking to monetize the media that I’ve been doing for the last several years, which is a combination of my podcasts and my sub stack. I’m a former media executive guy. So I know some of the ropes, my challenges, um, have been having the quality of, of the design of my, my content, as well as how I look to amplify it. So I think they’ve got the content piece down. Well, I’ve got a consistent look and feel a pretty consistent Distribution schedule I’m dropping at least a pot a week and doing some shorts as well and those go across Spotify iTunes I’ve added YouTube with the video links as well and Yeah, so what I haven’t been able to really nail is the audience development side because and you know, um, that’s that’s That’s because I haven’t really mastered the art of content creation and posting and Instagram and TikTok and all this other stuff. I have a busy consulting business and I don’t want to spend 100 hours a week doing this shit. It makes total sense. [Michael Houck]: We come across a lot of folks who are in that similar boat where it’s like, you sort of know what works, sort of have like a perspective on it, but it’s just, it’s a lot of work to do it right and to do it consistently. And so you’ve got other stuff going on. That makes sense. And look, I mean, on LinkedIn, in particular, I think you’re starting with a pretty good, pretty good audience size there, even if we’re going to do stuff there, right? [Keith Newman]: It’s like 6000 or maybe 7000. I don’t even accept a lot of people who I don’t know and come from, you know, no references, no contacts in common. I don’t add everybody, you know, and whatever. But, but yeah, I do a little bit posting. And I think it’s a really quality audience for who I want to reach. [Michael Houck]: Makes sense. I can give you sort of a brief rundown on what we do and sort of the two sides of our business. And you kind of tell me how you see it plugging in and helping the most. So basically, we’re a content distribution agency. So we do content creation across LinkedIn, X, Substack and Beehive. We do as well, newsletters, and also we’ve been building this AI digital twin that actually has let us create some interesting like short form vertical video without the person needing to sit down and film anything. So that’s been pretty successful with the first two clients we’ve rolled it out for. So we can help with that. It sounds like you sort of have some of that internally already, which is fine, but if there’s interest in bringing that over here, we’re happy to take that on. And then we also have side which is a creator network of I think it’s like 550 now total creators with about 60 million combined aggregate audience size. And we can loop them in to engage with your LinkedIn content, your Twitter content, or we can partner with them more deeply on things like collaborations, testimonials, placements in their newsletter ads, or sponsored posts to get your name out there in front of their audiences. So there’s a lot of different ways to engage with that. But those are the two different sides, content and distribution. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sounds good. [Michael Houck]: So I guess my question to you would be sort of, you know, based on what you’re saying, it sounds like the distribution side makes the most sense, but I’m curious where your head goes there. [Keith Newman]: Well, certainly, if you wanted to take my content and do something with it, that would actually help us monetize together, beautiful. If not, kick it to the side. And then on the side of audience, if you have a different way about going to get audience that I haven’t been doing, that you can layer into what I’m doing currently, that would be fantastic. I can’t see myself stopping everything I do and saying here, manage everything for me. And I count on you to go get me a million people next year, or the next 12 months? I mean, so, so tell me, given that you have a lot of examples, similar to how I’m doing and what I’m looking for, how it best works. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it sort of depends on where the client wants to draw that line, right? If you want us to create content for you for LinkedIn, or for the newsletter, we don’t we mostly only do written content. So that’s where I’ll focus, we can do the digital twin stuff if you want to. And As I said, that’s been successful. But our bread and butter is the written content. So if you want us to take over your written socials, basically what we do is we do a kickoff call with you, me, and someone from our team. And we go super deep on strategy, voice, what’s working, what’s not working, where do we want to get to, what do those people care about, who has that audience today. And then we just be creating weekly batches of content, scheduling it for you. Doing like proactive engagements with other people’s content so that they see your profile frequently, and just try to build the audience that way. Now, if you wanted to say, hey, let’s layer in the Creator Network, at that point, you can do that entirely self-service through our platform. You actually don’t need to engage us at all to do that. If you want to engage us as part of a content package, then we take all that management of the Creator Networks off your plate and just include Okay. [Keith Newman]: Um, so monetization, how do I get to monetization and what kind of numbers can I look at? [Michael Houck]: For monetization, I mean, that’s going to depend on what services or products you’re trying to, you’re trying to sell through your, through your channels, right? That’s, um, you know, we’ll, we’ll push anything you want. We’ll get it in front of people. Um, but in terms of how you monetize and design your funnel, I mean, that’s a larger strategic conversation I’m happy to have. But that’s also sort of, you know, you need to give me some guidance on what you’re trying to say. [Keith Newman]: No, that’s that’s a fair response. I feel like I’m a media guy. So what I know is like, host read ads and ad insertions, but I feel like that’s a really uphill climb. My consulting business is running well, I don’t mind mentioning that. But at the same time, The advertising part of that is secondary to just me mentioning it within the body of the content I produce. And then the third thing would be I could build a subscription service of some sort to get people to pay or donate to get access to some exclusive content. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, and those all can make sense and we can include mentions of them across social. Your profiles as well. And, you know, we do sort of organically mentioned them and drive traffic there for you. And we can help design that funnel when we when we get to that point for sure. [Keith Newman]: Well, I’m interested in seeing maybe what you’ve done for somebody else or what you think you could do for me if I wanted to kind of pick one of these channels or two of these, you know, steps and put something together. [Michael Houck]: Sure. Yeah. I mean, the nature of ghost rating is sort of anonymity is king. So I can’t go forward and say, hey, here’s some person who we’ve, you know, we’ve done this for. I’m happy to share some results anonymize and things like that. [Keith Newman]: I’m not asking you for anything. No, please understand. I don’t need any names of anything. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sure. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So I’m happy to follow up in an email later today with some sort of guidance and a proposal specifically designed for you based on, you know, looking through what you have set up now. And I can, I can just include that over later today. Okay. [Keith Newman]: Works for me. Cool. Okay. [Michael Houck]: Um, so I guess just some guidance would be helpful around, you know, whether you’re thinking content probably makes the most sense, content and distribution, or if you think you’re just probably be self service, let me use this creator network, sort of as I see fit, or if you just want me to come back with a bunch of options and you can pick from there. [Keith Newman]: Actually, you know, not too many, man. But one or two. And I’m, again, I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job of content creation. But I could probably use some coaching in terms of trying to use it to develop the audience side. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: Okay, that’s helpful to know. I’ll put together say two, maybe three tops, different options that you can sort of think through. And then if we want to hop on another call later in the week to talk to that in more detail and sort of go a level deeper. [Keith Newman]: I’m happy to do that. [Michael Houck]: Thanks. I appreciate it, Michael. Any other questions on your mind right now before I come back to you with that? [Keith Newman]: No, I think that’s kind of the two things I wanted to run by you and you’ve you’ve shared some of those and a little bit more. [Michael Houck]: Okay, cool. We’ll keep an eye out for an email tonight. [Keith Newman]: And we’ll we’ll take it from there, man. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right. Good talking to you.