- Duration: 46 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01K3P8SPD7HESMYWBJYCAYTHNP (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01K3P8SPD7HESMYWBJYCAYTHNP)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Hey, sorry, guys. I can’t get it. It was 130. So my bad. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Oh, good. [Tanyo Goshev]: How are you guys doing? Yeah, pretty good. [Michael Houck]: How are you? [Tanyo Goshev]: I’m good. Blake, how you doing, man? [Michael Houck]: I’m busy this week, man. [Blake Emal]: It’s been a nuts one, but it’s It’s always good, better than nothing. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so let’s dive in then. So Tanyo, for context, this is the first one of these that Blake and I are doing. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: So you’re a guinea pig here. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. Basically, why we wanted to do these is because we want to make sure that we’re just updating strategy as we go past the kickoff call, right? We do these kickoff calls with these guys, we talk about strategy, but then often what we find, or at least what I observe is that what clients tell us they want in the kickoff call is often different than what they actually want in practice. And also we’ll learn things about the audience that like what resonates, what doesn’t. So we might want to update strategy. So I think that’s why I want to do these just to jam on sort of each client for a few minutes and make sure we have a sort of direction and plan that’s going to result in So whether they want leads, whether they want follower growth, whether they want just impressions and awareness, you know, we have a strategy for that that’s well-defined. So yeah, I guess it would be kind of freeform, but I think I’ll sort of be the sort of voice of the client as much as I can. And then I think the majority of it will be you and Blake sort of jamming on like strategic strategic and tactical stuff for each of your clients. Does that sound good from your end? Am I missing anything? Yeah. [Blake Emal]: I mean, I think the goal is just so that we can fully align on voice and the types of content that we’re putting out because it’s just different for everybody and we have a bunch of clients. [Michael Houck]: So good to realign. Yeah, exactly. OK, so with that being said, Tanyo where do you where do you want to start? [Tanyo Goshev]: Who do you want to start with? Yeah, I think that it’s better to start with Barry from X for no, I feel like he is like more Difficult in a sense like he’s not very responsive he takes a while and I’m still trying to figure out like I Feel like both clans like to house and X for no like are the total opposites, in a sense that Daniel is more chill, he’s laid back, he wants to post memes, he wants to be more out there, while Xfano are more like stats-oriented and data-driven and all that. So yeah, I’m just curious, because Xfano are obviously on LinkedIn, how, and I know Carousel example and because they’re more data-driven like images, infographics, carousels and all that sort of things would work and I assume they perform better because we can visualize the data. What would be the process for that because I see that the research they post is basically on their website and they have a lot of images there so if we want to turn that into carousel So what’s the logistical process for images and visuals for them? Yeah, I think before we dive into the tactical side, I want to just make sure we’re aligned on strategy. [Michael Houck]: So carousels are one thing that we can do. And we can take inspo from their website, and then you can send that to Celine, and she can put together a carousel. That’s fine. Just use the design request form. Celine will take care of that. Just give her guidance on that. Um, but like, so I think the first thing is let’s talk about just, uh, interacting with him as a client so far. So now he’s like a new client. We sort of got to get, got to get him into the, into the motion here. What, what are your thoughts on, on how to do that? Cause I think that’s, that’s the first, the first priority in my mind is making sure that. And it seems like he’s been a little bit more bought in, uh, over the past few days, like he’s engaged on Slack. It sounds like he’s like going in and making edits. Like, do you feel like he’s showing that? And also, do you feel like you’re like the edits that he’s making the feedback he’s giving are helpful? [Tanyo Goshev]: Like, what is that telling us? Yeah, I feel like last few days, he has been more responsive. I just feel like when I gave him like the ideas, I gave him gave him something like 20 ideas. And he responded like to nine or 10 of them. And he didn’t. And today asked him again, if he needed new ideas. So it seems like if I ask two questions, he only responds to one, which is fine, but something to keep in mind. In terms of walking him into the process, I feel like the kickoff call gave me a good idea of how he wants to be portrayed on social media. He wants to be a thought leader in that space, which is like a blue ocean right now. Um, so I have an idea of how we can do that. Uh, and he has been better these past few days, but I don’t know if it’s, if it’s because he’s busy, but it’s still like not, maybe I’m doing too much or too fast. And, um, that might be the issue. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, I don’t think him not responding to every question we send is a bad thing. I think it just shows it’s going to teach us basically what he to talk about and what he doesn’t, right? And then we’ll get more sort of tuned in on that over time. So I actually see that as like a way to learn about him and like what he wants to what he wants to make content about. In terms of then the content itself, like, do you feel like you’re getting a better sense of his of his voice? Or like, I don’t know what and Blake is as you go through sort of the first batch here and editing, what are you what are you seeing? [Tanyo Goshev]: Yeah, I mean Tanyo do you want to tackle your part first and then I go or Yeah, I feel like yeah based on the edits he made yesterday and today I have like a better idea of his voice and stuff We have only done like a few pieces so it might take a while, but yeah, I’m getting like a good idea of what he wants Okay, yeah, I mean this this is still like the first big batch, right? [Blake Emal]: Has he started? No. [Tanyo Goshev]: Also, did he give Andrew access to his LinkedIn? Because I don’t have access to his Typefully, for example, and I don’t think he… I shared it with Andrew yesterday or the day before, and I don’t think he has given him access. That might have changed since I last spoke with Andrew, but… So, I don’t know if we have scheduled to anything so far. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, that’s on Andrew to push with the client. I shouldn’t have to remind him of that. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: So let me just message him right now. [Blake Emal]: Yeah, so for my part of this here, I thought the content that you gave for the first batch was good. Always my approach for the first batch, kind of bleeding into the second as well, is as long as we are being accurate, correct, the formatting’s good, the writing’s good. I’m not going to nitpick as much because I want to see what the client likes because every client’s a little bit different. So sometimes we send those out and the client’s like, hey, I actually hate using grammar of any kind or punctuation of any kind. And we wouldn’t have known that. And so it looks like the changes that he made were not drastic compared to what you gave initially. [Blake Emal]: Do you feel that that’s true? [Tanyo Goshev]: Yeah, yeah, I feel the same way. Yeah, I think that’s true. [Blake Emal]: It seems like there’s always going to be voice things that are going to come up and we need to take note of that. But it seems like there were some nitpick things and smaller things, but didn’t see anything yet that was like, we need to totally change the topic. We need to totally change the hook. We need to avoid these things. And even if we do get those notes, it’s a positive early on. And we’ll just be responsive that I know you’ll, I know you’ll do that, Tanyo, but for my end, looks good. The only thing I’ll say is every post that we have either in approved or kind of in edits or review right now, pretty similar length across all those. And obviously LinkedIn, so that’s going to happen, but we can definitely explore like different lengths, different formats, things like that. So obviously carousels is a part of that, but it’s something to keep in mind. We don’t want every single post be exactly medium length every time, or else there’s going to be some fatigue on that. But, you know, writing wise, so far, from my perspective, going well, and we’re kind of in learning mode right now. So I’ll pause there. So what are what are we trying to learn? [Michael Houck]: Like, if we had another call like this in a month, right? What would we what are the things we want to try to learn that we don’t already know between now and then. [Tanyo Goshev]: Content formats like which one perform best for him specifically and how it’s tied to like how he’s perceived online like content formats. Voice and style and yeah maybe besides the content itself or maybe like a better like communication and all of that sort of stuff. But I would say like content formats and voice would be like the biggest ones. [Blake Emal]: Tanyo, do you feel like he is super clear on who he wants to be writing to? [Tanyo Goshev]: Like the one person that he wants on the other end of the screen? Yeah, he gave me like a broader target, meaning like he said, marketers, That could be like it’s in startups, but also like mid market or enterprise companies But he’s most focused on them, which is obviously like three different personas in a sense But the way I think about him specifically is that And maybe this isn’t correct but the way I think about him is that he wants to be seen in the AI search space as the guy who brings brings a lot of fresh research and data. And I feel like based on his edits, he really wants to stick to the actual data and to the stats and all of that sort of stuff. So as long as we ground the content and his voice into the raw numbers, I think we’ll have success with him specifically. [Blake Emal]: I mean, that’ll be the biggest blocker is if we run out of data from the website. You said there’s stuff on the website. If there’s not net new things coming in and that’s what he wants to be grounded in, we’re going to need to have a really good system for getting that kind of stuff from him or from going out and sourcing other trending things, other data that we can react to. So that’s going to be a huge thing that we have to constantly be on top of if that’s the expectation that that’s showing up in every post. Otherwise, the default without any inputs is broader posts, just by nature. Hard to get specific for a person when the person isn’t specific or giving any input. So a lot of that is on us still. Like we can’t, we want to still make this as easy as possible for him. So we might need to brainstorm a system that’s simple, that we, whether it’s Slack reminders or whatever, that we can consistently give these kinds of insights. [Tanyo Goshev]: Yeah, I think that, Let me check his website, but I feel like they regularly have at least one article in their book, which is like very data driven. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: But also, also Tanyo, I think like, you know, he’s in a space that is very competitive right now. It’s a lot of, a lot of like new companies are trying to build in the same space. They’re doing all pretty similar things. Like it’s fairly commoditized. So what that means for us is that if we’re looking for like interesting data or research or like insights to share with his audience. Yes, we can get the original stuff that only he is putting out through their company blog or whatever, but there’s probably also like five or 10 other companies that also have blogs that also have interesting insights that, you know, we’re not going to cite them obviously, but we can sort of have him be the one saying those things on social specifically. So I would say that a good exercise to do would be to, and you can maybe work with Ben on this, but basically just, you know, find, you know, five to 10 other companies in this GEO, like, you know, chatbot search optimization space and find their founders on social, find their company blogs, find their newsletters, whatever it is, and just build a system for yourself where you’re able to go check those sources every time you’re doing a new batch of content and look for interesting Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea. [Tanyo Goshev]: I would do that. Did he share like at any point like the people who he wanted to interact with on LinkedIn? That might be like a good. A good initial list. [Michael Houck]: No, I I think we should treat this separately, because he’s probably not. He’s probably not going to want to interact with his competitors, right? He’s probably going to want to Big tech influencers who have a broader audience who he wants to educate about this topic So what we want is we want to create our own list of like, you know other people in this space I mean if we can’t find anybody, of course, you can ask him to do it But I feel like there’s a lot of these companies right now trying to do this like two of them just come to mind For me right away as I’m sitting here so just work with Ben to find them and pull together a list and just use that as your sort of of inspo for each batch. Okay. Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. [Tanyo Goshev]: I will do that. [Blake Emal]: I think those are going to be good questions to be proposing. So instead of having to come up with like the 20 content ideas that you gave were like topic focus, right? Whereas if you’re starting to go out and show that you’re sourcing other tidbits and stuff, his reactions to those things are, we still need that part of it. Like it’s one thing to have a source, have the data point and you could, we could go out and make a piece of content that says here is the data point. But what’s much more interesting and non-replicable is to have his actual take on top of that. And so those are probably the things that we want to get answered more than just about anything else in my view. [Michael Houck]: Correct. I just dropped in chat. Here’s, here’s like a, another company in this space. Um, they have a blog on their site. So like, yeah, to Blake’s point, what would be great is like, Hey, let’s, Let’s go through their blog. Let’s find some interesting things that are maybe counterintuitive. And then let’s go to Biri and say, Hey, like, what do you think about this fact? What do you think about this insight that we saw? [Tanyo Goshev]: What’s your take? Why are they wrong? You know, where could they go further? You know, something like that. Okay. Yeah. And in terms of metrics on LinkedIn, like what’s the, how would we know the strategy is successful? Is it impressions or like, this might be more of a question for him specifically, but he mentioned on the call that he wanted to be like one of the people who talks about that specific topic, which isn’t like, is easily measurable. So, um, no, I think it’s pretty easily measurable. [Michael Houck]: It’s it’s if he cares about the sort of being a thought leader in the space, then follower count is number one, right? How big of a of a, of a audience rebuilding for him. But if he, I think probably what he’s going to care about eventually is ROI for his business. And so we should also do this through the lens of like driving leads and signups for, for his business. [Tanyo Goshev]: So that’s what I would say. Okay. Okay. [Michael Houck]: It makes sense. Okay. Anything else for him or should we, uh, should we move on to, uh, to Toolhouse? [Tanyo Goshev]: No, I’m pretty clear on Xfinal and Berry. OK. [Michael Houck]: OK, so yeah, Toolhouse, what’s your what’s your assessment so far of working with Daniel? [Tanyo Goshev]: Yeah, he is really like easygoing and chill and it’s fun working with him because like he always responds and like he likes the content itself. And I feel like I have like a good understanding of his voice and just his style of writing like all lower cap, not very much grammar and stuff like that. So yeah, so far so good. [Michael Houck]: I wonder what are we seeing so far, like as we’re putting as we’re starting to put Yeah, I’m in his typefully right now. [Tanyo Goshev]: And I wanted to ask you both this. Once again, what’s the metric in terms of each individual tweet? In terms of, is it engagement rate? Is it views? Is it impressions? What’s the one we optimize for? And obviously, forwards, we come out of that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, you should. This is something we should know because we ask him this during onboarding, right? So we already have this information. I don’t know what it is off my head, but [Tanyo Goshev]: I mean, didn’t we get this in the form and then also ask him again on the call? Yeah, but I mean like, Maybe I’m not asking the question the right way. Like how do we? Like in typefully all the different metrics we see like how do we assess what’s a successful tweet uh because like there are a lot of different metrics here and I have heard like all different like you should focus on views or engagement rate or fall uh or how many followers you get and I’m still trying to figure out that part yeah I mean it’s it’s just it’s going to be different for different clients there’s no like you know, there’s no like one metric that is the right metric on social media, right? [Michael Houck]: It’s based on the client. So if the client’s goal is revenue for their business, then we don’t even care about impressions, really. We care about revenue for their business and how happy they are with that. And they have to report that to us. But, you know, so for so what is his goal? Is his goal followers? Is his goal impressions? [Tanyo Goshev]: Is his goal leads? What did he tell you? When we chatted, he wanted to similar to Barry in a sense is he wanted to be like a thought leader in the space, in the AI space. That’s why I focused more on like reaction tweets, like I sent him a link of a tweet and he responds to it like a reply type of thing. And yeah, he really wants to be out there in terms of like being controversial and in a sense. So that’s why I focused on these types of posts. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Right. [Michael Houck]: So just to be super clear, like when we gave him those three options, which one did he pick? [Tanyo Goshev]: Impressions, followers or leads? On top of my head, I don’t remember. I need to check. [Michael Houck]: OK, let’s check real quick. Because that’s that’s something that should be your North Star. That should be top of mind for you with this, always. Say a side note here. [Blake Emal]: If he’s saying thought leadership, if that’s really what he’s looking for, just reaction pieces, that’s going to make him like an industry reactor. And there’s value in that. But like a thought leader really has to push new ideas too. So we need to be able to kind of balance those things. Having unique reactions, differentiated opinions on stuff that’s happening, but also are we like pushing new ideas that maybe people haven’t heard of Are our hooks like driving home these unique ideas that maybe jar people a little bit, give them a new perspective on the industry? Like that to me, that’s what thought leader means more. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, I agree. [Blake Emal]: So I would be cautious of like over indexing on reactions, although that there’s some value that, too. We don’t have to stop that entirely. [Tanyo Goshev]: Yeah, we are pushing new ideas in a sense that I asked him about, working with T1 and responding to Brock’s benchmarks and stuff like that. So there is a combination of some memes, some responses and reactions, and sharing new ideas. About the industry. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: And he, if I remember correctly from our call with him and I listened to a couple of his voice notes too, he has like a lot of like hot takes, like he likes being like sharing hot takes and then he feels strongly about his opinion. So I feel like there’s no shortage of material there with a guy like him to, to create sort of not, not, not intentionally provocative, but just like organically provocative opinions. Cause he has strong opinions, right? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, sure. [Michael Houck]: We should lean into that because that’s his personality and that’s what he, I think, wants to get across. Circling back though to primary goal, it doesn’t look like we added it to the kickoff call doc during the call. So I’d have to watch the recording to find out what he said. [Tanyo Goshev]: I think I have the transcript. I need to find it. It wasn’t in the form? [Michael Houck]: No, I don’t think it was in the form either. It should be in the form. It’s kind of weird that it’s not. Yeah, I don’t know either way. Um, just so we use this time productively, like let’s assume that his goal is at the end of the day, like ROI for his business. Obviously he wants to be a thought leader. He wants to build up his account. But like, you know, the reason he’s doing this is because he wants to, you know, build up his business. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Right. [Michael Houck]: And that’s the only way he’s going to continue to do this is if his business grows. So let’s do it through that lens. And so, yeah, I guess like Blake, what are your thoughts on the sort of strategy and editing side here? [Blake Emal]: Well, one thing that’s come to mind as well is I’ve been editing his style and Tanyo has been doing a great job with like a lot because he is a little bit different. Yeah. The I kind of got the sense to like, Followers and actual ROI is probably where we’re leading especially if he’s doing this for the business like ROI at the end of the day and It’s hard because I think he I mean Tanyo does he want to do memes like he specifically said he wants to do stuff like that Yeah, if you mentioned it he wants to be like funny and the reverent and over that sort of stuff Yeah, so like I totally get that and there are impressions to be had on memes the hard part is translating that from getting impressions into getting followers, into getting leads is difficult for me. So like this may be an instance where if we, if he’s definitely aligned on leads are the main thing or even followers, we probably need to push back a little bit on the types of content that we push out because so far it’s been shorter stuff, quippy memes, like, it’s it’s kind of been a growthy type strategy where we’re just trying to get impressions and get people in but those are maybe I mean sometimes you’re going to get good people from that but you’re just it’s too wide a net like that that’s my sense of where we need to go is maybe we need to dive a little bit deeper into some of the content not that every post needs to be long or anything but maybe we need to start like working on a longer piece of content for every batch or every other batch, and then also repurpose that into smaller stuff and work on separate smaller stuff. To me, that might give us more shots on goal and also help him stand out as a thought leader a little bit more instead of focusing on quick wins or impressions. [Tanyo Goshev]: Yeah, I agree with that. Because you’re right that like both things aren’t really aligned in terms of like being having hot takes and controversial opinions is fine but it will drive attention to him not necessarily his business that much and we need to like have like a middle ground where both things are true like he is a top leader but also would drive leads to his business yeah I think like honestly in the hooks there’s still all the room in the world to have those hot takes it’s a great way to start off a post, there’s just also opportunity to maybe dive a little bit deeper into the insights behind it. [Blake Emal]: Like what are the three, four bullet points behind that, that make it true that maybe people haven’t thought of If we can get on that level and have a mixture of like, okay, here was a longer post. And then we’ve got like 20 shorter posts that are all punchy in their own way. That, that to me at least gets him a little closer to that only short form. And when I’m saying short form, it’s like, it’s like one liners and two liners, right? It’s not even usually well beyond that. So I don’t know. [Michael Houck]: I don’t, I don’t know your thoughts, your thoughts on that. How I think you’re right. Um, I do, I see the misalignment. I sort of agree with your take. Um, I think, yeah, let’s, let’s bring this up to him and see what his thoughts are. Um, in like a, positive way, right? Not in like a negative way, like not in like a way that makes it sound like we’ve been sort of wasting time, but just in like a way of like, Hey, here’s how we think we can take this one step further. [Blake Emal]: Okay. And a great way to frame this, by the way, Tanyo is like, Hey, we saw this cool, we thought of this cool opportunity for the account. So what if we have the shorter posts that are more focused on your unique hot takes, and we use that as shots on goal to like get to which ideas work well. But then once we figure out what works well, we know that that’s going to work and we can use that as a hook for a longer post. So that way he feels like he’s getting even more value from it. That’s one way that you could positively frame a potential change in strategy. And ultimately, it’s not a huge change in strategy. It’s just like, hey, we want to maybe build stuff that’s a little deeper. [Blake Emal]: And that’s a decent way to frame it that I found. [Tanyo Goshev]: Yeah, I have like I will need to create content for him tomorrow like five pieces or something and he reacts to them and we have content for him up to end of next week. So should I message him like tomorrow after or should I start implementing what we just talked about in the upcoming batch that I will be doing tomorrow? [Michael Houck]: I think I think let’s keep moving forward as is for this week and let’s frame this because urgent. And let’s just propose this to him as like, Hey, here’s something we’re thinking about for next week. [Tanyo Goshev]: What are your thoughts on it? Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, okay. I think that’s, that’s good. [Michael Houck]: I think we have some sort of direction here for both. Is there anything else Tanyo on your mind for these guys? That’s like unresolved that we should talk through? [Tanyo Goshev]: No, not really. I think we have a good understanding on both the processes and the strategies and all of that. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Blake, any other things you want to flag? No, I think I’m good for now. Okay, cool. Let’s move forward with this then. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Thanks, guys. Nice talking to you.