- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01K8NN9DQCMVC7XWS4DSETFFD6 (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Ben Ornstein: How are you? Kelley Louise: I have been chatting with each of you just to bring Steve up to speed. Andrew Safranko: I think you know all of this already. Kelley Louise: But I met with Andrew and Ben last week. We talked about the LinkedIn strategy. We also just talked about like ops in general and just ironing out a smoother system. Andrew and Ben, just for visibility, Michael had messaged me as well and said there was like maybe some confusion about who to reach out to for different things. Y’all can always just like treat me as the primary point person and I’ll tap anyone else in as needed, hopefully it streamlines stuff from your end. But for this meeting specifically, what Steve and I thought would be helpful is just to have something on the calendar to have a regular touch point. Steve’s schedule is likely worse than mine in terms of like getting roped into stuff and having a million things to do. But I think having a regular meeting on the calendar will be great for him to share some of his thoughts in terms of content and hopefully it kickstart the brainstorming process. So that’s everything from my end. Happy to pass it off to you all from here and we can dive in. Yeah, for sure. Andrew Safranko: I’ve got some thoughts on content, but I know Ben, you wanted to just share a bit more too. So feel free to go on your end. Yeah, absolutely. Ben Ornstein: Steve, just for full context here, I’m kind of, I’m House Chief of Staff and I kind of do the content operation side. So I’m handling the engage, the proactive and reactive engagements. And scheduling as well. Okay. When you say you’re handling, does that mean that you’re managing or that you’re writing? Steve Spurgat: Oh, no, both. Ben Ornstein: I’m handling and actually writing the comments myself. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Gotcha. Ben Ornstein: And so I’ve received very helpful feedback from the team to nail the voice down. So I think I’ve nailed it, which is really good. And so the one thing I wanted to discuss today was the Megaphone amplifier engagement strategy. Hauk messaged me last night, Kelley, that you two had been chatting about that in terms of wanting to nail down like what that strategy kind of looked like and how we can kind of optimize it going forward. My thought initially was testing out boosting different content types. So like if there’s a post that’s an X thread, maybe let’s try to boost a thread. But at the same time, the inside of that strategy is it’s really good to be organic to see how the organic engagement looks on that as well on these different post types. So I guess there’s kind of two paths we could take. We could test in boosting the posts, like a new strategy, like we’re starting the memes this week and there’s text posts with images. So we could either see how those do organically or because they’re different types, we could boost them from the beginning. I don’t know how you guys feel about that. Steve Spurgat: I mean, you’re the experts, right? I guess you have to make a judgment call, right? Because I think somebody said you have to boost it within the first hour for it to really, for boosting to work. But then if you’re boosting the first hour, then you’re gonna lose the data on organic. So I guess, how do you decide which should take for per post. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, when we’re posting as frequently as we are five days a week, especially like on the X side of things, it’s more of, you’re much more selective in terms of like which ones you want to boost. And there’s different reasons why you would do that. One is like that thread that Andrew wrote last week that I think all of us agree was one of the best posts yet, that, That was one that, as you pointed out, Steve, probably should have been boosted. But we didn’t really have a strategy in place then. And I had already planned to boost the post on the following day, which I did. And so we could take a general strategy of like, hey, if there’s a post that just feels kind of even higher quality, then we could, regardless of the post type, that maybe we should boost. That’s the strategy we kind of take with most clients. Yeah. I almost prefer like boost the best. Steve Spurgat: It’s more important that we, the best posts get in front of more eyeballs. Cause the key metrics we really care about are, you know, leads and followers, right? Yep. Ben Ornstein: And I think that actually makes the most sense because then we can test the different content types organically rather than boosting those. So, okay. We’ll go with that. We’ll go with that. Ben Ornstein: Great. Andrew Safranko: Did you guys want to explore, so for instance, Kelley, you mentioned you’ve got the case study coming out. Did you want to explore anything from a Big Human content specific standpoint? So like if you’ve got a case study, did you want to explore boosting that as well and see how that goes or more so just kind of get out in the ether? I think we’re open to anything. Kelley Louise: My main piece of feedback I think that we have full visibility into the boosting strategy and its current form. Like Ben, what you just shared is the most information we’ve received. We basically know it’s part of the budget on a month to month basis, but we hadn’t necessarily seen it done. And what I saw was a disconnect because that one tweet in particular that I flagged, I did comment on it and I said, this is the best one so far. And that’s why it caught Steve’s radar as well, because I passed it along to him. And then it wasn’t the one that was boosted. And so it just felt like that to me felt like a missed opportunity. But the bigger picture is that we know that we’re paying for boosted posts, but we don’t know what the strategy looks like or what we’re trying to achieve there. So broadly speaking, I think like internal comms and alignment is the best first step. And then from there, generally speaking, we are very experimental, we’re open to creative ideas and trying different things. Like if you all have an idea that you’re like, we want to test this, or we think that this is gonna perform well, like generally we’re very open to any of those ideas. I think what we’re missing right now is the internal alignment on what is the strategy behind the boosted content. And even for my visibility and understanding, I believe that it’s different. You’re not boosting it through X. You’re boosting it through creators and your network. And so that’s why you’re like, it’s best to do it within the first hour, which makes sense to me. Um, but I also don’t know, like, how are you picking those creators? What is the matchmaking look like, Like I don’t have like boosted and creator network is like the strategy that I understand right now. So Steve has probably even less visibility. Into that than I do. Yeah. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Um, let me explain a bit because, uh, and I actually had an idea for in terms of like operationally how we can handle this. I’ll say that afterwards. Um, in terms of how we’ve had a greater network of like hundreds of creators, each on X and LinkedIn, uh, they’re across all industries. Uh, they’re verified creators. Some of them are faceless accounts. So like we know the person behind the account, but it’s like a, uh, it’s not, it’s not a person. Um, regardless, we have when we boost to post, and when we kind of like onboarded the Big Human accounts onto the Megaphone network, we select a few different niches. So design, tech, startups, SaaS, in that kind of range was what we selected for Big humans accounts. And so what that means is what happens is we have an algorithm that connects that your content with the best possible creators in the network, automatically. And so those creators, they are the ones that are engaging with the content. Does that make sense? Kelley Louise: And do you know which one engages with the content? Do you just tell them all at once and then they pick and choose? Is there a way that we can get visibility over this is the post that was boosted and here’s the creators who engaged with it? Ben Ornstein: So the creators that engage we will not be able to tell you. We have privacy with the creator. We don’t release their identities. However, in the Weekly reporting spreadsheet for the posts that are boosted, I added a column that shows Megaphone boosts. And it shows the exact spend amount on the posts that were boosted. Steve Spurgat: So the creators interact with it. Wouldn’t you just see that by looking at the post? Ben Ornstein: You could probably guess who they are. We don’t reveal who they are though How does that I’m sorry. Steve Spurgat: So what is it they’re doing that would require a guess? Ben Ornstein: They’re engaging with the content. So there’s I kind of select on my end a comment Repost quote post you can get that selective in terms of we can do a separate call Specifically on Megaphone if you kind of wanted like a demo I could show you the product Totally, that’s totally That would be cool. Steve Spurgat: Yeah. Yeah. Cause you would see, cause all of that you would see, right? Ben Ornstein: You would see, you would see obviously like on the Big Human post, you would see like creators commenting, of course. So then where’s the anonymous issue there? Steve Spurgat: It’s like, they’re doing something in the public. Ben Ornstein: Like we won’t, we won’t verify like who, like who the creators are. Steve Spurgat: Okay. Oh, I see. You won’t verify that they’re the paid or not paid. I see. Okay, that’s fair. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, it’s a gray area of social media. We’ve had no problems at all with either of them. In fact, we’ve spoken with teams that because this was always happening in the shadows, this is like a productized version of it. And they actually really, yeah. Steve Spurgat: So I mean, kind of makes sense. It all has to exist in a gray area. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, 100%. But hopefully this helps in terms of clarity. But in terms of like an operational side, Kelley, I had an idea. When you’re reviewing the post for the upcoming week on Friday, and you’re like, oh, this is a really good post. Could we boot, you could tag me and be like, hey, Ben, can we boost this one next week? That way we’re aligned in terms of like, which ones you guys see as like being higher potential and higher quality. We will, of course, I’ll like, I’ll add my thoughts will be like, hey, this one probably wouldn’t be the best one to boost for this reason, if I disagree. But with that kind of like solves the operational problem. Yeah, that works. Kelley Louise: I probably won’t pick one. Like, I’ll just point out if I think that there’s higher quality content anywhere. But if I don’t do that, just choose your own. That works. Ben Ornstein: Sounds good. Ben Ornstein: And one last thing on this in general, like going viral is like timely amplification with high quality content. And that’s why like you using us as as like the ghost writing plus the Megaphone combined in that first hour of amplification that is that’s going to lead to higher potential of virality. So that’s why I like the combination of these two is great. Great. Kelley Louise: I think that was all from my end, though. Should we talk about the next batch of content, Andrew? Yeah. Andrew Safranko: if you’ve got some thoughts. I’ll preface it just, I remember when we first spoke and Russ was on the call as well, we were kind of talking pillars and I feel like that conversation was a little bit more on the design side, although I know you guys do a lot more than just that. But Kelley, good for flagging that because we’d love to kind of see and hear where else you want to kind of go in terms of direction. I think we’ve kind of got a good cadence going and there’s a good amount of folks paying attention now, but I’d love to switch it up for you guys. Steve Spurgat: Yeah, is this for me or for you, Kelley? Steve Spurgat: Whatever you want, Andrew. Yeah, I mean, our other service, so I guess beyond product design, we obviously are building a lot of apps. So anything that’s engineering focused, I think, is also helpful. Steve Spurgat: And then I guess, you know, because we have incubated and it works with so many startups and people often come to us because of our startup experience, maybe like just thought leadership stuff around startups in general. I don’t know what your thoughts on that are, Kelley, but sort of like being, you know, anything related to trends around, you know, go to market, user acquisition, retention, like what new products are doing well, AI versus no AI. Although it’s kind of a tricky one for us, right? It’s kind of a sensitive topic right now. Is replacing all of us. Steve Spurgat: Although I’m out of phase this past few weeks where I’m starting to embrace it a bit, but that’ll come later. But I guess anything, Yeah, I guess more startup related. Um, and then, you know, as you know, Kelley like leads our marketing department. So, um, whether it’s for startups or for bigger companies, anything, you know, marketing related, um, particularly around like content marketing SEO, but also, Ironically, social. I thought we were competing with you. In fact, if it ever comes to Twitter, we’d probably sub stuff out to you. But we’re doing more, I think, on Instagram and TikTok on that front. But it’s usually part of a bigger package. Andrew Safranko: So I don’t know. Steve Spurgat: Anything else? We’re missing there, Kelley. Kelley Louise: Did you mention dev stuff? Dev? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Steve Spurgat: Yeah. I mean, that’s OK. It’s OK if you tuned out. I do it all the time. Kelley Louise: I think my biggest piece of feedback, Andrew, is just that all of your prompts this week were focused on design. And on a week-to-week basis, ideally, we’re not just a design agency. And so we’re covering a broad spectrum of like maybe like one product post, one marketing post. Like we do, um, we do more in certain areas that might not always be exact, but I just want to make sure that we don’t come across as only design centric on any given week. Yep. Fair enough. Andrew Safranko: That will change immediately. Yeah. Steve Spurgat: I mean, it is probably the best default, you know, if we had choose only one, it probably would be design just because it gives the credibility that leads into everything else. Steve Spurgat: But we don’t want people to think that we’re a design studio only. No, for sure. Andrew Safranko: I think the cool part now is there’s a good voice and a good look and feel to what we’ve put out. And I think transitioning to these topics makes perfect sense. It won’t look weird, right? Where it’s like, oh, why are they talking about startups all of a sudden? I think it’ll still make sense and it should flow pretty nicely. Yeah. Cool. OK. Yeah. These are all great topics. Super excited to dive into these ones as well. There’s a lot that we can talk about here. Ben Ornstein: Also on the engagement front, I’ve obviously pivoted away from complete design engagements as well. So it’s been, I agree with Andrew. It’s going to be a nice transition because as kind of the entire, everything on X specifically, because that’s where we’re doing the engagements, is where it’s been kind of AI, startups, tech. I’ve avoided AI, because it’s kind of, yeah, tech, startups, growth. I have gotten a little bit in dev, but I’m not too technical myself, so I’ve been very safe in terms of the engagements. Nothing that you guys would disapprove of, I’ve made sure of that. Steve Spurgat: Yeah, we could do things around designing for AI, which we’ve done a couple. That may be more case study stuff coming up, because we have a couple of those that we’re working on. Steve Spurgat: But yeah, otherwise, we can kind of stay away from AI for now. Andrew Safranko: Give me a month. Andrew Safranko: there’s like something that is dramatically trending, if you will, that we think makes sense. Yeah, I agree. Like there’s too much out there and none of it seems to really like stand out these days. Like solo 2 kind of a thing for a minute, and that’s the LinkedIn post we’re going to do. Because it did have its own sort of moments. But otherwise, yeah, most of it’s just blending. Nothing really exciting. You mean? Steve Spurgat: Say again, sorry? Did you want to cover Oh, so we have a LinkedIn post for this week on Sora 2. Andrew Safranko: Okay. Ben Ornstein: Actually, it went out this morning. Yeah. Okay. There you go. Andrew Safranko: Yeah, I feel like it was just, it was a bit of a defining moment just because it really captured a broader audience and it sort of, I think the conversation around it at the time, like with its launch, like I wouldn’t do more Sora 2 you will. Speaking to its beginnings is good, but otherwise, I mean, we’ve already seen all the AI videos out there. There’s not much more I would say, if you will, right now about it. Yeah. Are you looking at Pika as well? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Everyone’s doing cool stuff. Steve Spurgat: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Andrew Safranko: I’ve taken a look at them before. This new thing they just launched, Russ is actually helping out with and kind of behind, but it’s outside of Big Human. Steve Spurgat: I don’t even know if he’s tweeting about it himself. Andrew Safranko: He doesn’t really tweet about anything. Steve Spurgat: Yeah. Other than Hulu logos. Andrew Safranko: That was the last thing he tweeted. Steve Spurgat: Yeah, I’ve paid attention to this space. Andrew Safranko: There’s a really cool- I’m going to post this. Andrew Safranko: Which one’s this? Steve Spurgat: This Hulu thing is so random. Steve Spurgat: Yeah, I don’t know. He seems to have an archive of stuff. Yeah. Andrew Safranko: Yeah, there’s a space brewing around this world with regards to, I guess, AI-created content that’s more professional, if you will. Like, there’s a really good studio in the UK right now that’s doing some really professional Hollywood-quality stuff. But I didn’t get it. It escapes me. But they created the, what’s name. It was a couple weeks ago, it went viral. Hollywood was all over this because they were claiming she was the next star, but she was an AI star. Let me just… One second. Tilly Norwood. Did you hear the name Tilly Norwood ever? Yeah. Tilly Norwood was created by… Oh, she was the one that was on TikTok. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Twitter. Steve Spurgat: I mean, she’s on, she’s on everything. Yeah, yeah. Andrew Safranko: So Particle Six was the company and that’s a spinoff from, where’s the company? If you Google Particle Six, you’ll see. But anyway, they’re based out of the UK and they created her but they also have a whole production studio that they’ve done some pretty good stuff. A lot of it is, it’s not, I don’t think they’ve done anything in long form, but you could see the potential. You can see the quality is there. Steve Spurgat: I’ve heard of mine runs a studio loop, and he’s a little afraid of all this stuff. I can imagine. I don’t know. I think you’re always going to need people that kind of bless this. You can’t just rely on tech to do it all. Andrew Safranko: You need creators to make this make sense. You’re not just going to get it. I don’t know. I have a film background. For me, there is always going to be a Human you need for either directing, editing, something. You can do the AI stuff, but I don’t know. There’s always going to be a Human touch, I feel. Because otherwise, I guess, who knows? You’re right. I mean, this is even more agentic, right? You just create five roles for everything you just named and say, you act as this, you act as this, you act as this. Steve Spurgat: It’s true. It’s true. I don’t know. Yeah. We’ll see how this goes. Andrew Safranko: Yeah. But anywho, um, yeah, let’s pay some attention to if I see stuff, I’ll definitely let you guys know to like, if there’s something we think we should we should mention. But yeah, it’s all slop at the moment, as we’re well aware. Well, um, do we have anything else we want to cover? Did you want to brainstorm more? Steve Spurgat: I mean, if you guys got anything like top of mind, so if you know, in your slack channels, or what have you, if there’s stuff that you guys you’re sort of like joking around about or you see trends. Andrew Safranko: Look at my way, please. Would love to kind of riff on anything you guys find interesting as well. Yeah, I mean, are we, I guess, are we giving you what’s normal or less than average? Steve Spurgat: I know we’re not giving more than average, at least not right now in terms of like… Steve Spurgat: I get some stuff. Go ahead, Kelley. Andrew Safranko: Andrew, I don’t think you’re getting anything from those prompts from us. Kelley Louise: And so my goal with this session is that you can get the brainstorming from us here, and we might drop stuff in ad hoc. But to me, the Slack brainstorming is not working. I have a million notifications in Slack constantly. And so it’s hard for me to like, I have to kind of go through them very quickly. And it’s hard for me to stop and formulate a response. Something that’s top of mind like I certainly will flag it like I’ve shared at least one article I also shared our upcoming case study so I can make a point to do that but I think generally speaking theoretically hopefully this meeting is more of your brainstorm and every half hour every two weeks right yeah so is that enough time probably not the good part is like I’m pretty familiar with the work you guys do and just the world you live in like that was a world I was in for many many years so from a focus standpoint I can probably get away with just understanding where you guys are coming from but obviously if you guys Andrew Safranko: can send me stuff I’ll always take that dude like that’s always helpful um I just you’re right like kelly you’re right like what it’s about finding the mode the modality of how you want to share like what’s the most optimal way of doing this knowing everyone’s just running a mile a minute, right? Andrew Safranko: So by default, and this is sort of how we operate at Megaphone, we’ll send questions to clients just to kind of spark conversation. By all means, and as you’re well aware, they’re not mandatory, right? If you can, great. If you can’t, we get it. It’s fine. But yeah, it would be good to understand if there’s ways we can trigger this. It becomes cadence at some point. I don’t know. It’s definitely not part of the routine at the moment. So yeah, how do we solve that? Should we be engaging with products that we like and tagging them on Twitter now and again? Steve Spurgat: It’s like new things that we think are cool, new tools. Yeah, I think that’s an interesting one for sure. Andrew Safranko: As a tastemaker, if you will, that’s not a bad idea. Yeah, but it’s also a way to like, have people on the back that are potential clients or connectors. Steve Spurgat: Yeah, like if there’s any that you’re eyeing, I could spin that in a creative way so that it’s not particularly obvious that you’re trying to eye them. Andrew Safranko: You know what I mean? But we can highlight it. Andrew Safranko: Yeah. Yeah, if you want to send any just over the next month or so. Feel free. Steve Spurgat: Yeah. Andrew Safranko: And one thing, um, just for both of you for, for something that many of our clients do is when they see something throughout the week, they’re like, Hey, this is potentially interesting. Ben Ornstein: Maybe we could draft some content about this. That’s like welcomed anytime, just the Big Human channel, whenever you come across anything. Um, uh, just cause because you live in the world even more than we do, uh, we’re of course always monitoring, but, um, you know, Even if there’s like articles or publications that you pay attention to, like just maybe think of our Slack channel, just dump a link. Andrew Safranko: You don’t even have to comment. Like if you literally just dump a link, I’ll take it. And I’ll just know that that’s something that was interesting to you. And I’ll try to like spin it in a way that helps you guys. That might be helpful as well. It has to be as easy as possible for you guys. I’m also seeing like some the engagements here. Ben Ornstein: So like, bold of him to turn frustration into retention metric. Steve Spurgat: That’s fun. Yeah, I tried to get creative, like witty, but kind of humorous, but in a subtle way. Ben Ornstein: Do you think like that? That’s, that’s like on par with what you guys are going? I’m not following this person. Should we follow them? Ben Ornstein: Yeah. So in general, we want to keep we can we certainly can. Steve Spurgat: I’m trying to keep the kind ratio of Ben Ornstein: Oh, get the ratio low. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously yours is extremely good. Really good. But we can follow up. Yeah, absolutely. I don’t I don’t see why not. If there’s one that you want to flag the people that I’m engaging with. I’m trying not to engage with them too often. Like if I engage with one person, I try not to engage with them again. You know, right away, just so we’re not like engaging with the same people. But it’s really high quality That’s something that’s really relevant. Of course. I’ll I’ll engage again BRBO Yeah, the enterprise brands was something Kelley pointed out so I’m always looking for the ones in the industries that you guys work in cool Is our follower count growing Are we I guess we’re I know reporting is a part doing as well. Steve Spurgat: What does that come in? Yeah, I sent that one yesterday. It’s all the slack. Yeah. There’s a spreadsheet that’s attached as well. So you could check that out to show like it shows all the metrics. I give like a little bit of a higher level report. Ben Ornstein: Steve, Jacqueline’s grabbing that and she shares it in the marketing team meeting. Okay, cool. Which is happening starting right now. Kelley Louise: That’s our cue. Steve Spurgat: Yeah, so I guess This is good. Andrew Safranko: If we think we need more than I guess we should do more of these meetings. And right, I guess is my only question now. Steve Spurgat: I think we’re just limited by the calendar. Andrew Safranko: So you let us know sort of what works more than happy to jive and jam on these things with you guys. 100% Yeah. Welcome to chat. You guys want to? Yeah. Cool. That makes sense. Ben Ornstein: But otherwise, I’m good. Andrew Safranko: I’ll make sure you guys have stuff. Steve Spurgat: And I’ll switch up topics. Andrew Safranko: Thanks, Kelley, for highlighting all that. Great. Thank you. Cool. All right. Have a great day, guys. Thanks, y’all. Great talking to you. Thanks. Cheers. Bye-bye.