In this episode, Parthi explains why his company pivoted from SEO content tools to LinkedIn-focused social selling, and why other marketers should pay attention.
As AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini transform search behavior, Parthi recognized that AI-assisted, personality-driven content became the clearer path to revenue. “I still use Google, don’t get me wrong, but I also use ChatGPT or Gemini quite a bit,” he notes, describing how his habits shifted from “80-20” in favor of Google to “50-50” as AI tools improved.
Letterdrop now uses AI to turn internal expertise into trust-building LinkedIn content for sales and executive teams. Their system “indexes your blog, sales calls, customer success calls” to understand your business, then uses AI to generate personalized content that feels authentic. Rather than chasing virality or building influencer-level personal brands, Parthi focuses on helping professionals who don’t post regularly to create content that resonates with the small subset of people who matter: their prospective customers.
About Our Guest: Parthi Longanathan
Parthi Longanathan is the founder and CEO of Letterdrop, a platform that has evolved from an SEO-focused content tool to a LinkedIn social selling system. He was a product manager at Google on the search team and also worked on G Suite (now Google Workspace). Parthi gained insights into how search works behind the scenes, giving him a unique perspective on content marketing.
At Google, he tried to launch Google Chat (to compete with Slack), an experience that taught him about product development and market fit. After leaving Google in 2019, Parthi founded Letterdrop, initially focused on helping marketers create high-quality SEO content by streamlining research and connecting content to revenue.
In 2023, Parthi decided to pivot Letterdrop toward LinkedIn-focused content after noticing changes in search behavior and declining demand for SEO services. This shift allowed the company to address the growing importance of personal brands and relationship-building in B2B marketing.
Insights and Quotes From This Episode
Parthi articulates a vision of social media’s role in B2B marketing that challenges traditional tactics while providing practical frameworks for implementation.
“Your job is to try to answer the question as best as possible and give the person who’s searching their answer. Google’s job is to connect the two. That’s pretty much it.” (00:11:00)
At Google, Parthi learned that SEO should focus on providing value rather than reverse-engineering algorithms. He explains that many marketers approach search as a zero-sum game to rank higher, rather than considering the actual needs of searchers.
“ChatGPT had launched probably six months ago… and I look at my own behaviors. I still use Google, don’t get me wrong, but I also use ChatGPT or Gemini quite a bit.” (00:17:00)
Parthi shares his reasoning for pivoting his business. He notes both external factors (declining demand) and internal observations about changing search behaviors. He describes how his own usage shifted from “80-20” favoring Google to “50-50” as AI tools improved, signaling a trend that would impact content marketing and SEO.
“Our goal is to make the people who don’t do anything and get them to essentially start building trust within their sphere of influence, which is much smaller.” (00:27:10)
Parthi explains Letterdrop’s focus on helping regular professionals rather than established influencers. He distinguishes between two types of social media creators: influencers building large audiences versus everyday professionals needing help starting with content creation. By focusing on the latter group, Letterdrop helps sales teams and executives create content that builds trust with their target prospects.
“If Adam Robinson emails me, I will open the email. If John Smith, your 23-year-old SDR, emails me, guess what? You got marked along with 80 other emails and sent to trash.” (00:23:00)
Letterdrop helps subject matter experts and sales professionals share content consistently. This builds trust before outreach happens and increases response rates because prospects recognize the person reaching out as someone who has already provided value.
“How do we make sure that the rest of your team is doing their part to distribute that? Your CEO might have 20,000 followers or a bigger network. How do we get them to distribute John’s content to more of that network?” (00:23:30)
Letterdrop creates a content amplification system within organizations. They help companies create internal distribution networks where executives and team members share each other’s content, instead of isolated efforts.
“There’s a thousand people in their world who matter to them. How do you influence those thousand people and nobody else?” (00:28:00)
Parthi offers a different perspective on social media success than most marketers consider. Rather than maximizing reach, he suggests focusing on influencing the specific people who matter to an individual’s business — around 1,000 people for a typical sales rep. This focus on targeted influence rather than virality represents a more strategic approach to LinkedIn.
“Most people don’t have a tone of voice. Unless you post a lot, unless you’re a writer in some capacity, you don’t have a tone of voice. 99% of people don’t have a tone.” (00:34:00)
Parthi delivers an honest assessment: most people don’t have distinctive writing styles. This observation explains why template-based approaches work for professionals who aren’t regularly creating content.
“If someone told you the singularity is happening, what do you want to do about it?” (00:37:00)
Parthi considers the broader implications of advancing AI technology. He acknowledges the possibility of a technological singularity changing knowledge work, but admits he doesn’t have a definitive solution. Instead, he focuses on helping people today while remaining adaptable to whatever technological shifts occur.
About This Season of the Animalz Podcast: AI & Content
Hello… is there anybody out there creating real value with AI?
The AI conversation in content marketing has become deafening — skeptics shouting from one side, shallow tips from enthusiasts on the other. But somewhere in this noise, there must be pioneers who’ve actually figured something out, right?
We’ve gone on a search for the real pioneers — the ones who’ve ventured beyond the hype to succeed (or fail) spectacularly. Through their hard-won insights, we’ll discover if there’s actually something of value hiding in the noise, or if we’re all just shouting into the void.
Check out other episodes in the season here
Links and Resources From the Episode
Brian LaManna, Nate Nasralla, and Isaiah Crossman (00:03:00): Sales experts Parthi follows for insights into the sales and RevOps space.
Letterdrop (00:05:00): Parthi’s company, which pivoted from SEO content tools to LinkedIn social selling systems.
Google Workspace (00:06:00): Formerly G Suite, a product Parthi worked on at Google.
LinkedIn (00:07:00): The platform where Letterdrop now helps companies build personal brands and relationships with prospects.
Google Search (00:10:00): Where Parthi worked as a product manager, gaining insights into how search algorithms evaluate content.
ChatGPT and Gemini (00:17:00): AI tools changing Parthi’s search behavior that led him to reconsider his business direction.
Surfer and Clearscope (00:19:00): SEO tools Parthi mentions when explaining alternative approaches to content optimization.
Clearbit and 6sense (00:20:00): Tools mentioned for identifying website visitors and connecting content to revenue.
Adam Robinson (00:23:00): Referenced as an example of someone with strong personal brand who receives high response rates.
Follow Parthi Longanathan on LinkedIn: “I’m there posting helpful, thoughtful stuff three to four times a week. At least half of it is created by Letterdrop.”
Full Episode Transcript
Parthi Longanathan: [00:00:00] I think a lot of people just misunderstand how to use LinkedIn. Like I onboard customers and they’re like, oh yeah, like my boss told me that we need to grow impressions by 20%. Who cares about growing impressions by 20%? Let’s talk pipeline. Let’s talk business. Let’s talk about meetings on your, on your team’s calendar.
Nice, and that’s what we should focus on.
Ty Magnin: Welcome to The Animals Podcast. I’m Ty Magnan, the CEO at Animals. And I’m Tim Metz, the Director of Marketing and Innovation at Animals This season on The Animals Podcast. We’re focusing entirely on AI content use cases. We’re bringing you on a search to meet the AI pioneers, those venturing beyond the hype to succeed or fail spectacularly.
Today we’re here with Parthi, the CEO at letter drop. Letter drop, if you know it from its previous instance. Was a tool focused entirely on helping content marketers and SEOs produce content. Parthi actually pivoted the whole business into something that’s focused on the LinkedIn channel, and you learn more about it in this episode.
Part’s background is [00:01:00] really interesting because he was a pm, uh, Google for many years. He focused on their search product and so he does have a perspective on search that you might value, and he shares some, some of his thinking around where it is today in the future and also why he pivoted his business towards LinkedIn.
So I hope you enjoy this episode. Did you know Animals Now offers a podcast service. We’re taking over your audience’s earbuds, reaching them during their commutes, their workouts, or when they’re doing chores around the house. From show strategy to editing and distribution, animals can handle your podcast for you.
With that same originality and audience first approach that we bring to all of our content. Every podcast episode can become fuel for your broader content program. You can mine your podcast for ideas, for articles, social posts, and other kinds of content assets helping you create more high quality work in less time.
Ready to start a podcast worth listening to? Head over to animals.co. Book a call with us and we’ll start talking about your podcasting goals. [00:02:00] One way that we actually begin all of our podcast episodes is to ask our guests. And each other, but mostly our guests. What kind of content they’ve been consuming lately?
What are you reading for work? Maybe watching.
Parthi Longanathan: Listening to, so we’ve largely been selling to sales and rev ops teams in, in the past like six months. And so, um, I’ve been really kind of like steeped in that world. So a lot of. Stuff from folks like Brian Lamana, Nate raa, our sales coach, Isaiah Crossman. Um, these are all great people, largely on LinkedIn, I’d say.
I’d say those are, those are like the sort of primary places I’m consuming. It’s a lot of LinkedIn newsletters and a little bit of YouTube. What are the big storylines happening in the rev ops space right now? I think there are a couple of, uh, changes happening there. There are two, there are two macro factors that are kind of happening at the same time right now.
One [00:03:00] is sort of end of free money and we sort of started reigning in the rampant expenditure that we were seeing back in like 20 21, 20 22. I think there is still a lot of capital injection going in the wrong places today, but it’s very concentrated. It’s not, it’s not as widespread as as it was. So that’s, that’s one macro.
Factor. The second is sort of just like AI and, and automation, which has obviously been changing things quite a bit. So I think both of those have been in play. Um, the end result of that is kind of like what you’re seeing in all industries, especially like in, in content for example. You’re seeing this as well.
Um, I think a lot of junior level roles are just being eliminated or their value question. Um, I think there is more stuff that previously needed to be done manually that is now. Automatable because it is automatable, it also becomes almost necessary. It becomes the standard and so cool, like you automated, it [00:04:00] doesn’t make you special or get you outsized results.
The window for that’s starting to close now, it’s just kind of. Mainstream, like you need to do this in order to compete. Um, so it’s not even necessarily advantages, it’s just something that everybody needs to do. And so I think for Rev ops teams, they’re really looking across their sales and marketing organizations and just trying to figure out how do we make sure that people are not doing mundane manual tasks And, um, we have all the data flowing in into the right places and people are more focused on building relationships.
And, um, I think that’s just gonna continue to be true, right? So I don’t know if Sam Altman’s claims around a GI are true or not. I’ve talked to a couple of friends who work at DeepMind in open ai and it doesn’t seem as farfetched as one would think. And so if you’re operating under the, uh, assumption that we will have something that is akin to Intel true intelligence.
A lot of knowledge work is gets automated and what we’re left with [00:05:00] is people doing business with other people and it’s gonna be very relationship heavy, which is what I think is happening in the sales world. Like relationships are the one thing that are kind of safe. Everything else is, uh, slowly being eaten away.
Ty Magnin: Maybe you can help the audience understand what letter drop is, and if you also wanna include a little bit about your background. Yeah.
Parthi Longanathan: Absolutely. Um, letter Drop has gone through many changes today. Uh, what’s working and what we’re doing really well with is we’re helping companies with social selling essentially.
So we’re helping executives, sales folks, educate buyers, build relationships with them, and then essentially look for intent data or signals that somebody might be open to a conversation might be in market so that you can. Focus your outbound efforts. So that’s what we do today. Letter Drop has gone through a many iterations over its history.
So for con some context, I used to [00:06:00] be a product manager at Google. I worked on the search team as well as on, uh, what was previously called G Suite. Now Google Workspaces actually, uh, tried to launch a net new product at Google. Google Chat was supposed to compete with Slack, didn’t really work out.
Product exists, I don’t think that many people use it. And when letter drop started out, we were really focused on SEO. I felt like I had a competitive advantage in understanding how to think about search. Um, ’cause I’ve kind of seen how the sausage was made and I think I saw a lot of bad practices out there.
Keyword stuffing stuff that you, like the folks at Animals know very well. It was not really value oriented, it was not really meant for the the searcher. And uh, so we built a platform on top of that. Had over and still do, have over a hundred customers on that platform, and were successful with that. I think last year the writing was on the wall that the future of [00:07:00] Google and SEO is going to look very different as, as you guys have probably seen as well.
Um, I’m not saying it’s going away overnight, but if you’re gonna make a future investment in something and it’s declining, that’s something you need to pay attention. We as a business, uh, sat down and we, we were like thinking, okay, like where, where are people consuming content or how are they being influenced?
How do they learn? And that sort of, at least in B2B, led us to LinkedIn. We were actually already driving a quite a bit of our own pipeline from LinkedIn. We’d gotten very good at it. And so, uh, from a software perspective, we essentially packaged our knowledge. Really thought about it holistically. How do you create this flywheel on the platform?
It’s not just randomly reaching out to people or, or like all these automation tools you see in terms of like spamming people, but really thinking about, um, how do we make everyone a little closer to like an [00:08:00] Adam Robinson, um, for example, from our B2B? Like, how do you make people educate publicly? How do you build that relationship?
How do you build that familiarity with the face and then identify. And figure out how to get that distributed and in front of as many of your ICP as possible. And then identify, okay, who’s really sort of engaging with this, who sort of actually cares about this and is maybe open to a conversation. And so that is, uh, a brief work, not so brief.
History of letter drop and how we arrived to where we are today and how we’ve sort of, kind of meandered through this, this world that’s, that’s changing very, very rapidly and I’m sure it’s gonna change again in the next couple of years.
Ty Magnin: Yeah. So interesting. Tell me, how do you think about Google search?
You mentioned that some folks are doing, you know, keyword stuffing and taking these not so best practices in order to try and win ranking positions, but. What’s your philosophy or outlook on how content marketers [00:09:00] should think about search?
Parthi Longanathan: Yeah, and I can answer this from the perspective of how Google used to work.
Um, I haven’t worked at Google since 2019 for for context, so I haven’t been there in six years, and I’m sure it’s very different now. Also, the purpose of all the content you’re putting out is not just for a Google search with blue links as it is today, but the purpose of the content you’re putting out is also for ingestion into.
Um, which is how people are increasingly started consume this information aggregated through lms. Um, whether that bechet. Meta or grok or like Gemini, like there’s a bazillion of them at this point. When I was at Google, when I was on the search team, like we didn’t actually have a lot of machine learning, but the point of search is to help the person who is searching it is how do we give them value?
How do we make sure that they can find what they’re looking for? Lots of very, very sophisticated algorithms to try to figure out like what might be relevant to that person, personalize it for them, et [00:10:00] cetera. And I think. If you leave that world and go talk to how the vast majority of people think about SEO, they’re thinking about it purely from like, oh, there’s a zero sum game.
I just want to be the top result for this search, and the way I’m gonna do that is going to be incrementally better, better in quotes than whatever’s out there today. They don’t really think about adding net new value. They don’t really think about the underlying need for the person who is searching and how to address that need in a way that people are not addressing it right now.
Your job is to try to answer the question as best as possible and give the person who’s searching their their answer. In a way that that makes you trust trustworthy and et cetera. Google’s job is to connect the two. That’s pretty much it. And your job should not be trying to reverse engineer Google constantly to figure out how to be connected.[00:11:00]
Your job is to follow their guidelines as best possible and try to add value, um, as best as you can. And so I think more people need to think about SEO and search from that lens. As opposed to what I think most people do, which is, I don’t really wanna think about this. I think SEO is this thing that’s very divorced from, from my business.
Um, it’s just a thing like I can go spend dollars on in the same way that maybe a person would spend dollars on ads. And um, and then suddenly traffic appears. You need a reason for that traffic to appear on your page. And you need to be sharing knowledge. You need to be providing value in the same way that your product needs to be providing value.
You need your content to be providing value in order to deserve that traffic. So, yeah, so that’s how I think more, more people should think about search. Now obviously that’s changing now, is that gonna be search in the future or is. T or the equivalent going to be driving that, or like even Google possibly gonna be [00:12:00] driving that traffic to you in a different uh, way possibly.
Is the type of content and how you create content and where you publish that content gonna change possibly should you still strive to provide unique value that nobody else is doing. Yes. Like that, that remains true. And I think if you can’t do that, you should really question it. Why you’re making this investment or like what you’re trying to do here.
Ty Magnin: Nice. Yeah. So much of what you said aligns to the way I’ve always thought about search, which is like on the Google side, like you have a party, right? That is trying to find the best content, right? That is trustworthy to then surface in front of certain searches. Best is relative to the person. So there’s personalization in there, et cetera.
But that means as a content marketer like. Focus on that. You know, like, let’s get back to, you know, the simplicity of the relationship that you’re trying to create, uh, and the mechanism at which you’re trying to then, you know, distribute the content through. I don’t wanna call it the dumb approach, [00:13:00] right?
But like, it’s definitely, uh, gives me a little more faith in our philosophy here at Animals, which is mostly to create great content that answers the search and the intent, uh, there and. Hope Google figures this out, right? I mean, sure we pay attention to some of the best practices too in search, but generally those are guidelines.
Parthi Longanathan: Yeah, and I think there are two elements to that. Like one element is the technical SEO type stuff, which should be standardized. You should make it easy. For Google to understand your page and and your content, and you should think about those best practices. And I think that’s the kind of stuff which should be sort of like normalized and automated.
You do it once and you never wanna think about it again. And it’s kind of a framework that’s applied across your site, across your content. And then the second element of this is the actual content, which you mentioned. And I think a lot of content marketers where they struggle. Today, and I think it comes down to the way the revenue org is built.
[00:14:00] First off, a lot of the content marketing is not seen as a part of direct. It technically sits under the revenue org, but is not directly like really seen as like a key driver of that. Even though it, it is and can be. I think a lot of CMOs and VPs of marketing don’t necessarily think of it in through the right lens, and as a result, it’s very divorced from what the buyers and customers actually care about.
Which is why you see a lot of unqualified traffic, which is why you see a lot of the content that is kind of like fluffy or doesn’t really speak to buyer needs or or understanding their problems. If I were to go and talk to the average content marketer and really dig deep about whatever problem it is their business solves, and this is not just the content marketer, this is a lot of the go-to-market team, like you’ll see like salespeople who also don’t really understand the business that they work in.
There is a very. Sort of like surface level understanding that maybe they work in a dev tool and they’re like, oh, I don’t understand this stuff. It’s like engineering or something like that. [00:15:00] I, I hate to break it to you, but you do need to understand this stuff because the consumer or your content does, and how can they get advice from somebody who doesn’t really understand it themselves?
Totally. Yeah. It makes sense. So you
Ty Magnin: mentioned part of letter drops pivot away from doing. Search oriented content or helping folks produce search oriented content has to do with the future of search. You said basically in sum that the volume of search traffic is declining and will continue to, maybe I’m extrapolating on your idea, but tell us more about how you see the future of search.
Tim Metz: What, what changed for you? Because originally that was your vision, right? So there must have been a moment or something that happened that that suddenly, or maybe not suddenly, but that convinced you like, Hey, this is not the right direction. We need to go into this other direction.
Parthi Longanathan: I think there were both external factors as were, as well as internal factors that made me make that decision.
The [00:16:00] external factors were really just demand, right? So your job as a startup founder is in some ways, like you’re trying to grow, you’re trying to create this high growth business. Um, in order to have a high growth business, there needs to be demand. And so, uh, like, like, like you can’t just build product in, in isolation, in the hope to God that somebody wants to buy it.
People buy buy things because they need to unblock internal projects. And there just wasn’t the, I saw the demand declining a straight up. Um, I think we saw it looked at past quarters and then we looked at two quarters in a row and I was just like, Hey, there’s a pattern here. Um, the demand for CMOs wanting to invest in-house, SEO PR programs.
Was declining. And so I think that was a macro trend I was seeing from external perspective. And then I think internally, this is just more so trying to. Predict the future, looking at where things are going. Chat [00:17:00] GPT had launched probably six months ago, and then it was starting to get mainstream, it starting to get better.
And then I look at my own behaviors in terms of, I still use Google, don’t get me wrong, but I also use like chat CPT or Gemini quite a bit. And I think that trend is like increasing. So I, I, I use them more like I’m seeing that Google usage, like. It used to be like 80 10, 80 20, like Google Chat, GBT, and now it’s like 50 50 and Google themselves, they’re, they’re launching shamini, they’re launching onto of these products themselves.
They, they themselves realize that they need to disrupt themselves in order to stay relevant. And so I think you look at both of those trends and you’re just like, what am I doing here? Why am I continuing to help companies try to rank on Blue Links when my own behavior is changing? People’s behavior at large is changing.
Um, the future seems to be going in this direction. I can’t force myself to be going in this direction, which no longer makes sense. The world has changed. I need to update my internal model of what the world needs and adapt [00:18:00] accordingly. And so that was really the, the crux of it. Um, it probably took like six months to come to that conclusion.
It’s not easy, um, to make these, you need much more data to get there, but then at some point you see the writing on the wall and you’re like, okay, we need to make some changes over here. Yeah. Which is fine. That’s business. That’s the world. It’s unfortunate, but it’s better to face reality and adapt as, as opposed to being stubborn and hotheaded and stick to something that’s not working
Ty Magnin: nice.
For the audience here, parti, if you don’t mind, can you help them understand what the previous version of Letter Drop was focused on? What the feature set was? Yeah, so
Parthi Longanathan: we took a look at what gets SEO to work, and part of it is maybe some like technical SEO best practices. I think the ways in which companies maybe, and I, I haven’t followed the space in, in like over a year now, so I, I, I don’t know how things have changed, but, um, surfer or clear scope, for example, we’re approaching it where it was like [00:19:00] very much about like, use the word blank, like, uh.
Process optimization seven times. Yeah. And you’re good. I more like
Ty Magnin: seven D times, but seven times
Parthi Longanathan: I was just like nowhere when I was at Google, at no point did we care about this. And so it, it was just absurd to me that this is what people were doing. Um, and so we were really focused on like information gathering.
How do we cut down the time on the research process and how do we cut down the time on the ops process to get the right information there? So how do we make it really easy for you to. Interview your like internal subject matter experts, like click on a button, it sends them something where they can just record themselves talking about something, processes the snippet, turns it into a block of text for you, uploads the snippet to YouTube so you can embed it.
That kind of workflow. How do we do research? Like, okay, here’s the top 10 pages, here’s. Not the keywords that they are mentioning frequently, but here are the ideas, concepts that they’re talking about, and here’s the information gap [00:20:00] between what you have right now versus what’s out there. And so you want some coverage like.
To, to match what they have, but you need to add net new ideas. So like, can we get you to a good baseline? And then over this, it’s kind of up to you to add ideas. We can give you some tools to help you ideate. And that’s pretty much it. So we were just approaching it from like a very wrap, like very, very different angle, just focused on search searcher value.
As opposed to just like keyword stuffing and just getting rankings and also like helping companies tie the story back and, and, and figure out, okay, how does this tie to revenue? Right? There are so many people visiting your blog, you just don’t know about them. And you can identify them with tools like Clearbit and Six Sense, et cetera, but that’s never connected back to revenue.
Um, maybe you’ll get an MQL from somebody who just like filled out a form after visiting a blog post. But the reality is the B2B journey happens over many months [00:21:00] and somebody may have visited your blog three months ago, read something, bookmark it, shared with a friend, and then that should count towards like, Hey, this informed their journey.
And so we, we can, we, we can’t, we can, and we still do help companies kind of like tell that story. So that’s what we, uh, were focused on. Still have many happy customers on that product, and I fully expect them eventually at some point in time as. Things change to eventually just be like, we’re cutting back our SEO investment.
Um, I don’t know how many years that’s gonna take, but yeah. Um, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of like how we were approaching the space and, and that problem area.
Tim Metz: How did you go from there to start building the LinkedIn growth engine? And especially because I, I’m also curious to hear how you, it sounds like you started doing that for yourself first, and then how, what did it look like?
Can you walk us through how you built that from, from scratch?
Parthi Longanathan: I mean, I think through the process of building letter drop, we just built, we have like a good engineering team. My background’s in [00:22:00] product and engineering. We’re good at building stuff straight up. And so I think if I can point us in a direction like we will, we will like very rapidly like change.
And so same principles, it’s essentially like how do we take your internal like information, subject matter experts, all that kind of stuff and turn that into content. The way, the way we distribute that content is different. It’s via LinkedIn. I think what’s different or the reason why we did this was I didn’t have a lot of confidence in like the blog.
I, I think blogs are useful, don’t get me wrong. I think for, there’s lots of like long form content that’s great. And so I think there is a place for that, but that’s not what the market wants. For better or worse, right? So I’m like, okay, like what does the market want? The market wants something that’s like easier to consume, easier to influence.
Um, I think there’s a lot of value in a face being tied to that content as well. Um, what are the faces? Which matter at a company, the executive team, anybody customer facing really, but the executive team, [00:23:00] the sales team, uh, ’cause this is the person who’s gonna be hitting up your inbox eventually asking for your time.
How do we make sure that this person is trusted? If Adam Robinson emails me, I will open the email. If John Smith, your 23-year-old SDR emails me, guess what? Like you got marked all along with 80 other emails and sent to trash. How do we make John Smith, your SDRA little, he’s not gonna be Adam Robinson, but a little bit more like Adam Robinson within his sphere of influence within his network, which is with your prospects.
So how do we get your SDR or your AE. To be at least a couple times a week, sharing something that’s thoughtful, insightful, educational. How do we make sure that, uh, the rest of your team is doing their part to distribute that essentially like your CEO might have 20,000 followers or a bigger network. How do we get them to distribute that John’s content to more of, more of that Bill Johns network help, SDR [00:24:00] or the AE do better.
Get their name seen and then tell them like, Hey, here’s a couple of people. I think maybe they visited your website. They did something that are probably worth reaching out to. Now that you’ve started building that demand, and you specifically are the person who needs to reach out to them because they’re an account that you own, and you are going to see the highest response rate from you reaching out.
As opposed to like a nameless individual. Right? And I think this is what, where a lot of a BM programs get get wrong is like you start running a lot of ads, send eBooks, do all this stuff and it’s all coming from like the company, company brand or some random person. And then port your port SCR is the one who has to reach out and they’re like, I don’t know who this person is.
Like this is not who educated me, who shared that information earlier. There’s no trust. Like there’s massive hemorrhage there and we are closing that gap. By making it easier for those individuals to be their own like [00:25:00] personal brands, build that relationship, be the distributors of this content so that they can build that trust and actually turn that into bookings.
Nice. Yeah, and then I think from our perspective also like it’s just like closer to revenue. Not that like the stuff we did earlier was any less important. It’s just that the reality of the world is. A lot of revenue leaders just think like proximity to revenue is what they pay attention to, even if that entire journey started nine months ago.
So, okay.
Ty Magnin: The components of the LinkedIn engine that you mentioned, let me see if I got them right. One, there’s like this necessity to help your subject matter experts produce content for their LinkedIn to, there’s some cross distribution and promotion. I imagine it’s like having your VP comment on the BDRs post.
In order to kind of like share that network together. Three. Then you have this like, you know, IP reveal, IP lookup thing. So when they someone hits the website, that person that might have the connection with the [00:26:00] account or at least be assigned to that account is then notified to do some outreach or maybe they’re automatically doing some outreach.
Are those the core components? What did I miss?
Parthi Longanathan: Yeah, I’d say those are core components. It’s essentially, I break it down into two parts. The first is the demand generation, which is. Creation of content, assets and distribution. And the second is the demand capture. It’s like, okay, here’s somebody who seems to be showing signals of intent.
Um, and just making sure that every SDR has like a, a name account or a book of business to, to be working on. And so that I know, so for example, if I were selling to Utah. I, I like you, you gimme so many opportunities to interact with you, engage with you online, just making sure that I’m aware of those and like taking those opportunities.
I’m getting into your orbit, I’m connecting with you. I’m posting content that you start seeing, um, when you post content. Like leave a thoughtful comment. Um, all the basics that very, very few people do, and [00:27:00] we just streamline it and make it really easy for people so that they get the alerts in Slack and say, okay, you need to do this today.
Ty Magnin: Yeah. Have you studied the kinds of posts that are performing best on LinkedIn? So here
Parthi Longanathan: is, is my take on, on how you wanna approach social media. There are two types of creators on, on social media. There’s the influencers or the people whose goal is to just build as large audiences as possible at letter drop.
We do not build for those people. They’re very good, they’re very talented. There’s a lot of craftsmanship, there’s a lot of thought that goes into that, and they’re very, and they can figure it out on their own. Our goal is to make the people who don’t, who don’t do anything, um, and get them to essentially start building trust.
Within their sphere. Sphere of influence, which is much smaller. And so I’m not gonna turn an AE into Adam Robinson, but we’re gonna a get an AE to start like sharing something and building some trust. They’re not gonna go viral, they’re not gonna have a million [00:28:00] impressions, but they’re gonna have impressions with the people who matter, which is essentially their network of people who they’re connecting with, who they eventually wanna sell to.
It’s probably like 200 accounts. Five people at each of those accounts. There’s a thousand people in their world who matter to them. How do you influence those thousand people and nobody else? At that point, you don’t really care about getting the highest juicing post for the highest performance or getting the most impressions.
What we’re focused on is how do we get this a to be helpful, educational and thoughtful so that I actually want to have a conversation with them. And the best way to do that is to essentially just. Imagine you’re speaking to your buyer, like what advice would you give them? How did you help somebody who looks exactly like them, um, on a call?
Like you’re an ae, hopefully like you have in a pipeline, but you’re probably doing 10 plus calls a week. And so we do things like hook up to your gong and pull out the insights from those calls and say like, here’s exactly something. Here’s something you said to a prospect. There’s a hundred other prospects in your [00:29:00] book of business who look exactly like them.
Every AE is probably like verticalized, like you’re selling to travel. Guess what? Like now every other travel company you’re selling to cares about the exact same problems. There’s so much content, so much education to be created from that internal conversation you’re having. Um, and we take that out and we turn it into content for you that you feel confident sharing because it came from you.
This is not something your marketing team wrote for you. That’s. Overly manicured that you feel embarrassed to post. Oh my, my, my friends are gonna think I’m weird, which is a very common I object. This is just something you said, instead of using it one-to-one, where you’re helping you say it one to many and that many is people in your network who you’ve gone and connected with, who are part of your book of business, who are now gonna be seeing this influence with this.
So that whenever they become in market, when you reach out and you’re like, oh yeah, like this part guy seems to really know my industry, know what he’s talking about. I’m going to open that email. I’m going to like read that DM and [00:30:00] actually give him a shot.
Yeah.
Parthi Longanathan: Um, and that’s all we’re trying to do and we do this education through our sales process.
I think a lot of people just misunderstand how to use LinkedIn or how. They think of it as like a social media channel where you’re just trying to like, I onboard customers and they’re like, oh yeah, like my boss told me that we need to grow impressions by 20%. Who cares about growing impressions by 20%?
Let’s talk pipeline. Let’s talk business. Let’s talk about meetings on your, on your team’s calendar. Nice. And that’s what we should focus on. Yeah. It is work. I’m not gonna lie, it is work to get people to think. In this direction about what matters?
Tim Metz: Hmm. Just observing. I, I really like how, how clear of a picture you have of like, what you wanna help your customer achieve and like, who’s not your customer.
I think that’s really nice. And you, you, you’ve really put a lot of thought in that. And the other thing I was gonna ask, but you just answered it, it’s like, when you were talking, it’s almost like you could also be describing like a training company for salespeople on LinkedIn, but, and I was gonna ask like, where does the AI come into the picture?
But then you started hitting on [00:31:00] that. It’s like, so like. Are there other parts in the process where, where AI comes in and other parts where people might not expect, where, where it’s essential that, that the human action and interaction comes into the, into the process when people use the product or in general when they’re making content and selling on LinkedIn?
Parthi Longanathan: Yeah, so I think a lot of what our AI does is it just, it pulls from internal data. So we, we index your blog. So whatever the marketing team’s putting out there, we use that to kind of understand your business and how you help customers. We index any PDFs, like video transcripts, like videos, podcasts. You can, can dump all that into letter drop.
Um, we hook up to your sales calls, customer success calls. We have an understanding of your, of what’s being asked. From your buyers over there. So we take all this information and we try to make sense of it. I think we’re expanding into doing things like industry trends as well. Anything that matters essentially, like we take this and just this, and then [00:32:00] our solution is really trying to figure out, okay, for every rep or executive, whoever’s on your team, what is the one thing you can do for within five minutes today, share.
That is going to help you build, get one step closer to building trust with your buyer. That’s the only question we ask. And how do we make that process as friction, as frictionless as possible? We want that post to be like 90% done for you. We just have all of the understanding to give you something, give you the tools to like add upon that if you want, if you have like a unique perspective that was not captured in any of your internal data, um, so that you feel comfortable posting that.
And so that’s really like where I’d say like the AI is coming in is just like understanding, digesting, understanding the individual, and then giving the two of them. Um, I think we’re like 70% there in terms of my vision for where this product needs to be. Um, but we’re already creating a lot of value on our website.
There’s a wall of posts. All of those are like 90% generated. By letter drop. Um, all of them have a [00:33:00] lot of engagement. And when I say engagement, I don’t mean just like likes, I mean like people like having conversations, starting conversations with you because that was an interesting idea. Yeah. Um, and that’s really like what we’re trying to strive for is like totally start those conversations.
Ty Magnin: Yeah. I like it. You’re not trying to gamify the LinkedIn algorithm too much. It kind of goes back to the way that you, uh, understand search of like create a conversation. Right. Start, uh, putting out some. I forget the words you used. Something that’s helpful and like interesting to your target audience. I do have an important question.
I know you want to comment on that. I’m gonna stop there though. How do you manage the variety of unique voices in a company? Say you have 20 SDRs and five executives that are all using letter drop, they each kind of sound a little different. Are you able to like just kind of blanket apply a voice and tone?
What is your thoughts around that? Have you layered anything in to let her drop for that
Parthi Longanathan: one? Most people don’t have a tone of voice. Um, I think we just realized that like, unless you’re, unless you’re Adam [00:34:00] Robinson or like you’re, even me, like unless you post a lot, unless you’re a writer in some capacity, you don’t have a tone of voice.
99% of people don’t have a tone. And so whatever you give them works is, is the reality of it. Um, the hard truth. Uh, Tim, do I have a tone of voice? Maybe I don’t. I think you do. Uh, because, uh, I guess the question is like, if I took the name off and I gave it to you, like, would you recognize it? Like pg from yc?
He has, he, he has a distinctive definitely, uh, tone. Like, I, I can read a pg SC and just be like, this is pg. It’s a lower cage too. Right. I mean, that’s a nice skill that said. The answer is like, yes, we do try to identify if there’s anything and apply that. And I think what’s easier is that we have like lots of templates, a lot of people don’t know how to write for LinkedIn and so we give them the formats and templates.
Like you need a hook, you need a CTA, you need to space out things that people can like, um, scan very easily. Um, it can’t be like a wall of text. All those basic things. Like we do have lots of templates [00:35:00] for different types of use cases like. Product launches or sharing thought leadership or a customer story, and that works really well and you can add your own.
So I can say, or even if I don’t have a tone of voice, I can say I like Adam Robinson’s. I can just like say clone, clone his. I just wanna use that format for my post. So letter drop will allow you to do that. I think the second thing is it doesn’t matter as much as you think it would because at the end of the day, like everybody, in an ideal world, every one of these people owns their own book of business.
It’s just their book of business, which is seeing stuff, even if there’s overlap, that’s great, but I don’t think a lot of people are really reading into it. We all have goldfish memory. We are, we’re not really paying attention to somebody in our feed. I think the fact that their name even pops up and says something that’s remotely valuable is good enough.
I’m not sitting down and like be like, oh, you sound a lot like this other person. Yeah, totally. And it’s not authentic because of those reasons. So yeah, it’s, it’s almost like a. [00:36:00] Like a, not a real problem.
Ty Magnin: It’s so funny. I kind of, I like begrudgingly agree with you, right? Like so much of marketing is just you being like, Hey, still here.
You know, don’t forget about me. Right? And does every exchange have to be extremely valuable? I mean, that’s a t, that’s like a strategy you could try, but from my experience, no. Tim, you are locked and loaded on. One more question from Parthi. I can tell.
Tim Metz: I think if you, you know, if you look at all this, where is it going?
Like, and what, and what do you think, and, and I think specifically, which marketing or content marketing practices do you think are gonna be obsolete one year from now?
Parthi Longanathan: I think that’s a multilayered question, because I think there, there’s a, there’s a genuine question about like, the future of knowledge work.
Like Yeah, that’s one step higher.
Tim Metz: Yeah. Yeah.
Parthi Longanathan: That’s one step higher. And I, I, I almost pretend like I don’t want to think about it because I don’t have a solution to it. If someone told you the singularity is happening, like, what do you wanna do about [00:37:00] it? You’re just like, well, I can either, either I, I thought about this myself.
I’m like, either I go contribute to it, like I quit my job and like go work at a research lab and, and help it happen. Or I just continue doing whatever I like and I’m passionate about helping like people today. And then when it happens, it happens and the world’s gonna change quite drastically. Um, so I think that’s like the meta level question.
I don’t know if that’s two years out, five years out or 10 years out. It does seem like today based on my conversations with people who are very deep, because I was in San Francisco for eight years deep, like a lot of these people are my friends and I talk to them. And from what I’ve seen and heard, it doesn’t seem farfetched.
That’s gonna happen eventually. Let’s remove that out of the picture ’cause that, that, that, just like everybody who sits at a computer like. They have questions. Now let’s bring it down to just like short term, like content marketing. Um, to answer your question very directly, successful content marketers will really nail a couple of things.
A, they will actually truly understand [00:38:00] their business if you do not understand your business and who you sell to, why they buy, what are their problems? If you’re not a person who can credibly give them advice or at least wrap your head around like interviewing the right people to give them advice, you probably don’t have a place in that organization.
You’re probably not doing your job great. The tactics I’d say like matter to a certain degree, but they certainly matter less. I. I think there are lots of solutions and third parties and agencies and vendors who can help you with the tactics. I think your job as a content marketer is really to understand like the internals of your business, an increasing percentage of content, like who it comes from matters as opposed to it just being like great content in the void.
I think great content with like research and, and all that stuff can stand on its own, but I think slightly less great content. But coming from people who are going to actually build those relationships is actually like fairly valuable. And so I, I think I’d be paying attention [00:39:00] on, uh, with that. I would be like, how do I stand up content programs which feature my CEO and my sellers and my executives, and how do I or our subject matter experts within the organization, how do we help them educate and tell their stories is where I’d be focusing a good chunk of my energy.
Then distribution, all the channels still matter. Like even SEO like still matters a ton. And, uh, you should pick the channels, uh, which matter to your industry. I would focus on getting really good at one of them before you keep layering on others.
Ty Magnin: Well, I really like where your head’s at, uh, with what you’re building with letter drop.
Right? When you look at these two important macro trends of personalities becoming important and relationships becoming more important. Search potentially becoming less of a part of the mix. Maybe it’s still a great channel, but it’s certainly gonna decline further from where we’re today. So I, I’m, I’m long on letter drop and, uh, thanks for taking time, chatting with us today.
I learned quite a [00:40:00] bit. Last question. Where should
Tim Metz: people follow you? LinkedIn. Any, anywhere else? Yeah.
Parthi Longanathan: LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah, just search Arthy. P-A-R-T-H-I. Space letter drop. My last name’s really hard. Um, and you’ll probably find me on LinkedIn. Give me a follow. Um, I’m, I’m there posting helpful, thoughtful stuff.
Three to four times, uh, a week. At least half of it is created by a letter drop. You wanna see it? You wanna see, see, see me eating my own dog food? You’ll find me there. Awesome. That’s great. Thanks
Ty Magnin: again. Well, what so am I, I don’t mean this in a negative way, like nothing parthi shared with us was surprising.
However, you know, like the whole like, okay, search is declining, so we pivoted letter drop for being a search focused tool to a LinkedIn focused tool. Like we’re gonna spend time helping people build up their personal brand and connect that back to sales. That makes sense. When you zoom out and look at the macros, what’s impressive is like the fact that he is doing something [00:41:00] about it, like the fact that he pivoted this business that was showing signs of success, right?
Like had traction a hundred customers, people were talking about letter drop in this way and decided like, eh, this isn’t where the future is. I’m gonna pivot the whole business. But I think content marketers, marketing programs like. Maybe they don’t need to take as hard of a pivot, but there is some change that I hope they’re inspired to make.
I’m inspired in that way today.
Tim Metz: No, absolutely. When he was describing the first product, I, I, I kind of thought, it sounds kind of handy to me, so that’s why we get that. Is my head in the wrong place or not? I was like, this sounds like a pretty cool product to me. I mean, as I said, injury, I was also really impressed with how he, how, how he could talk about like, you know, he knows, he knows very clearly who he’s going after and who he’s not going after, which I think is super important and not everybody has such a clear picture.
I think what he’s also right about is like quite literally, I think like what remains are the human relationships, right? It’s like no matter what’s gonna change in the end, there’s somewhere gonna still [00:42:00] be humans who need to make a final deal at least, or decision.
Ty Magnin: Definitely. One thing I actually disagree with, I mean, I think he’s helping people go from zero to one on social.
To go from not posting anything to having some regular cadence of it, which is great. Like there’s so much value in zero to one. I think SDRs like, I think like anybody can have great content in virality and that would be a huge tailwind for their personal commission checks. Right. And also for the business, for me, there’s still something interesting about exploring, like really well written.
Crafted LinkedIn content that does understand the algorithm. It does understand what people want to see there. That can actually take off. And helped you win over a larger audience over time.
Tim Metz: Yeah, absolutely. And and it’s also like, well if you think it through, like if, if every person, if, if everybody goes from zero to one, how are you gonna stand out?
Right? Because then, then that’s, then that’s the, the baseline, right? So if everybody just has like decent LinkedIn post, then you’re still gonna have to do [00:43:00] something different. Yeah. Do it better.
Ty Magnin: Alright, well thanks all for listening. Uh, we’re gonna wrap it here and we’ll see you again soon with another episode of The Animals Podcast.
