Shownotes
In a recent live broadcast across Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, we were introduced to Dennis and Elena, the co-founders of Twinbox, an innovative platform designed to help podcasters and content creators monetize their content and engage with super fans. In this discussion, they shared the powerful features and benefits of Twinbox and how it is revolutionizing the way podcasters interact with their audience. Let's dive into the key takeaways.
What is Twinbox?
Twinbox is a tool that allows podcasters and experts to engage with their audience in a more interactive and monetizable way. It helps podcasters provide instant answers to their listeners' questions through contextual AI conversations, transforming passive content consumption into active participation. With Twinbox, content creators can upsell premium services and products directly to their most engaged fans, providing a seamless, non-intrusive way to monetize their audience.
Who Can Benefit from Twinbox?
While Twinbox is particularly useful for podcasters, it’s not limited to audio content. Anyone with educational content, whether through blogs, newsletters, YouTube channels, or other platforms, can benefit. For example, a wellness coach with a podcast could use Twinbox to interact with their audience, answer questions about specific episodes, and upsell premium services or products.
The ideal user is someone who has educational or expert content that fans frequently return to for more information. Twinbox can help streamline their interactions with listeners or readers, providing quick answers and recommending relevant premium content.
How Does Twinbox Work?
Twinbox integrates easily with a content creator's website. A widget is placed on the site, allowing users to type in questions related to the content. The AI-powered tool searches through the content’s knowledge base—including transcriptions of podcasts, blog articles, or other relevant materials—and delivers the most accurate response.
For example, if a podcast listener wants to know more about a specific topic discussed in an episode, they can simply type their question into the Twinbox widget. Not only will they receive an answer, but they may also be directed to additional resources like books, courses, or one-on-one coaching services offered by the podcaster.
Driving Traffic from Platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts
A common challenge for podcasters is getting listeners from audio platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts to visit their website. Twinbox addresses this by encouraging podcasters to mention the tool in pre-roll ads, newsletters, and other promotional materials. Listeners are encouraged to visit the podcaster’s website to engage with Twinbox and find additional content or answers to their questions.
Intelligent Upselling
One of the standout features of Twinbox is its ability to intelligently upsell products and services. Initially, podcasters could set up ads for specific products within Twinbox. However, the platform is evolving to provide even more personalized upsells. Twinbox’s AI analyzes the questions being asked by users and offers products or services that directly relate to their queries. For instance, if a listener asks about improving sleep and the podcaster offers a premium program on sleep improvement, Twinbox will automatically suggest the relevant product.
This real-time, context-based upselling provides a more natural and non-intrusive experience for the audience, increasing conversion rates without appearing like a traditional advertisement.
Customization and Analytics
Twinbox provides extensive customization options, allowing content creators to tailor the widget to match their website’s branding. Additionally, creators can view all the interactions that have taken place, helping them understand their audience’s needs and interests. This feedback loop enables podcasters to refine their content strategy and develop future content that resonates with their audience.
Beyond Podcasts: Flexibility Across Platforms
While Twinbox is initially designed with podcasters in mind, it’s adaptable to other content forms as well. It can be used with YouTube channels, newsletters, and even educational platforms like online courses. Twinbox’s versatility allows it to become a central hub for any content creator looking to engage more deeply with their audience.
Building Community with Twinbox
Another exciting feature that Dennis and Elena discussed is Twinbox’s ability to enhance community engagement. By allowing fans to subscribe to updates and receive notifications about specific topics, Twinbox helps content creators build a more personalized connection with their audience. Fans can opt to receive notifications about new content that specifically interests them, ensuring they stay engaged without being overwhelmed by irrelevant information.
The Future of Twinbox
Since launching in early 2023, Twinbox has grown steadily. Dennis and Elena emphasized that they’re continuously optimizing the platform based on user feedback. Their vision is to make Twinbox the go-to tool for content creators who want to engage more deeply with their fans while monetizing their premium content effectively.
Twinbox is a Game-Changer for Podcasters and Content Creators
Twinbox offers a unique solution to the challenges content creators face in engaging and monetizing their audience. Its intelligent AI-powered interactions allow for a more personalized, user-friendly experience while offering new ways to upsell products and services. Whether you’re a podcaster, YouTuber, or blogger, Twinbox can help turn your audience into super fans and increase your revenue streams.
If you're a content creator looking to take your engagement and monetization to the next level, consider giving Twinbox a try. You can learn more and sign up at twinbox.ai.
You can contact Denis on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisbelyavsky/ and learn more about twinbox at https://twinbox.ai
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcripts
Audio file
Denis & Anisa podcast.mp3
Transcript
::Hi and welcome. I am excited to share with you.
::Dennis and Elena from twins box, dot, IA. They are here to join me on a live on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
::Welcome to the show.
::I'm I was telling people over on LinkedIn and on YouTube all about the exciting things that you're going to be sharing with us as far as twin box goes because it's such a phenomenal tool for people who are.
::Have a lot of content or are hosting a podcast and they're trying to monetize it. And so I'm really excited to hear you talk about all of the bits and pieces. So welcome and thank you for joining me.
::Thank you. Excited to be here. Yeah, we are to cofounder, set spinbox. My name is Dennis. Adam is with us. We are actually a married couple. They say that it is really difficult to run a business when you are married. But we are somehow.
::Managing that, we have a very long history working in tech and tech startups and it's about a year ago last we decided to start our own venture. We called it twin box and basically we help, we help podcasts, super fans.
::Learn more about their favorite experts and to help experts to monetize their super fans to sell them to their premium content and services through contextual AI conversations. So that's that's what we do at winbox and we love it.
::That is awesome.
::So.
::When you're talking about Super fans, how, what kind of?
::What kind of?
::Platforms are you mainly using this this application?
::For.
::Right. Like when am I talking about superfriends?
::Probably it's a good, good time to talk about our. I see our ideal customer, right, so that we can really understand who this solution is for and for me it is really important to to be very specific about our our you know ideal customers since we really want them to get value from twin box. And for us the ideal customer.
::Is a broadcaster.
::Actually, even an expert with the podcasts that's is used as a kind of marketing funnel to bring more customers to their premium services and programs. So let's say you are a Wellness coach and you have a new podcast, you have 20 episodes and you have a website where you store maybe your blog post or maybe you have a newsletter.
::Maybe you have some premium program for your Members, so you want to attract your customers to your website so that you can upsell your premium there.
::And twin box is basically a really good hook for your fans to have a reason to come there have a reason to, you know, spend some time on your website, ask any questions about your content, get instant answers and meanwhile we upsell your premium to your super fans for right now, interacting with twin box on your website.
::Suggesting them something relevant from your, from your programs or services or whatever, you know, AIDS things you have.
::And I I guess I should also mention that we work mostly with experts who have more educational content, not for example news or some entertainment shows just because the listeners who consume educational content.
::They are more opt to return to it to search for answers, to ask different questions. They want to learn more and to get more information. That's why this communication starts happening.
::So explain to me because I'm a little fuzzy on how do your.
::So let me let me back up a little bit because my understanding of how podcasting works is that people will come in and they'll find you maybe on Apple or on Spotify and.
::From there, how do you get?
::Them to your website.
::Yeah, that's a good. That's a really good question and we are helping a lot our existing clients with that. Since you know like first of all, they have to know that there is such a thing like twin box, right. They have to understand the value they can get from twin box and they have to know where to find it. So most of our our existing clients.
::They use their newsletters and pre rolls to attract more eyeballs to to their websites and explain what is to inbox and how.
::Find it. So basically you are a listener. You're uh, you're, you know, you're listening some podcast episodes and they're our hosts. They mentioned that, you know, if you have a question about where did I talk about X or if you would like to, you know, get a quick summary of these episodes before you listen to it, you can come to our website.
::You can find this search bar of twin box widget there and ask any question and it will answer answer you like I would if you are talking to me directly.
::Even better? Really because.
::It's able to go through so much content so quickly and it can give you a whole transcript of whatever podcast episode you're you're looking at, which was really impressive to me. I when I saw that it was just like, Oh yeah, I I've got to bring these people on.
::Issue.
::That's do. Does the content have to be on the web?
::Yeah.
::Site in order for twin box to work like do they have to post all of their episodes on their website so that twin box can find it or can it go out to ancillary places and and scrape that information from there?
::Yeah, the content doesn't have to be on the website, so we basically work with different platforms.
::You can get the content from different platforms, whether it's Apple Podcasts or it's YouTube or it's RSS feeds. So we do all the transcriptions and we import them. This text versions of the content into that Winbox knowledge base. And it's not only about the podcast, we can do the same with.
::Blog articles or newsletters or any promotional even information that you do have on your website so we can work with this data as well. So.
::So somebody doesn't necessarily have to have a podcast. Maybe they have like a YouTube channel that's really got tons of content on it. Can you pull from there also?
::Yeah, that. That's right. Mm-hmm.
::Yeah, like the.
::The reason why we focus on podcaster is like uh folks who have a podcast is that it is, you know, the the whole idea of doing books. It appears when one of our mentors at that moment.
::More than a year ago, bit more. He's pretty successful podcaster, he is an expert, he helps founders to start their venture and he once mentioned that he is experiencing like lots of issues with answering repetitive questions to his listeners. You know, like when they are asking him like would you help us to find the episodes?
::About that topic and he got no idea where did he talk about that. Right. Like he has more than 300 episodes and there is no quick way for him to search through this whole, you know, files of.
::Of episodes and he needed something that would help him with that. So it was our, you know, building block and understanding this whole issue. First, podcasters and experts, they have to help their audience to get value and then upsell to them. So that was the moment when we decided it's OK we will first focus on those who have.
::Broadcast. But then during our iterations when we were optimizing our product.
::We figured out that like in reality, we do not need a podcast to create your knowledge base, right? Like we can work with any type of of content you have, whether you are a successful you know, newsletter owner. Maybe you have, you know, thousands of subscribers to to your newsletter and you didn't yet start working on your podcast. We can.
::Also aggregates all these pieces of your newsletter and it will be your knowledge base. We will use it to generate answers to your users and help you upsell.
::Oh, I just thought of something that might help you, but.
::Have you heard of school yet?
::That's how it works.
::Have you heard of the platform? School S K0L 0K. And you know how her mozzie's gotten behind it? And.
::Yep.
::Evans is he's the founder of it and how it's really kind of growing and their their whole goal is to get people to put a lot of content on there. And while they do have a good.
::A good mechanism for gamifying the platform, which is their goal, to get people to interact and they have a really good communication. But people are trying to get people to get into memberships over there and for that you almost have to have a separate website.
::And funnel.
::And.
::So I I think that might be. So there's some of those people over there that are really working hard to build some huge.
::Communities over there. That might be a a place for you to to look also.
::Yeah, definitely. Thanks a lot for this suggestion. And an interesting thing is that we are already working with several clients who have the premium program and so they are using twin box as a tool to retain.
::Their existing premium members. So let's say you already subscribed to a program that's uh, I don't know, helps you to to get better sleep, for example, right. And so there are tons of sections within this program and it is really difficult for you to jump across all this stuff like it is, you know, like people are often.
::Stuck somewhere in that program and they need some kind of a helper right? In this case I helper that will unblock them and will make the whole experience.
::Smoother. So that's where twin box could also help. So it is not specifically for generic public that comes to your website. It can be used as any type of you know assistance that might help those who use your contents to do it just more efficiently and and quickly.
::I.
::My brain is.
::Just like so, how long has this been out?
::I I don't know when did we launch. I guess it was the beginning of the.
::Year right. In February. Yeah, since February.
::Yeah, we we got our first paying customer in February. We've been running lots of tests before that and in February we decided that OK, we're ready to go live and we had some pretty long.
::Line of of people in our wait list and we decided to to do it in like on a cohort base since we like.
::Mostly we were interested and we are still interested in getting enough feedback from our customers, right. Since we definitely have a long way before us, we are optimizing all the time. We're, you know, making constant improvements since the technology that is that ours. Our our solution is obvious to generative AI, it is you know.
::Lots of things are are.
::Are getting clarified on on our way. So we we started in February and now we are growing with a really good month over month rates.
::That's awesome. Would you like to to try to do a demonstration?
::Absolutely.
::OK, so do you have present options on your screen? So if you want to click the present and you can do you can share your screen and and do a demonstration.
::Of how it works. Would that work? Sure. OK.
::First time on.
::This platform.
::OK, this screen.
::I'm not entirely.
::OK.
::OK.
::Can can you see my screen?
::I can see your screen.
::Hi, Dave.
::OK, cool. Yeah, so.
::This is the admin panel or the dashboard of one of our clients, so I will just quickly explain what you see here right now you see the knowledge base of twin box. Basically all the content that.
::The client wanted to upload into the knowledge base right now. Here she has all her podcast transcribed as well as I think she has a.
::Book. Here are some chapters from the book as well as a few blog articles. So what happens next? Is she integrated a small widget into her website. That's her website and you can see this bar at the bottom of the screen. This is the Slingbox widget.
::So right now, her listeners or her readers or her clients whenever they come to the website, they are able to get here and ask her any.
::She is able to predefine some popular questions like for instance. She often gets questions emailed to her about different mistakes in speaking because she is speaking coach. So different things about this topic. So she is already she already knows.
::What people ask, and she defines it as popular questions, but you are also able to ask anything that comes to your mind like the custom question that you want to learn from this podcaster.
::So if you do ask a question, then we do search through all the knowledge base that she has uploaded into the twin box and we provide the best answer and with the resources to dive deeper into this topic. And meanwhile you can see.
::What happens here is she had a few upsells set up. So when people start asking questions, she directs them to the relevant.
::Materials that she has like for example, right here after this answer she is offering a book about fear of speaking. Sorry, she offers to book a call to provide one-on-one session to get over this year.
::So can I ask a question at?
::This point does the.
::AI actually decide what is the best upsell or does is this predetermined before?
::Yeah, that's also a really good one. So first, our first iteration with Upsala.
::Could you please mute?
::Thank you. Yeah, I was saying that's our first iteration of app sales was pretty straightforward. So the podcasters were able to create app sales like, you know, advertisements in their dashboards and decide when they are going to show these ads to their listeners who are talking to their.
::Inbox, but right now we are releasing the next version that will be intelligently understands what the user is interested in within this conversation. So we are analyzing the questions from that users and then we are also scanning the premium base of that client, understanding whether there is anything in the premium content.
::That can be suggested to that listener at this very moment that is very relevant to this very topic they're talking about, right? So if, for example, again my sample with the Wellness Coach, if there is your friend who came to your website and asks about, like, how can I sleep better?
::And there is a premium program to, you know, improve your sleep, but then we will generate this upsell on the fly and show it to the listener. So that to catch them at this very, you know, moments of their top interest about this topic. So the conversion rate in this case is dramatically.
::High and we want to make it not so frustrating to the fans to see this, you know, repetitive ads again and again. Like you see it in in Google or or other platforms.
::It looks like it's.
::It doesn't look like an ad. Let me put it that way. It it just looks like it's part of the content and it makes perfect sense in relation to the information that you've just delivered. So in that way, I think it's really nice.
::Yeah.
::And do you tailor the the colors to the?
::The website or do you?
::Yeah, we provide a lot of customization options so that the widget will be able to match your branch basically.
::Yeah, that was the question I was asking.
::What's?
::Yeah. Thank you for catching it.
::The other very I guess useful thing is that you are actually able to view all the conversations that happened with your digital train, review the questions and the answers that we have provided and in this way you can keep track of two things. The 1st is.
::What's what's on the mind of your fans, of your listeners, of your readers, what they are interested in so that you could strategize about your?
::Next steps what you have to come up with in terms of content. And the second thing is you can check what the your digital twin answers so that you are sure that all the answers are correct and in case you don't like some information that is provided to your listeners, you are quickly able to correct it.
::And upload to the correct the correct information.
::Oh, I love that. Are you able to capture emails or names? Or is this all anonymous?
::So just yesterday, yes, just yesterday we released the feature where your fans and listeners will be able to sign up and.
::Subscribe to your updates. So for instance, let's say you are interested in one of the topics that we in. The usually speaks about, so you are able to subscribe to notifications to get updates when she has new content about this topic exactly.
::So in this way you don't get spent and you get on identifications on things that really interest you and at the same time, we ask you to leave your e-mail. So in this way you become kind of elite for the podcast as well.
::Right. But it also helps the podcaster.
::Or whoever the content.
::There is tailor their content more towards the questions that they're being asked more frequent frequently and then decide how their content is going to be. It's more consumer based content driven rather than whatever they feel like talking about.
::Right. Yeah, yeah.
::Give some a lot of information.
::Then.
::And what when we've been designing these, uh, these two uh, we also did tons of interviews with podcast listeners since we really want to to understand whether they will use it right. I mean it's without them using twin box, it doesn't make any sense for podcasters since there will be nobody to upsell to. So one of the things they they wanted.
::To to be able to do is to get this hyper personalized.
::Approach. Since you know for example, I personally I'm subscribed to. I don't know, maybe several dozens of podcasters and I'm just not able to review all of their podcasts since there's so much information. So they want, I mean, the fans. They want to be able to tackle those specific topics in each of their.
::In each of the contents of their favorite podcasters. That is really relevant to that. What they're interested in right now. So for example, I as a as a a startup founder right now, maybe I'm interested in improving the onboarding process of my new users, right. And I want only this thing.
::Two consumed during next week, so this is a way for me to, you know, avoid distractions and irrelevant content and be subscribed only to the things that matters.
::Yeah, I love that and.
::It's just podcasting is becoming like blogging was maybe 10/15/20 years ago where people were putting out a lot of content and it with a website there was the search bar and so it was a little bit easier. But with podcasts, it's you can't just like scan it.
::Even if you've got transcripts, it's really difficult.
::To just like.
::Or even even if it is a summary, it is still, you know, you have to spend some time to understand whether there is something in this episode that you want to listen about and you don't want to spend an hour just for the sake of listening to something.
::You should be really.
::Sure that it is worth it.
::Right, right. And I think I really think this has a lot of application over on on videos as well. The long content videos out there that show you how to do things and.
::You know there's.
::YouTube is like full of of information and you you can subscribe to certain channels where you're really interested, not just in being entertained, but being educated and having this kind of a tool to just.
::Go through some of those.
::Some of those channels have.
::Massive amounts of content over there and.
::To be able to go.
::Through that content and find what specifically you're looking for. The answer to? It's like priceless to me.
::Yeah, exactly agree with everything.
::So how do people find you, and how do they?
::Work with you. How? How does all that work?
::Yeah. So basically the twin box is by its nature very viral, right? I mean, podcasters, they put it in their newsletters. Other podcasters see these newsletters. They, you know, get to know about it. They come to us. Plus we do just founder, let's outreach in LinkedIn, mainly since the the main platform.
::Now.
::Their, you know, kinds of a watering hole for for our ICP is LinkedIn. They love it, they use it extensively. So we are connecting with them there. We try to explain the value on the fly. Obviously we are super interested in jumping on calls with them since that's where the magic happens since as I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, we are.
::Very honest about whether it will work for you or not, since we do not want you to use something and the special to pay for something.
::That won't work. So we are trying to understand together with our, with our prospects like whether it is for them or not. And yeah, then from time to time we are offering like some special promotions like you know expressions or during ex months or or whatever.
::Yeah, that's that's our approach. And we're still growing. We're still very young. And yeah, I think happy to talk with anyone who is.
::Interested to learn.
::I I think this is really cutting edge and I really appreciate you coming on and sharing what you've got going on and.
::I I can see big things for this. It's really you're. You're right at the very beginning stages of reaching.
::People that it's going to just help so many people. And Speaking of helping so many people.
::I thought that.
::I saw somewhere along the line that you actually help podcasters or people that become your clients.
::Umm.
::Make it so that this really does help them rather than just like you know, put it on your website and good luck with that.
::Yeah, that that's actually really important since there are, like so many people who are doing AI for the sake of AI just because it is high, you know, it's so cool to have something AI ish in your business. And given that we are ourselves like technical guys, we we know that you know, AI is not a civil bullet silver bullet.
::That's all. Uh, often it's uh, it makes things worse and you should be very uh, you know, laser focused about like why do you need it? So with our solution we we try to make it useful and you know just understanding the the core key issues like monetization you know understanding customers, understanding listeners.
::Better, that's how. What helps us to to focus our our efforts and to prioritize those features that really deliver some value to our users.
::Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. How do people get in touch with you if they want to reach out and?
::Yeah, we're absolutely we're super responsive in LinkedIn. Probably you can somehow put our LinkedIn profiles. I don't know in the comments or whatever, and twin box dot AI, that's our website, it's easy to find. So like either e-mail us.
::Like this?
::Or or drop us a message on LinkedIn and we will be super happy.
::To talk.
::Awesome. Thanks again so much for joining me.
::Thanks so much. You're inviting very excited.
