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When you think about creator tools, do you immediately picture tripods, microphones and lights? Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy. Today I want to talk about different types of creator tools and the ones that I'm using. I'm going to share some of the insights I've had from my experience using some of these tools. And when I say tools, I mean apps that we use to schedule content.
Helen:The link in the profile, what are we using for that? Potentially auto answering your DMs, are you using something for that? I really wanna break down three categories and I'm gonna share which tool I use now because I have been through an evolution on a lot of my different tools that I've used through the years. So I really want to share my learnings on how I landed with the ones that I am using now so that you can decide is the one that you're using doing what you need or have you just not really thought about it. Alright.
Helen:So let's just start with the Stan store. And that means the link in the profile. Because if you have a link in your profile on TikTok and then it leads to other links and the same thing on Instagram and it leads to other links, This is a really good place to get people right away, to get them interested in what you have to offer depending on if you're doing a course or coaching or you just have digital products or whatever. And I have been through, I think I used to use that one, what was the the one that everybody was using? Linktree.
Helen:I was using that for the longest time because I just didn't really wanna think about it. I didn't wanna worry about it. And at that point, I think I wasn't really even selling anything in my Stance store. At one point, I had a TikTok course. I forget even how I had the payment attached.
Helen:But when I think about it now, I'm so annoyed that I wasn't in the Stan store sooner. The reason being, it makes it more streamlined. And it's also a link that doesn't require when you're a person that's watching your videos, they go to your link in the profile and they tap on the link. In TikTok, a lot of times it will say copy and paste this link into your browser because it won't open up directly. And that right away is going to lose someone.
Helen:You've just lost a percentage of sales or interest because even me knowing quickly how to copy and paste all of you know, I know how that works. I will, when I see that, I just skip it. I don't bother going to the link because now I have to do an extra step and I gotta get to the link and then maybe it's their website and da da da da. It's just, to me, the process, every time you ask someone to do another click, you are losing a percentage of people. This is factual.
Helen:It's also the same on that's why TikTok shop is so popular and that's why brands, if they're not gonna have success if they don't have that shop right link right in their in their on the screen because it is proven just like why live sales work best. When you can click right in the moment and make that purchase and there's no barrier, you have a higher chance of making that sale. So for the people who are selling digital products, if you're using any of these other, apps where you have to click and especially on TikTok and you get that little warning, copy and paste this link into a browser, this is an outside website, you've probably lost a percentage. I'm not gonna guess at the percentage, you've lost a percentage of customers without a doubt. So that's why I like the Stance Store.
Helen:As soon as you tap on it, it takes you right to the store. As soon as you tap on the thing, the payment system is already attached so you don't have to have a a flow of like, oh, first they book, then they have to go to another link to pay. It's so streamlined. So I hate to be like a seller for the Stan store, but I have to be because it is so good. It's my favorite thing.
Helen:And I'm just so annoyed that I didn't have it sooner. There are other options. I guess you can use Kajabi, something like similar, Gumroad. But I'm from what I've done on the research, there's it's a little bit more of a learning curve on those where StanStore is very user friendly, very easy and goodness, you can easily customize something in and out day to day if you want to change something suddenly or add something suddenly, it's just so easy to work with. So it's best for creators who want that one link without it being without having to hire help to do it and without it being now a process for the person who clicks that they have to go somewhere else and they have to copy a link.
Helen:It just really it will stop people from getting to the end of the road. So I I really, really like the Stan store. Now, let's move on to the next topic, which is, I'm gonna talk about the email list for a minute because I've gone through I didn't even mention this in the intro, but we've gone through Mailchimp, then we went to Beehive, and then we went to Substack, and then there's some limitations on Substack which made me think, oh, should I have also a a mail should I go back to Mailchimp and have Mailchimp again for certain uses? Because they all have pluses and minuses. And those those platforms, they go based on how many emails are you have and that that's what the rate is for the month.
Helen:So it they charge you in that way, whereas Substack is free. But Substack, since that one is more like a social media app as well as an email list, it doesn't give you those audience segmentation things, those tools within it. So if that's something that's really important to you, you might want to do a deep dive on Substack before you go down that path. Because I really wanted to have a certain group as a separate email list and what Julie and I came up with is, oh gosh, maybe we have to go back and do a Mailchimp. So anyway, just know that about the email platforms that you might want to just make sure when you're doing your deep dive and you're picking a mail program to gather your emails, just make sure it's one that you can segment your lists and have different categories of people in the list so that you can target some of your newsletters correctly.
Helen:Alright. The next thing I want to cover is the automations of posting because now I've never used a scheduling app and there's lots of scheduling apps, you know. I've got you've got Sprout, you've got oh my god, Hootsuite. I don't know, there's a lot of them. Alright, I'm not even going to go and list all of them.
Helen:You can you can do that yourself. I have landed on repurpose.io and I want to spend a few minutes talking about this one in particular because I want anybody who's considering it, it's not cheap, it's 30 something a month, I think it's $30 a month, anyone who's considering it needs to know the downside of the discoveries that I've made at using it. And the upside's great. You put it you post you choose where you're gonna post, and then you choose your automations. You can have going YouTube.
Helen:Sorry. You can go have going TikTok to YouTube, TikTok to Instagram, TikTok to Facebook, TikTok to Pinterest. I don't even know. There's a bunch of other choices. So you can have TikTok firing things out, which is great if that's your lead.
Helen:You can do the same thing. You can have Instagram post there, and then it's gonna go to TikTok. Post there, it's gonna go to so you can decide where your beginning is and then where it's farming to. But here is what I have learned that I think everyone needs to know about repurpose. When the automations go, they don't take with them the tags.
Helen:So if you tag someone, it's not going to actually be they're not going to be tagged on Instagram automatically. You then have to go into the Instagram, tap on edit on the reel, then you have to manually tag them or manually add them as a collaborator. And that has to be done by post by post. On the upside, it's automated, so everything just goes quickly, so your caption goes and all of the things go automatically. But then you have to remember, and I just do this like on a daily basis, I go in at night and I check my Instagram and I'm like, oh, let me make sure the tag is is edited and I make sure the tag is there.
Helen:I make sure the cover thumbnail is edited. You have to edit the cover thumbnail if you want your Instagram to look nice. You know what I mean? It doesn't take certain things with. It takes the bulk of the content goes, the music is not a problem, the audio goes nicely.
Helen:That's a smooth seamless process, but there are things that don't work perfectly. So you need to know that if you're going to spend the money. You need to know, okay, it's still a little bit of work. You still have to go and check and manually tag and do all of those things. The other thing that I noticed, and no one's even talking about this, okay, is that when you do an automation from repurpose to Facebook, it will only go to a business page.
Helen:So I can't have my repurpose do an automation to my personal Facebook page. It has to be a business Facebook page. And to me that's a little bit annoying because I want some of my videos to go to my personal page and other ones to go to my business page. I know that also I have to add this, if you have an automation on your Instagram to post directly to Facebook, that is now overridden by the repurpose app. So that automation is no longer going to hold true.
Helen:It's going to post from TikTok and Instagram but it's not going to then go from Instagram to Facebook. You get it? So there are limitations and you have to weigh it. Like is it worth it to have the automation happen or is it better to manually post so that you're controlling all the things one and done each time? And I have assessed at this point, for me, I guess it works to just have the automation happen because by the time I remember, oh my gosh, I never posted a video, if it's posted already, even if it's not with the tag correctly and it's there for three days and I'm like, shoot, I never went and put the and tagged the people, I can then go back even if it's two days later.
Helen:But if I forgot to post altogether, I wouldn't have gotten the content out. So I guess weighing it out for me, I opted for having it happen more timely and more quickly and then I'll catch up when it comes to making the edits and tagging the people properly and doing all those other things. This is just like, I know this is where in the weeds a lot, but I do think these creator tools are things that we as creators depend on and not a lot of people are talking about the pros and the cons and the reality of working with some of them. Because the reality is, yeah, all looks good until, like, you post and then I'm like, oh my gosh, it didn't go to Facebook. It was automated from Instagram to Facebook, so I figured out that that's turned off now.
Helen:Or like, oh my god, it didn't tag those people and that was a brand. I I wanted them to see this video. Those are the types of things that you have to be aware of. You think repurpose, oh yay, I'm paying for it, it's going to solve all my problems. No.
Helen:It's not going to solve all your problems. It's going to leave a few of them where you have to just make little, accommodations, let's just say. Okay? So that's that about that. Another automation, this isn't high on the list but it's one I use a lot, but it's not high on the list for a lot of people.
Helen:But for me Zapier is really helpful because it gets people onto my email list. It zaps people onto my email list. There are so many automations that I have set up in Zapier, I don't even remember what they are at this point. But it's when, let's say somebody joins one of my free workshops on Zoom, it zaps their email to my email list. So there are so many uses for the platform Zapier.
Helen:And I'll just let you look into that for yourself because it really does require somebody to set it up, understanding where are the emails, like what 's triggering the in and where is it going. But it's a useful tool if you have products and things that you're offering that aren't that you want to collect the emails on and not have to manually add them to your email list. So that's a useful tool. Let's see. What's the last one I wanna talk about today?
Helen:Is this the last one? I have it on my list. Okay. ManyChat. Many of you might know about ManyChat.
Helen:That is where it auto answers a DM or a comment. So you can set up automations on Instagram, on TikTok if you have a business account, and on I think Facebook too. It works on does work on TikTok now, I know that. But it only works on TikTok if you have a business account. So downside for me, I don't have a business TikTok account, so I can't use ManyChat.
Helen:So what I do is I use the strategy of ManyChat, but then I do it manually. So I'll say to somebody, comment learn if you'd like to, you know, know more about my studio. So then I look for comments that say learn when I'm scrolling through my comments and then I tap and then I manually have a response that I copy and paste. So I'm a manual many chatter. I do it myself on TikTok because I don't want to turn my TikTok into a business account.
Helen:But on Instagram, I believe you can use it for non business. Maybe. I don't even know now that I think about it because I wouldn't have been using it on my business account. But anyway, don't know. I think on Instagram I'm going to let you look that up.
Helen:Does it work on a business account or a personal account as well? It's just, these tools are all they have a use but the money adds up. How many subscriptions are you paying? Which ones are worth it to you? And which ones are, you know what?
Helen:I'm gonna let that one go and I'm gonna do that one myself. So you have to decide as a creator what's the biggest time saver and the thing that you struggle with the most so that you can hone in and decide what email list platform do I want? How am I gonna collect my emails? Do I need to zap the emails or can I once a week just manually put them in? Because, for example, on StanStore, the StanStore emails when I get somebody like getting something from one of my free things on my StanStore, I can't zap the emails over to my email list.
Helen:I have to monthly go and I copy them, make it into a sheet and then I import them. So it's really like so personal and it's your own flow. But these are all things that are options as you start to grow, and you have to figure out which ones are the most important right in this moment. And that's how you decide. I wouldn't recommend any creator go, I'm gonna do all these.
Helen:Now that she just said that, I have to have this, this, this, and this. I would say one at a time because you have to grow into it. You have to figure out what's the most useful and then also maybe there's one you let go. I had ManyChat for a while. I was using it a lot for the Instagram.
Helen:And then I was like, oh my god, I'm not using it enough to make it worth what I'm paying for. I was using it on an occasional tutorial to say comment this and I'll send you a link to join the studio. And it wasn't really paying off. I mean it wasn't you have to weigh it out. There's people who it's like comment and you get a recipe and that's worth it.
Helen:I mean, I know SkinnyTaste is really, really good at using the automations. When you comment and then you get automatically a link to a PDF, maybe that goes to her email list or maybe it goes to get people to, purchase her cookbook. That's worth it. If you're selling things directly and you feel that that's gonna make the sale quicker, then you want to go for it. I will leave you with this.
Helen:I find that even though we have, we're trying to take away all the barriers to any kind of sale, like you want to be on TikTok shop, want to have the shop link, you want to be on Instagram, you want, I know that there's Instagram allows links too now, but also on the Instagram story you want to be able to tap link, go right to the purchase. You just, you've got to weigh out the benefits of paying for these things and how many sales are coming from it because your return on investment has to be worth it. And personally for me at this juncture, my live streams are the most profitable for me making any types of conversions. So even though you could say, oh, well, manually get the ManyChat going, for example, on TikTok. If you get a viral video, then you're going to answer all the comments.
Helen:Sounds good. But guess what? I do the thing where I say, comment learn and I'll send you an invite to my studio. And then I manually do it. I don't get sign ups from that.
Helen:Even though I'm individually reaching out to these creators and it's manual, I'm doing it like for real, I'm not getting the conversions that would be worth me spending money on a chat feature that's going to automate it because then I'm paying for the chat feature and I'm not even making the sale. So you have to weigh out where are you making the conversion to the purchase, whatever that purchase is. And what's are these things helping you? So you're paying for them. Are they tools that are helping you?
Helen:Or it's not helping you anyway, so why bother paying for it? And the flip side to that, is the tool stopping people from clicking through in the example of the Stan's store link in Linktree thing. If something is stopping your purchaser from actually getting to the link, then that is worth paying for. That's where I will fall on a sword a little bit for the Stan Store because it has been game changing for me personally. So if I was gonna, out of all the things I'm talking about, today's, on today's episode, if I was gonna convince you of one thing, I'd probably say the Stan store because you just you have to pay for it.
Helen:You have to pay a monthly fee. But if you make well, depending on what you're selling, if you make enough sales that warrants it, it streamlines your process so cleanly. So if you are doing click through to scheduling, coaching, sales, affiliate links, etc, it's going to save your, it's going to get you more click throughs because it's so efficient. It's just that you have to decide are you making enough sales to make the monthly fee worth it. And you might need to let it it ruminate for a few months to to see if it's gonna work.
Helen:So it's not just like try it for one month and then it's not working. You you might have to let it go for a month or two to make sure that it's working. Those are my little advice tips for today about creator tools because I have been through them. I have tried them and I'm still trying them. As soon as someone recommends something, I'm like, oh I'll try that.
Helen:Like I I'm waiting to get this other thing in my feed that would replace the repurpose, but I haven't seen it again. I can't find it. It was some app that you can pay one time for it and then you can have the scheduling. But I couldn't test it, so I'm like I don't want to take a chance and pay one time for this this automation and then who knows if it works. I mean I have to be able to try it first to make sure.
Helen:That's why a monthly versus a one time cost is worth it to me. And that's it. I'm going to leave you with it. Have a wonderful weekend. Which one are you going to try?
Helen:Let me know in the comments if there's one that you're using now that you would just love and you want to stay on. And I'm going to put the links to all of the things I mentioned in the show notes here and also in the show notes on YouTube. And I'll try and put them in the newsletter too. Actually I put them in the newsletter so that way you can click and get right to the thing and see if it's good for you. Alright.
Helen:That's it for today. Have a wonderful weekend. See you next week.