Fellow small business owners! If you are looking to up your organic marketing game, then THIS is the episode for you.
This week on the S.O.B. (small owned business) marketing podcast, Vivian and I are discussing organic marketing, what it is and what tools we suggest you use for your organic marketing strategies.
Let us know in the comments which tool is your favorite!
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction (Please Leave us a Review)
04:48 Marketing HOT TAKE: Organic Marketing is NOT Free
08:10 What Is Organic Marketing?
13:36 Google Tools for Organic Marketing
22:45 Why Social Media is THE Organic Marketing Tool
26:13 Canva Updates and Changes
32:19 Email Marketing
38:20 Opus Clip
40:00 Stock Image Options for Organic Marketing
41:48 SEM Rush (free version)
43:27 AI Marketing Tools for Organic Marketing
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5 Must Have Tools for Small Businesses: https://youtu.be/Nj5NSzTlmTI
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Vivian: Yes, keep going with this because she is the last person that would go camping. So I want to hear her explain how to keep a fire going
*Intro*
Chelsea: Hey everyone and welcome to the S.O.B. Marketing podcast. Where we celebrate to S.O.B. you are, and if you haven't figured it out yet - we mean Small Owned Business, we don't mean S.O.B...
Vivian: Listen, we know that as a small business owner you are working hard on the daily to keep your business fully operational while trying to promote it. And while some days it may feel like the business is owning you, if we're being honest with each other I bet you would admit that you wouldn't give up the insanity for anything.
Chelsea: Our commitment here at the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is to give you the real talk, what works when it comes to advertising, marketing, and promoting your business. And then what doesn't really work.
Vivian: And Chelsea and I promise to always keep the conversation real.
*Beginning of Episode*
Vivian: Chelsea, do you feel like we are consistently bombarded with the amount of tools that are out there for us to run a business or do our marketing?
Chelsea: I think we're constantly bombarded with everything and tools is definitely one of them.
Vivian: Yeah, and so it gets confusing, right?
Chelsea: Yeah. I mean, which one is worth your time? Which one's worth the cost because some of them cost money? That's why you and I are here though, because we'll figure out what tools are worth your time.
Vivian: We'll waste our time figuring it out for you.
Chelsea: Exactly!
Vivian: No, I think, well, let's tell them then what the topic specifically is today, because we have done two other topics or two other episodes on tools, but they were very specific. One of them was specifically for AI tools. And the other one, I think, was SEO tools or something like that?
Chelsea: It might've been, I think it was maybe just our favorite tools, marketing tools. There could be other episodes. I mean, we have what, 160+? So definitely go check it out.
Vivian: Which means if you ever need four hours to kill, you've got plenty to listen to.
Chelsea: Exactly. No, but today we're specifically talking about marketing tools that will help with your organic marketing. So we're going to explain one more time what organic marketing is, real quick. Then we're going to go ahead and get into each of the tools that we brought today.
Vivian: Yeah, our hope with this discussion is perhaps to be able to introduce you to a couple new tools that maybe you aren't using that's going to make your life a little easier, whether that's for content creation or any other aspect of the organic marketing, which we'll talk about.
Chelsea: Or it's going to remind you that you have access to some of these marketing tools and a reminder that they can be beneficial and don't let them just collect dust in the background.
Vivian: Don't be like me. I don't know if it's a 40 something thing, but I feel like all my life I have felt like I've had to work hard or made things more difficult for myself in order for it to be, I don't know, worthy of some type of accomplishment. Don't do that. Okay. The thing is you have limited time in your day. You're running a business. Hopefully you're kicking it with your family too. You have friends that you enjoy. We want you to be able to do all the things and not just beat yourself up or waste time without incorporating some of these tools.
Chelsea: That was a lot of like generational stuff. I feel like that's a generational thing.
Vivian: Am I trauma dumping?
Chelsea: No, you're not trauma dumping, but I can't remember the last time I heard someone say "kicking it" with someone.
Vivian: Yeah. Well, do you have that sentiment, Chelsea? Have you found yourself that maybe whether it's in your studies or whether it's in your profession or daily work, like sometimes you take the long route.
Chelsea: No.
Vivian: Like I feel like that's me all the time.
Chelsea: No.
Vivian: I don't, I don't do shortcuts well and I don't know what it is about my personality that just, I feel like doing shortcuts is kind of like cheating or something. So I've had it get out of that habit because these tools, some of these will make it feel like you're cheating and you're like, it really cannot be that easy. That thing that used to take me 30 minutes now literally takes me 10. You're allowed to do that.
Chelsea: Okay, it's time for the marketing hot take. Vivian, organic marketing means free of monetary cost. That does not mean it doesn't cost you anything. This is a hill I will die on.
Vivian: I'm going to write this down. Hills Chelsea will die on.
Chelsea: Yes. It's that organic marketing is not completely free. Okay. You're not spending money, but you're still spending time and effort. Figuring stuff out. Time is money, especially as a small business owner. There are things that you could be doing that would generate revenue. Organic marketing, now hopefully your marketing strategies are generating revenue, but just because something does not cost you in monetary value, does not mean it's not costing you in other ways.
Vivian: I will agree with you on that.
Chelsea: You better.
Vivian: Especially since it's a hill you're willing to die on.
Chelsea: I mean, exactly.
Vivian: So I think the interesting part, it does two things when you were stating your opinion. What kind of brought to mind, to my mind, was the fact that for one, when you think that something is free and you think it's free of any value, not just monetary value, just, it's free. So it doesn't cost me anything at all. You're kind of diminishing, I think, the value that that thing has. So it's almost like- I'm thinking of social media in particular, because a lot of people are like social media is free. It doesn't cost me anything. Okay.
Chelsea: It costs my sanity.
Vivian: Yeah. That's the most expensive thing. You're telling me that the 30 minutes that you're spending every day in creating a reel or coming up with a post or doing whatever isn't costing you anything. That adds up over the week. I feel like when people do that, they also diminish the value that social media can have in their marketing strategy. So it's almost like, maybe I don't have to pay as much attention or make this as important because it's free, quote unquote. But like Chelsea said, that's actually not true.
What it forces you to do is if suddenly you're putting value on it, not monetary value, but you're cognizant that it's taking up your time, you're going to be a little more judicious in the way you go about posting what you're posting. You're going to give more thought to it, right? So that's one thing...and then I think that's it.
Chelsea: Okay, thank you.
Vivian: I just felt like- My husband and I, we watch Home Alone throughout the entire year. It's not just a Christmas movie to us.
Chelsea: Okay?
Vivian: There's a part in Home Alone 2 where Buzz, the jerk brother, he goes to make a list of things and he's like, three things. Number one, or he goes, A, and then he says B and then number three, and he mixes it all up. You're like, man, he really is dumb. That's why I just felt. I'm like "two things. One. That's it".
Chelsea: Let's get into the conversation. We're going to start with just a quick recap of what organic marketing is and then we're going to go ahead and just get into the marketing tools. I'm not going to do a TLDL this week because it would just be me listing out the tools we talked about. I think you should just listen to this entire conversation. Sorry.
Vivian: No skipping ahead. All right. So what exactly is organic marketing?
Chelsea: Now I did allude to organic marketing earlier, you know, that it's free, but I have a definition. Let me give the definition.
Vivian: Okay Webster.
Chelsea: Organic marketing is a long-term cost-effective strategy that attracts customers naturally over time without paid promotion.
Vivian: Okay. There are two parts that I always think about with organic marketing. One of them being, you mentioned it, that long-term. That's such a big deal because it does kind of change the perspective of what your end goal is. I think that's because for one, you have more time with it. You know it's going to be something that you're building as opposed to just a short-
Chelsea: Like a paid ad. When you're doing a paid ad, you set a specific amount of time, you have specific goals, you want conversions, right? Organic marketing isn't about that. It's the marketing strategies that want to build trust.
Vivian: Yes, and trust is the other key point of it because I think the building trust part is the part that eventually gets somebody to even consider purchasing from you over time.
I think that's where the ads are kind of like fuel. It's kind of like throwing gasoline on a fire. It's going to make it bigger. However, the fire itself, like starting it, that spark is going to be your actual, what do you call it? Organic marketing. So you need the organic marketing to spark it.
Chelsea: I like this analogy. You need organic marketing to spark it. Adding fuel to the fire is going to be your paid ads. I think it's important to remember organic marketing again is a long term strategy. So it's also going to be you making sure that the fire doesn't go out. So I don't know, moving the wood around or adding more wood.
Vivian: Yes, keep going with this because she is the last person that would go camping. So I want to hear her explain how to keep a fire going.
Chelsea: That's all I got. Is that how it works? Just move the wood. You just poke it. Just poke the fire.
Vivian: Eventually- Just poke it like a bear.
Chelsea: Don't poke bears.
Vivian: I will poke bears. The fire will eventually go out if you're not consistently fueling it with something. That's the part of it too that I think is important. Organic marketing is going to be that long-term thing. You consistently have to show up. You consistently have to share information or provide valuable resources. So what does that look like, Chelsea? What exactly is organic marketing? You said not paid ads.
Chelsea: No, not paid ads. Think about, again, we're thinking of long-term marketing strategies for building trust: your SEO, your social media...
Vivian & Chelsea together: Blog posts.
Chelsea: She read my mind. Email marketing. Things like that where you're consistently showing up. Vivian, I want to, before we get into these marketing tools, you need to do a mix of both. Okay? Think again to the fire analogy. You need to put gasoline on your fire too. So a mixture of both organic and paid marketing strategies is going to be really important.
Vivian: I just love as someone has just tuned in at that part, they're going be like, is this a pyro podcast?
Chelsea: Might as well be.
Vivian: The final point I'll make on that before we actually start listing the tools that we love for organic marketing is, I want you guys to not forget that it takes two things in order for organic marketing to be sustainable. The first part is the creation. so tools that help you create faster, quicker, better. There's that part of it.
The other part is the distribution. It's the getting it out there, distribution or discovery for other people. How are you going to get it, once you create your organic marketing, how are you going to get it in front of people? So any of the tools that we list today could do one or the other. They're either going to help you with the creation part of it, or they're going to help you with the distribution part of it. So those are both equally as important because you can do all the organic marketing you want and still be the best kept secret because you're not doing an adequate job of getting it out there.
Chelsea: Love that. I think that's very important to keep in mind. So let's go ahead and get into the marketing tools that we brought today. I do want to point out, not all of them are free. They are all low cost though.
Vivian: Yeah. We're never going to recommend anything that's ridiculously priced. We are a podcast for small business owners, all right. Which ones do you want to start with?
Chelsea: Let's start with all of our Google tools. Google business profile. If you are not on, if you don't have, if you haven't claimed your business or anything like that, I want you to go do that right now.
Vivian: Also leave us comments down below. I have been seeing a lot of business owners beefing with Google lately because literally they are- Google now. I don't know if you realize this, Chelsea, they've changed. If you're a physical location, in order for you to verify that you are that actual business. Cause I guess maybe people are claiming businesses that weren't theirs. You actually have to upload a video now of you walking through your physical space. I've heard a lot of business owners say in the last month that Google has been rejecting theirs and they're like, I'm the business owner. What else do you need? I saw someone post the other day. They're like, tell me what to do, what to send to Google for them to believe that it's actually my business.
Chelsea: That's crazy.
Vivian: So tell me if you guys have had a similar experience. Tell us in the comments because we want to get down to the bottom of it and we're going to research it. Go claim your Google business profile. That's one of the best things that you can do for organic marketing, because it's going to be showing up on search listings and you guys want to be there. It's also the place where people leave their reviews.
Chelsea: Yes, and that's very important. Your Google business profile is how people find you on Google. Google is still a very big thing. It's not going away. So make sure you do that. If you already have a Google business profile, make sure it's up to date.
Vivian: Yes. Keep your hours current. Make sure your website is listed and that's current. Go in there, provide the services, keep those up to date.
Chelsea: Absolutely. If you need, I don't know, more convincing about Google Business Profile, Vivian, I'm pretty sure we have an episode where we talk about it.
Vivian: Yeah, we sure do. All right, keeping it in the Google family. The next one we're going to recommend is Google Analytics. Now, Chelsea, what can we expect in Google Analytics? What does it help us do?
Chelsea: Your analytics. Y'all. I mean, don't mean to be-
Vivian: Dramatic pause.
Chelsea: I don't mean to be dramatic, but your Google Analytics is going to show you everything that's going on, on your website. That is information that you need to know. It's going to help you make the best decisions for your website and website marketing and SEO, stuff like that.
Vivian: Yeah, and I know we're talking specifically about organic marketing tools. However, Google Analytics will also help you with a lot of your paid ads simply because it's going to allow you to collect more data on how those paid ads are performing. So either way, you guys need to get on that bandwagon and start using Google Analytics. If you haven't done that, maybe that's something that we can cover in the future episode just because it's consistently changing. But it's pretty self-intuitive. It is a big, robust tool, so it takes a little bit of learning. But you guys, there are some wonderful resources out there to walk you through everything that's available in there.
Chelsea: Very true. The last, no, not last, second to last. Google's got a lot going on. They're very helpful to small business owners. Next, we have Google Search Console. This tool is going to help you monitor your website's presence on Google search. It's great for your SEO strategy, which is yes, an organic marketing strategy.
It has performance tracking, technical troubleshooting. It allows you to submit a site map. Vivian, can you explain to us what a site map is?
Vivian: Yeah. So when it comes to search engine, remember we often talk about it being a matchmaker: search engine optimization. Think of it as basically the person on the other end of the screen is the, what do you call it? I guess the date. Any of these search engines are just looking to connect that person with the information that they're looking for. You uploading a site map, it's basically like the bones of what your website is. It's a layout of what your website is. That way, when you're submitting that...what?
Chelsea: Well, I like how you started with bones and then you said layout. I understand the analogy, but I just think that's really funny. It's the bones of your website.
Vivian: It is!
Chelsea: Well, I know you're right.
Vivian: It's the framework. Think of it. It's the framework of your website. That way, when you upload it and submit it, it gives Google just another touch point, another data point for them to be able to kind of scour and kind of understand your website.
Chelsea: See if your content is relevant for what the match is looking for.
Vivian: As a small business owner, the one thing you're trying to do is you're just trying to give it as many data points. You're giving these search engines as many data points so that way they can take all of that into account. Hopefully you'll be the best match for the person that's on the other end of the screen. That's all really you can do is make sure that you are putting as much information in there for them to consider.
Chelsea: Yes. So this is Google Search Console. Go check it out. Now we have the last one, Vivian, the last Google tool. We still have more tools. Google reviews. Google reviews. Y'all, it's so important to get reviews and Google again, I mentioned it already in this episode. It is still relevant. People still care about Google reviews, so you need to get some.
Vivian: They are one of the ways that people decide whether or not they're going to come to your restaurant, whether or not they're going to try your product or your service.
Chelsea: It's about building trust. We talked about organic marketing is really big about building trust. It's how people trust that you're a relevant, that you're a reputable business.
Vivian: I mean, it's kind of, I've used this example before, but if we're traveling to Charlotte, we want to try a new restaurant. Are we going to pick the restaurant that has one review? Even though it's five stars, it only has one review. Or are we going to pick the restaurant that's got 2000 reviews and is four and a half stars? I mean, we're going to pick the one that has 2000 because it's kind of like rolling the dice on the one that only has one review. Cause you're like, maybe it's not worthy of-
Chelsea: Maybe it's just the business owner left themselves a review.
Vivian: That's right. A family member or somebody. The other thing is just as a preview, we're going to be doing an episode on Google reviews because Chelsea, I ruined her day a couple of days ago.
Chelsea: She really did.
Vivian: No, I really did, y'all. Okay. She was big mad with a capital M because Google has actually changed the way that you're allowed to get Google reviews. It's kind of a doozy because I'm like, what are we allowed to do? It seems like a whole lot of don'ts.
Chelsea: Yeah, exactly.
Vivian: We want you guys to be in the know about that. We're going to do a future episode on it. So be sure that you hit that subscribe button so you could get notified when that episode releases.
Chelsea: Or you could join the SOB community because that's where Vivian told me about it. So if you want to see me crash out.
Vivian: Live crash out.
Chelsea: Crash out live, then yeah, join the SOB community because sometimes Vivian will bring me updates like this new Google review update and I'll lose it.
*S.O.B. Community Ad*
Vivian: This episode of the S.O.B. Marketing podcast is brought to you by the S.O.B. Community. If you are a small business owner that is neglecting your marketing and you feel like you've wasted time and money on marketing help that didn't deliver. Or if you're just craving support from people who actually get what it's like to run and promote a small business, then our membership community is for you. Visit skool.com/sob to sign up today to get instant access and weekly support. That's S-K-O-O-L dot com slash sob.
*End of S.O.B. Community Ad*
Vivian: All right, Chelsea, what is the next tool that you recommend for organic marketing?
Chelsea: I'm going to say this and people are going to feel some type of way, I think, because I'm going to say whichever social media platform you are on, that's a tool. Like Vivian discussed earlier, we have two different types of tools. We have the creation and then we have the distribution. Whichever social media platform you are reaching your target audience on, that's a tool. Sorry.
Vivian: No, it absolutely is. I think that's...
Chelsea: Well, the reason I've listed this is because I want you guys to reframe the way you're thinking about this. When you open up Instagram and you're like, I'm on Instagram again. Oh my God. Think of it as a marketing tool. I'm opening Instagram because I'm trying to build trust.
Vivian: Yes, it gives it a very specific purpose, like you're saying. I think what you end up doing is you kind of, I'll be very transparent. I've had a time with social media, 2026. I don't know what it is. It's turning me off. I feel a little icky about it. I get tired of hearing everybody giving me advice about, whether it's like lifting weights, eating sardines, doing my hair, doing like, I don't care. Like just let me live, okay?
I do not care anymore. I think that's the thing as small business owners, we do want to utilize these platforms because that is where our target audience is, right? We want to be very specific and cognizant about how we're using them and approaching them. I think that keeps our relationship healthy with these platforms because it's like, it doesn't own me. I'm not a monkey doing what it's asking me to do. What I'm doing is I'm using the thing as an avenue to reach potential customers.
Chelsea: I love that. This is, I don't want to get too into it. I believe Vivian, we already have a podcast episode about keeping your personal and professional life separate. I think it's really important to think of these social media platforms as tools because then it also reframes what you're doing in the moment. So when I'm on Instagram because I just want to be on Instagram, then I'm feeling like Vivian, I'm like, leave me alone. You're bombarded with too many things. When you reframe it and you're like, I'm in a professional setting, I'm promoting my small business, this is just a tool for me to use, then hopefully you can, I don't want to say compartmentalize, but like that's exactly what it is. You can set aside your icky feelings about social media and you can instead focus on, I just want to reach my target audience.
Vivian: Yeah. I think Chelsea just told me to put my small business owner pants on... instead of big girl pants. Put your SOB pants on.
Chelsea: I mean, I want all of you to put on your SOB pants and we're going to use Instagram as an organic marketing tool.
Vivian: Yes. This next one too, I think it's along the lines. It's not one that, I don't think new to everybody. If you're a small business owner, you've probably heard of a Canva. The thing with Canva though is I think if you haven't used it in a while, you would be surprised at how different it looks these days. They're integrating AI onto the back end of a lot of the stuff they're doing with the design work. They help you even write headlines if you need with their AI scripting, all of that. If you haven't gone in there and used Canva in a while, we think it's a really, it's worth your time to go and take a look at it. What do you like about it in particular for organic marketing?
Chelsea: For organic marketing, I like that- y'all don't hate me. We know that I'm an AI hater. All of your AI generated content looks exactly the same. I can't tell even if you have branding on it. I can tell that it's AI. I can't really tell that it's you. Canva gives you the opportunity to yes, still be guided because there's templates and stuff like that. But it gives you the opportunity and the chance to still make it your own and make it very clear that you created something. I think in this day and age, and this is a conversation we're going to have in the future. I'm not going to spoil it for you guys, but in this day and age, it's really important to set yourself apart and not use AI to create the content. Instead, when I say not use AI, mean, don't AI generate something and then just post it. You absolutely can use AI in Canva for help.
Vivian: Ideation, creation...
Chelsea: Headline help like you were talking about earlier. Absolutely do stuff like that, but still take the time to create something yourself.
Vivian: Yeah, something that reflects your business, your product or service. The other thing that I really love about Canva is, there are so many small businesses out there, small business owners that are showing up on multiple platforms or doing multiple things. So if you're creating short form videos and you're also doing carousels and you're also doing guides, or booklets. Or you can even do flyers with QR codes. It's very easy to toggle between all those things. So for me, what I love about Canva, it's a hub and you're able to kind of create all of that there at once. If you have a carousel post that then you want to turn into a short form reel or something like that. You can utilize some part of that and very easily start to convert those formats. I think it's just a nice hub for all of that stuff.
Chelsea: Yes. For all of your designing and creation needs. So this is a creation tool.
Vivian: Let me add one more little asterisk on there. If you have someone that's helping you with social media, whether they are an employee of yours or maybe you're outsourcing it and you just have someone that's coming in and helping you five hours a week or something with it, Canva allows you to give them access. So there's actually for the business account, you can give I think up to two people, two collaborators on there. That's a great way to be able to share files without having to like email stuff all the time. That way you can still have creative control, approving stuff, looking at things, making sure it's in line with your brand while also allowing you to expand and have somebody help you do that kind of organic marketing.
Chelsea: Wonderful. I love that. Okay, Vivian, next we have video editing tools. There's CapCut, there's Instagram Edits, there's InShot. We've used InShot. It does cost money if you want specific resources from it. I think it's branded if you don't. Yeah, so your images will be branded unless you pay for the premium.
Vivian: It'll have their logo on them.
Chelsea: It'll have their logo, yes. But it is a very good tool, inexpensive. If you don't want to pay though, there's also CapCut, there's Instagram edits. I, Vivian, unfortunately.
Vivian: There's Canva.
Chelsea: There is Canva. Yeah, you can use Canva for your video editing too. What I was going to say is, unfortunately, I actually really do like Instagram edits.
Vivian: It's funny you say, unfortunately. Let it, girl. Let yourself like it. It's fine. It's fine. If it's convenient and it works and it does the editing the way it's supposed to.
Chelsea: It's free and it's pretty good. It's a good video editing app. So yeah, Instagram Edits.
Vivian: The one thing you will never hear us say is that one is better than the other, because let me tell you, kind of like our philosophy of-
Chelsea: There are no rules, do whatever order you want.
Vivian: Yeah, do whatever you want. You're a grown ass adult. A lot of this is preference. InShot, I use it the most. I'm comfortable with that. Could I easily probably use CapCut? Yeah, it would probably take me a couple of times to be able to get comfortable with it. Chelsea likes using the Instagram edit app. She was using InShot, then she switched over.
You guys pick the platform that or the tool that works best for you. You do need some type of editing tool for video.
Chelsea: I have used Canva in the past too for video editing. That works too. It was fine. It was a good tool.
Vivian: Awesome. All right. What's the next one?
Chelsea: Next we have, Vivian this is one of my favorites. Maybe my favorite organic marketing tool. Answer The Public.
Vivian: What does Answer The Public do?
Chelsea: Okay. So what it does is you insert-
Vivian: Well, first tell me where do I go?
Chelsea: You go to AnswerThePublic.com. You can type in a keyword or a phrase, something that's relevant to your business and you hit search. What it does is it helps you find what questions or search queries people are searching for when it comes to that specific keyword or phrase.
Vivian: Yeah, I love this especially because if you guys are having trouble coming up with an idea or you're like, I want to cover Google reviews. I want to make a video about Google reviews, but I just feel like I don't want to sound generic like everyone else. You go to answerthepublic.com, put in there Google reviews, or maybe you change up the phrasing. Google review updates, whatever it is. Literally in the graph, it will show you all the questions that people are asking. It even has it categorized by who, what, when, where and stuff. So that way, if anything, it's not giving you a flat out like, do this. It starts to give you ideas of, people are asking that question? Okay, well I can easily answer that.
Chelsea: Great example. What I do and how I use it is whenever we pick a topic, I go ahead and put the topic in Answer The Public and then based off of the questions that people are asking, I say, okay, this is the conversation we need to have.
Vivian: We need to answer these questions.
Chelsea: Yes, we need to answer these specific questions because these are the questions that people need answers to.
Vivian: I love it.
Chelsea: I do too. I love, no, I really do. Check out Answer The Public.
Vivian: All right. Excellent. So the other one that we have is one that you guys are very familiar with, Meta Business Suite.
Chelsea: Hopefully.
Vivian: Yes. Meta, remember, owns Instagram and Facebook and Threads now. Meta Business Suite is the overarching umbrella tool that you can use to kind of create some of the back end standardization processes, scheduling?
Chelsea: Yeah, you can schedule your content out for both Facebook and Instagram. I think that's really great. It's also where all of your analytics for Facebook and Instagram is going to be. So it's a hub where you can basically get all the information you need for both Facebook and Instagram.
Vivian: Perfect. We highly recommend if you guys are using either Facebook or Instagram and you have not logged into your Meta Business Suite, we want you to go do that. Explore, take a look around and see how you can use it to best help you with your organic marketing.
Chelsea: Our next organic marketing tool is something that we talk about all the time on this podcast. So if you're new here, this will not be the last time you hear this. If you're not new here, this is probably the 50th time you've heard this. But email marketing.
Vivian: We love it.
Chelsea: We love it. So an email marketing platform.
Is it going to be free? Probably not, but it is going to be low cost and email marketing is such a powerful marketing tool, marketing strategy. We believe all businesses should be using email marketing.
Vivian: Here's the thing. It may be free actually to start until you hit a certain amount of email subscribers and then it might switch to like a paid account. Outside of that, the reason we want you to pick a email marketing platform, for example, the one we use is Flodesk. I stand by Flodesk. I have used it for many, many years. I love that it allows me to, you can send out weekly emails. You can put your email list into audiences, target audiences. You could create landing pages so that people can opt in and download resources. You could also create checkout pages, which means if you have a guide or something that you're selling, a course, you can set up a checkout page that accepts the payment all through Flodesk.
Flodesk is not the only one that does it. MailChimp, OmniSend. What's another one?
Chelsea: Those are the big three that I think of. A lot of your service platforms, so like your scheduling platforms will have a section for email marketing. So you could just use that.
Vivian: What's the one, Virgo?
Chelsea: Varago is the one I think of that I've used before.
Vivian: So remember, organic marketing is the stuff that you guys need to be doing on a somewhat consistent basis. We're not telling you you have to send out weekly emails, but we would encourage you to have some type of email list that you're building because remember, even though the social media platforms are wonderful tools, you do not own them. What we mean by that is if tomorrow Instagram wants to go away, it can, how are you going to reach
those people that were following you on Instagram? You should be trying to convert them onto your email list so then you have that communication line with them always.
Chelsea: In case your Instagram profile gets hacked, gets taken down, this is a good way to not lose all of your followers.
Vivian: Absolutely. Chels, the other thing though, can I sneak one in?
Chelsea: No.
Vivian: I really want to talk about Opus Clip as well. Opus Clip. That one's probably the most expensive one we're recommending, but if you are serious about creating video content, I highly recommend. What Opus Clip will do is it will take your longer form videos and it will provide you. You literally copy and paste the link or you upload the file and then it will generate short form videos from that long form video. So it takes a lot of that bulky work away, and because they're using some AI on the backend to see what's kind of relevant and hot on these social media platforms, it even gives you a grading scale. So once it generates the 20 clips, it literally will tell you this one, I give it a 98 out of a hundred. This one I give a 76 out of a hundred. That way you can watch each one, figure out if you like them and decide which ones you want to use to then upload to Instagram or YouTube shorts or whatever.
The one thing I will say is you don't have to use it the way that they cut it. I've gone in plenty of times and I like what it generates but I kind of want to tweak it some. I'll go in and actually edit it but it's done the bulk of the editing for me. So it takes less than 10 minutes for me to go in there and make tweaks and then be able to upload. So highly recommend Opus Clip if you're serious about video content.
Chelsea: Life saver. Life changer. Amazing. I'm glad you brought that one. I have next, I want you guys, if you're looking for high quality stock images, we have Canva, we have Unsplash, we have Pexels, we have Adobe. These are just some options. I don't want you guys to get copyrighted for using images that you just downloaded off of the internet. Make sure that you are getting permission to use these stock images.
Vivian: What we love about stock images too is, I know we live in a day and age where everyone is doing photo shoots. Depending on your budget, that may be something you can do. It may not be okay. So if you cannot pay a photographer to create some of these images for you. The next best thing is to find stock photos, right? For the websites that Chelsea listed, the Canva, the Unsplash, the Pexels, the Adobe and stuff, there may be a price. Sometimes you can per photo pay for it. Sometimes it's just subscription based, but this is a great affordable way for you to be able to use high quality images without having to go pay a photographer if that's not in your budget right now.
Chelsea: I will say I get most of my stock images from Canva.
Vivian: Canva does this great thing where if it's a premium image, it does force you to kind of add to the image to make it your own so that you can't download just the image itself. So I like the way that it's built into, hey, we don't want you to copyright this thing. We want you to at least tweak one or two things about it.
All right. The next one, Chels-
Chelsea: I think it's our last one, unless you have more.
Vivian: Yeah, I do. I have two really quick ones.
Chelsea: Oh my God. My last one then is going to be Semrush. Semrush is a big platform. There's a free version and a paid version. I use the free version, so I don't know a lot about what the paid version has to offer. What I like is that the free version has a site audit. It allows you to see how you're ranking with AI visibility. There's also keyword help. Overall, if you're trying to get serious about your SEO, it's a really powerful tool.
Vivian: So you just go to Google, look up SEM rush and it'll pull up this tool and then you can-
Chelsea: No, it's a website. It's a website. You go to their website. You input your URL for your business's website and it'll pull out. It'll give you all this information. Now, if you want to get deep into the information, you'll have to pay.
Vivian: Like the report.
Chelsea: Yeah. If you want to get all the little nitty gritty details, you'll have to get the paid version. Just the overview, I feel like is very helpful.
Vivian: If anything, it allows you to maybe diagnose something, that might be something I need to look into, right?
Chelsea: Yes.
Vivian: All right. The two that I'm bringing in, and I'll make this really quick. You're not going to be happy about this. I am actually going to say Claude. A.I. I do like Claude better than Chat GPT. Personal preference. But also, I think I did want to add an AI chat bot in there because I do think that they provide value. It depends on the way that you use it. Obviously, we don't want you guys copy and pasting stuff from there. We want it more for ideation. Also, to kind of prompt you, give you ideas for stuff. I don't know. Claude is super useful for that. Sometimes if maybe you have something, you have a paragraph and you put it in there and you're like, hey, what am I missing? Is there something I can add to this that would be better? It can be useful for those circumstances.
The other one though that I think I have really enjoyed using lately and I love is Notebook LM. We did a podcast episode on this recently. Go listen to that. We get into the nitty gritty on what it does. The overall idea is literally you're able to put in, whether it's a YouTube link, a video you've done, upload a paper, anything along those lines; you give it the project and then it will pull from there different things. You could do flashcards on it. You could do data analysis. You could do reports. You could do all kinds of things. Infographic, create an infographic
I just love that it gives you ideas and if anything, it gives you a different perspective of how you're creating. You're spending so much time in creating content, writing blog posts, doing all the things that builds that long-term trust. I promise you, you need to treat it like a lemon and squeeze as much juice out of it and this lets you do that.
Chelsea: Yes, I'm with Vivian. It is a very good marketing tool for repurposing your content. You are very busy. We're all very busy. Repurposing content is going to help you stay in your consumer's mind's eye while still not spending so much time trying to create new content.
Vivian: All right, Chels, I think that's it for the tools. We hope that you have maybe learned about a new tool that you didn't know about before and that you go check it out.
If you guys do, let us know. We would love to hear from you. Also we want to hear from you. So.
Chelsea: *aggressively pointing* Oh, leave us a review. Sorry. I was trying to bully people. If you're not watching the video.
Vivian: She was pointing her finger all up in your face.
Chelsea: All up in your face. Yes. Leave us a review. We'll shout you out. We shouted out someone last week that left us review. Last week, two weeks ago. I don't remember. The days blur. But yes, please, pretty please, it helps us get in front of more small business owners, and we want to help you guys feel confident and comfortable handling your own marketing. So Vivian, I want everyone to go be the best SOBs they can be.
*Post-episode blooper* Vivian: Here's the thing. The difference...my earring just came out.