10 Life-Changing Business Tools for Teacher Sellers

Kirsten 0:04

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Hey there friends, welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. It's been a while since I've done an episode on my favorite business tools. So I can't wait to share with you 10 of my favorite business tools that I'm not sure I've talked about on the podcast. But today I am. As a teacher printer, having the right tools can make all the difference. And leveraging the power of technology can streamline your processes, increase your productivity and contribute to overall success. So we are going to be talking about my top 10 favorite business tool. Well, okay, let me just even backtrack. It's not I wouldn't say it's my top 10. But it is 10 that I really like. So it's really in no particular order. But I wanted to share with you and maybe you're using it, maybe you're not. But it's definitely recommended by me.

Alright, so the first one I'm going to talk about is utilizing lead generation or lead gen ads on Facebook. So in the last several months, I have been utilizing Facebook ads and consistently running list building ads to grow my email list, this has been super pivotal is utilizing what's already kind of built in for Facebook. So rather than driving traffic to a landing page, I'm actually clicking on a campaign for paid ads for a lead form. And you create a lead forum. And essentially, people are typing in their name and address. And sometimes it already auto populates. So they are opting in, and they're clicking in to get my lead magnet or my freebie, and they don't have to exit Facebook, it's something that I'm thinking Facebook really enjoys is that you're staying on their platform, you don't leave it, you kind of hop in, get that form, say I'm want that lead magnet, and then you can continue browsing it at your heart's content. So I think Facebook likes that. And so in response, there's a couple of benefits between lead gen ads and having traffic generation ads. So the first benefit is that number one, the cost per lead is cheaper over time. So that is a bonus. The other thing is I believe with the Facebook pixel, they're able to track for up to 12 months, rather than if you were to just attach a pixel and connect it to your Facebook ads through your landing page. I think it's only about six months. So it is longer timeframe, longer window to retarget, potentially retarget. Anybody who might have clicked on or opted in to that specific form. So that's always a really great bonus if you're trying to retarget people who might have been interested.

So I highly recommend the use of lead gen ads. And if you're wondering, okay, how does it connect, that kind of leads into my second favorite business tool, and that is saved my leads. So when you are utilizing a lead form, essentially, you have to connect it in some way to your email service provider. So you have let's say ConvertKit and then you've got Facebook, people are opting into the form, it'll automatically be saved in a spreadsheet on Facebook, but you have to somehow connect it to your email service provider so you can deliver that freebie. So I have been using saved my leads. Zapier is another thing that you can use if you have the premium version. But save my leads is really, really low cost per month. And it's just a way to connect your lead form to your email service provider. And it works like a charm. I don't have to think about it. It's automatically inputted in to ConvertKit for me, and they're tagged and all of that good stuff. If you're using a lead form ad It's a really great way to connect it to your email service provider.

The third tool I enjoy, and I use for my WordPress websites is WP engine. This is a web hosting service. And it is the backbone of my online presence. And there have been times where I completely like I don't even know what I did, I was I was building one of my websites. And I had to essentially restore it, I had to start from scratch and WP engine comes in clutch. And I can restore it to its original version before I messed anything up. I just had to, it was backed up and all of that. And it was as nothing happened. And it was beautiful, wonderful. So I really, really love you know how seamless it is to be able to just log in. And I can connect both of my websites in that platform. It's just really great. I haven't had too many issues with my website speed, really great service, customer service and security. So I recommend if you're looking for a web host going with WP Engine, I think it is a must have for businesses who are looking to provide a seamless online experience. And the cool thing is you can have different you know, you can have it in production. That's kind of when your website is live. And you can also have it in a state as a staging site. So if you need to fix things up on your website, you can put it into staging mode. So there's just different ways you can build your site without having to have everybody look at the mess that it is just like for me. So yeah, WP Engine really great web hosting service, I definitely recommend.

Okay, number four is really integral for my tic tock platform. And that is cap cut. Video Content is king in today's day and age, unfortunately. But cap cut has become my go to tool for creating and editing engaging videos. I talked about this in the Tick Tock episode, but I love their templates, because you can find funny memes and different movies, clips, all kinds of things. And it's really great because it's like a green screen. And you can essentially take a video or photo of yours and then impose that in the template to like kind of integrated in the template. And it turns into an easy meme where you don't have to show your face. It's wonderful. So I really love it just to kind of find trending templates that people might be utilizing. And it's just a really great way to make professional looking and funny and engaging content that resonates with my audience. I always like to give it a twist. So I take that template that might be trending or popular. And I put it in a twist for my own specific niche and maybe the resources I sell.

All right, going into the fifth tool that I really love, it is Captivate. So I initially started my podcast in 2021. And I started on what was anchor. And now I believe it is Spotify for podcasters. But long story short, I switched over to captivate and I wish I had been on Captivate, but I hadn't heard of it. I love having Captivate as a podcast host it's a really great way to be able to easily upload and schedule and just utilize podcasting and have a nice way to share my episodes. The cool thing I love about Captivate is that you can insert dynamic ads. So you might have heard some of my dynamic ads go into place, I can change out the ads that go before the episode and after the episode and I don't have to manually do it is the best part is that I can change it up with a click of a button or two. It's wonderful. And then additionally, you can put an ads in the middle of an episode. But mostly I do stew before and after. And also it's really great because you can kind of if you want create your own podcast website with it, and I'm connected to your WordPress website, which I don't do at this time. I'm kind of afraid to touch anything because I might mess anything up. But that's just me. I really love it as a podcast host and I think it's really really fun and I of course love that they use Poppins in their branding.

Alright, number six captions. This is another app, it is free, and I will I should say it's a freemium app, but it's a great way to add capshins, it's really cool because you can upload a video, let's say you're talking and you are, you know, showing something about your resource and you're talking, it will automatically transcribe that video and put in some really cool looking captions. So if you are a person who talks on camera a lot, or you want to have really fun and engaging captions that kind of pop in a fun way, then captions is a really great tool to enhance your video content and increase engagement on Tik Tok or Instagram.

All right, going into number seven Mani chat. So the rise of chat bots is definitely a revolutionary way to engage with customers. I know I remember seeing it maybe a year and a half ago, two years and like, what is this, this nonsense people are like, able to respond to all of these immediately. Turns out it was a chatbot. But it's a wonderful chat bot. Mani chat is a really great way to automate any type of responses or engagement. Like if you have somebody I know a really popular method of getting links sent to people is saying comment with the word toolkit or comment with the word freebie or whatever keyword you have, when people comment on that word, they're automatically or I should say, the robots, the chat bots are sending in their DMS that specific link that set up. And they also might reply to the comment saying something like check your inbox or just sent you the link. And so that's a really great way to kind of automate, especially if you have a lot of engagement, a lot of comments, a lot of high activity on your Instagram or Facebook to kind of streamline the communication process and give instant responses and increase overall customer satisfaction. So I think I will, I think it's safe to say Gone are the days where you can just say, check out my Lincoln bio, for more details, it's kind of not going that way anymore. Because in reality, a lot of people are not necessarily checking in their Lincoln bio, like from a post if they're just kind of scrolling. So this is just a really great way to send, you know, even if they may not be thinking it, now, they might comment on it, and they're gonna get that link later, they'll look at it later, potentially. So that's always a really great way to kind of potentially increase conversions and people clicking on those different links.

All right, going into tool number eight, it is toggle. So for me, time management is a big struggle, it's always been. And toggle has been a lifesaver, I can track and manage my time more effectively, because it helps me keep organized. And it also helps me ensure every minute spent on tasks that help my business. So I always like to time track. And I've used clickup for you know, the time tracker included in clickup. But I also kind of like bucketing how long it takes for specific tasks. And with toggle, you can do that, you can actually also connect toggle with clickup, you can integrate it for free. So what I like to do with toggle is I can, you know, click on a task and there's a little toggle button and click up and I just click Start. And I you know, click the toggle button on. Essentially it will track how much time it takes for me to do certain tasks in that specific type of projects that I might have. So you can add different projects. And you can kind of do a little analysis for the week, okay. And I can actually see how long you know how many hours I worked for the week, if I'm really diligent with clicking that start and stop button. I can see how long it's taking me to work for the week and also what tasks I worked on the most in that specific week. And, of course, it's not just a week, you can go into the month and all of that. So it's just a really great time management tool that's a little bit more specific. And you can kind of break it down a little bit further just to see like, Okay, wow, it's taking me a lot of time to work on maybe recording podcasts versus this specific resource or listing products. So it's a really great way to kind of audit your time or just keep track of it.

Alright, number nine is Vimeo. I mostly use Vimeo to host a lot of my videos. Maybe if it's through WordPress, or courts platforms, I utilize Vimeo I've used other tools I've used loom I've noticed loom will cut off at the end for some reason when I have embedded videos but Vimeo does didn't do that. And you can customize what people can click on and what they can see and not see on the specific players. So you can kind of customize for all your embedded videos, like, can they kind of do the picture in picture mode? Can they go into full screen? Can they adjust the audio or speed or quality and things like that. I also like how it automatically when I'm uploading it a transcript appear. So you do automatically get that closed captioning and all that good stuff that we like to have. And so I'm able to customize my embedded video so that I can, you know, people can have full screen people can have the captions, and they can change the speed and, you know, customize it a little bit more than I might have if I had other video platforms. But yeah, it's just really great and has been a lifesaver.

Alright, going into number 10. I don't know if it's saving the best for last. But I'm going to say Thrive cart is my new favorite business tool. I initially was on the fence with deciding on if I wanted to purchase Thrive cart, I really, really really loved the idea of having a platform where I can host my courses and potentially memberships without having to pay recurring annual or recurring monthly fees. I was like the big thing. I'm like, wait, I only have to pay this one time, are you sure really. And so I was really really sitting on that idea. For a while, I wasn't sure what it was going to look like with what I was envisioning with my membership. So I stuck with Kajabi. And now I actually purchased Thrive cart in the fall of 2023. And now I'm kind of kicking myself because I wish I bought it sooner. The customization of how you can actually design your course where membership is really I mean, there's some there are some cons to it, like, you have to go and update every single page if you'd want to change something. But other than that, it's really as much as you make of it and I have learned plus, so I have a lot more advanced features in the course platform that I have my courses in. I've just really enjoyed it so much so that I will be moving my membership platform over to thrive cart in the coming months. So it is something that I'm super excited about. I know it's gonna be a lot of work, but it's gonna be worth it. I also love the checkout process and just the checkout in general, it's very easy to create. And I love the ability to have coupon codes and just the customization that other checkout platforms or course platforms don't necessarily have. I think this just takes the cake and I don't have to pay for it anymore. It's it's just a one and done. So that's something I recommend if you are a course creator or you have a membership considering looking into Thrive cart to see if it best fits your needs. For me and my businesses. I felt like it was perfect for me and I again wish I had done it sooner.

All right, well, that is the end of this episode. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you got some tools that you want to try and check out. And of course, I have the tools linked in the show notes. If you want to check that out. You can go directly to the description in the show notes and check out all the tools that I love. All right. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll talk to you again soon.

Thanks for listening to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also follow me on Instagram at the southern teach dot designs. Have an amazing day.