More followers on social media mean more chances to convert leads into new customers. So, how should you capitalize on this growth? What strategies can you use to sustain the growth and scale your brand? The answers could very well lie within your creator tool stack.
What is a Creator Tool Stack?
A creator tool stack is all of the tools you’re using to build your brand. Adding them to a stack means layering each to handle systems and workflows.
Most include content creation, organization, and engagement tools, analytics, AI assistants, and monetization platforms. But with so many tools for each of these categories, which one should you invest in?
What Tools Should Be Included in Your Creator Stack?
Every creator stack should include tools to help you build your brand, sustain growth, automate workflows, and scale your business. All of them should work seamlessly with one another. Below are five of the fundamental tools every growing creator should consider at each stage:
Stage: What Tools to Add to Your Stack: Problem it Solves
Your following takes off: Email list, your own domain, content backups: One ban can cut you off from your audience
Your audience holds steady: One planning hub, simple analytics: Tools pile up, and you can’t tell what’s working
You earn your first income: One platform to sell from: Payments and tax are messy to handle alone
Your income grows: A pricing check, sponsor outreach: Fees grow with your revenue
Tasks start repeating: An automation tool: You become the glue between your tools
Stage 1: Email, a Domain, and Backups to Protect Your Audience
Getting locked out of your social media accounts is a universal feeling. It’s happened to the best of us. But if you’ve built a brand using your social media platforms, you need to have contingencies in place by adding the following tools to your creator tool stack:
- Email marketing tools: Use them to export your email list.
- Your own domain: Set up your domain and complete DMARC, DKIM, and SPF.
- Backups of your content. YouTube’s help page says creators can’t download their YouTube content once a channel is terminated. Keep your original files somewhere else.
None of this means leaving social media. One Hacker News commenter, skippyfish, warns that “no one will visit your website” without something pushing readers to it. Keep posting where people find you, and use email to keep in touch with them.
Stage 2: A Planning Hub and Analytics to Track What Works
Tools pile up quickly. Some newsletter writers list ten or more tools each. A planning hub can keep that under control.
Several of those writers use Notion as a dashboard, a content calendar, and a simple contact tracker. Add a light analytics tool as well so you can see what brings in subscribers. Check it on a schedule, such as once a week.
Stage 3: An All-in-One Platform to Start Selling
Your first income brings new work, such as checkout, payments, and taxes. An all-in-one platform can handle these while your sales are still small. It also keeps your products and customer emails in one place.
Compare a few before you commit, because each one fits a different way of selling. Podia is one of the leading platforms out there. But many are already looking for Podia alternatives to better fit their needs.
Some platforms suit creators who sell from a website. Others suit creators who sell straight from a social media page.
Stage 4: Check Pricing Model for Each Tool
Some tools have cheap starter plans, then jump in price in the next tiers. So, before you sign up, check which pricing model it uses:
- Percentage cut: The fee grows with every sale.
- Flat fee: You pay the same amount each month.
- Usage-based: The price rises with your subscriber count or video traffic.
This is also the stage to look beyond ad income. Sponsors can pay out at least 10 times as much as ads do. But you can’t expect them to come to you. Instead, reach out to them using outreach tools on both social media and email.
Stage 5: Automation Tools for Repeating Tasks
If there are essential tasks that need to be repeated, it’s worth automating them. You don’t even need too much technical knowledge to create your own automation systems with tools like Zapier or Make.
For example, newsletter writers can use Zapier to send welcome emails when someone signs up on a landing page and to move form sign-ups into their email tool. You can start with small automations, and if you need automation to scale, consider hiring a developer.
