← This Can't Be That Hard
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- [00:00]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Hey friends. This month I am sharing the replays of some of my favorite episodes where I was the guest on someone else's podcast this year. Today's is a conversation that I had with Kim Box over at the Motherhood Anthology podcast where we dug into one of my all time favorite topics, which is marketing that actually works. We talked about the difference between marketing tactics and marketing systems. Things that actually move the needle by.
- [00:31]
Annemie Tonkin
Combining consistency, variety, and a little creativity.
- [00:34]
Anna Mi Tonkin
And I also shared a fun metaphor about a windmill that I've never shared here on this podcast before. And because you know I can't talk about marketing without bringing up AI, we also get into how photographers can use tools like custom GPTs to make content creation easier while still sounding authentic to you. I wanted to share this one because so many photographers are rethinking their marketing right now. How to make it feel lighter, smarter and more sustainable. And this conversation is full of simple ways that you can do just that. So let's dive in. Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Anna Mi Tonkin and I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard.
- [01:33]
Annemie Tonkin
You can do it and I can show you how. Hi everyone, my name is Annemie Tonkin. I am a family photographer based in Chapel Hill, N.C. have been doing that since 2010. Since 2020 I've been focusing a lot on the education space and basically my whole business when it comes to teaching has to do with the fact that when I first started out I came from a medical background. My parents were both professionals. They did not work in business at all and did not. No one could give me any advice on how to run a business. And I felt like it was really challenging in ways that I wasn't anticipating. I was. I kept thinking like, oh, it's a service. I. It's just me. I'm not trying to build some giant corporation. This can't be that hard. And. And it was. It was challenging in ways that I wasn't really anticipating. But I had a mentor pretty early on in the process who gave me very good advice which was focus as much on the business side as you do on the photography side. And I took that advice to heart and I honestly feel like it has been the key to my success over 15 plus years. So anyway, so in 2020 I started teaching Some of the systems and strategies side of things in a way that I felt like helped bridge that gap for other creatives. Because I do feel like, even if it's not true, we tend to think of ourselves as being one way or the other. Right brain, left brain. There's this, like, bifurcation that people like to, to make it. And I think that you can be as creative in your business as you are with your art. So. So I try and encourage that in my teaching. And if you guys had a chance to watch our training this month. Over the course of the last three weeks, we have been focused on marketing, and I used this concept of a marketing windmill, which I guess we're going to get into. But really today is less about me. I mean, you already have these videos. You have permanent access to those if you haven't had a chance to look through them yet. I would love for this to be interactive. I'd love to answer any questions that you might have. I might ask some questions too. I did build into my training this month something that I've never done before, which is using custom GPTs to help you get some of the homework assignments done. And if anybody has gone through that process with these, I would love to sort of hear how that was. Or we can sort of have a chat GPT.AI conversation. There's lots of stuff that we can explore and I'm here for it.
- [04:10]
Kim Box
So, yeah, I'm gonna jump in. I just wanted to know if anybody here has actually gone through the GPT. I mean, you can do it in the chat or you can unmute if you want to. Oh, Kara's raising your hand here. I'd love if you want to unmute and just tell me a little bit about, like, what you found and talk to onomy about that.
- [04:30]
Melissa
I got some crazy ideas. I was, I loved it. It was. I love chat GPT. Anyway, I named mine Melissa. I don't know why, but that's, that's my name for her. Her name's Melissa. But I, I, I'm floored by her to begin with. But it was so easy to use. You just, you put the questions in there and I fill it out and boom, boom, boom. And it spits out just exactly what I want to do.
- [04:57]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Nice.
- [04:58]
Melissa
The whole planning process of doing, sending out the newsletters and doing the social media posts and all that stuff, it's just so easy.
- [05:07]
Annemie Tonkin
I love it.
- [05:08]
Melissa
And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Because sometimes my brain is just creativity just goes away.
- [05:14]
Annemie Tonkin
Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, I'd Love to hear if this was your. If you have other experience using custom GPTs as opposed to just general ChatGPT. Okay, very cool.
- [05:25]
Melissa
Yeah, this is my first time.
- [05:27]
Annemie Tonkin
Yeah, I think that that's going to be a major, like there's going to be a huge, I, I'm sure influx of that coming soon. And I think the power of custom GPTs really is the fact that they don't have to be super complicated. I mean, these did not take me a ton of time to make, but you're basically feeding it a certain bit of information or like this is the framework that I want you to use when we're talking about this. And it just really kind of helps narrow in the wide world of information that these large language models are based on, built on. It helps us focus them and be like, this is how we want to go about this. We're not trying to market to the entire world. We're not trying to start a huge corporation. This is what this is for. And so that's awesome. I'm so glad that it was such a good experience. I think one of the hardest things about marketing is the fact that we tend to. There are a lot of marketing strategies out there. There are a lot of marketing tactics out there. And depending on who you're paying attention to or what you are interested in at a given time, we can get very hyper focused on one marketing strategy or tactic. And that honestly I think is probably one of the that, that and a lack of consistency are like the two major problems that I see with people's overall marketing. It's like I just post to Instagram and I call that my marketing strategy. Or I, I do send out a newsletter, but I do it like twice a year. Neither of those things is a very, I mean it, it could work, right? Anything could work. You could hit the lottery. But generally speaking, a solid marketing strategy is both varied where you don't have your eggs all in one basket and it is being produced consistently. So the teaching that I did this month has to do with this idea of a marketing windmill with four major blades. And there are other categories I guess of marketing, but I look at those blades as social media being one, email marketing being another. The third is like content marketing for SEO. So typically for photographers, that's a blog, it could be a podcast, it could be a YouTube channel. We're talking about larger form content that doesn't have to be created as frequently, but that is. Has sort of a more evergreen ability where it lasts for a long time and it helps Build your sort of trust and authority not just with potential readers or listeners or viewers, but also with Google and the, the algorithm gods. And then, and then the fourth category is sort of this like catch all category that I am calling buzzworthy marketing. And that can be a whole bunch of different things, but it's basically like these are the things that you do or participate in or specials that you run that give you something to talk about. One of the biggest challenges that I think we all face with marketing is that we generally have kind of one service that is what we're selling and we just have to show up over and over and over again and talk about like come book a family session, come book a newborn, whatever it is that you do. You might have a few different offers, but you end up talking about them over and over and over and over again, which is hard. You're always trying to talk about it a little bit differently. So one of the ways that we can mix that up and change it up is to come up with these buzzworthy things like I'm running mini sessions or I have a, we're doing mommy and me sessions. And it doesn't have to just be sessions, it can be all kinds of things. I have, I'm, I am carrying a new line of albums and we get to talk about albums for a couple of weeks or whatever. So, so those buzzworthy events and, and again, it doesn't have to be an event, it can just be something that's going on. But those buzzworthy marketing strategies are typically where I recommend that you start when it comes to your marketing planning. Because individual blog posts and social media posts and emails and all that sort of stuff, if you're trying to write those, every single one of those as a one off, it's a lot more brain power than if you start with an event or something buzzworthy and then you break it down into these sort of sequential things. So start big with the, with the thing that you're going to be talking about and then plan your content from there. So more or less those three lessons, take that and expand on that. And then the three GPTs that I built, these custom GPTs help you take that concept and hopefully implement it. Because by the end of this month, whether you're doing it now or going back and doing it later, what I want for you to walk away with is a pretty well planned out 90 day content strategy that covers all four of these blades of your marketing windmill.
- [10:42]
Kim Box
That is all super wonderful and I am curious if anybody in here. And again, just Use the chat to let me know. Okay. Excuse me, sir, is, did y' all have experience with Chat GPT? I mean, I feel like I use it a lot and have been using it for probably the last like five or six months.
- [11:04]
Annemie Tonkin
One of the things that I hear a lot when I'm talking to people about Chachi PT is this concept of I am worried that it's not gonna. I don't want to use it because I'm worried it's not going to sound like me. I'm worried people are going to know that there's a robot running my business, whatever, which are certainly valid concerns. And I think it can come across that way and it can become robotic again. I sort of look at this and when I first heard about ChatGPT from my dad, of all people, who was like, have you heard about this new thing? I remember thinking very much the same thing that I remember when my first friend got a smartphone and I was like, huh, so what do you use it for? Like, what's the purpose of that thing? Trying to imagine how I would use it. Same thing. When my dad said something about ChatGPT, I was like, so what would I. What would I do with that? And the first couple of times I played with it, it was like, help me meal plan for a week. And then it spit out a bunch of garbage. And I was like, well, that was useless. Waste of my time. Never mind, I won't do that. And, and like anything, you really do have to sort of learn how to use the tool in front of you. So when it comes to AI, my. And now I use it all the time, but I have sort of taken a very specific human first approach to AI where I totally recognize, and I think, I don't know whether it's true or not, but all over my Facebook feed right now and Instagram feed are people talking about this stuff study that was just released about how like, our neural connections are atrophying before our eyes. I totally understand that as a concern. My feeling is I am the brain here. Like, this is my business, it's my creativity, it's my whatever powering the engine. But when I sat down to come up with this windmill strategy analogy, I have long taught a marketing, a similar marketing approach called the marketing jar, which is like, if you've ever heard that pattern parable or allegory or whatever about like, you fill a jar, you start with the big rocks and then you do pebbles, and then you do sand, and then you do water. And I would sort of use Those as my. The four areas that I just talked about. So you start with your buzzworthy events and then you fill in content marketing, email marketing, and social media. If you start in the reverse order, if you fill up your jar first with water, there's no space to add rocks and all the other stuff because the water will splash out. So there's. So that was how I always taught it, but I was like, I feel like it's not quite. I want to teach this a different way. And so I sat down with ChatGPT and I was like, here's the basic thing.
- [13:52]
Melissa
And I.
- [13:53]
Annemie Tonkin
Here's my problem with the way that I'm teaching this metaphor right now, and I want to come up with different ideas. And we just had a conversation back and forth, and it was throwing ideas at me, and I was like, nope, nope, nope. And then at some point I either chatgpt said something about a windmill or I. It came to my mind and I was like, let's. Let's explore the idea of a windmill. And. And so I think that that is the difference for me when it comes to using Chat GPT in a way that continues to feel truly authentic to my thoughts. And in many ways, I feel like when I go about that exercise in that way, I come away feeling energized and like my brain is firing on all cylinders, as opposed to me showing up and being like, how should I market this thing? Or what should I teach this month? And it giving me ideas that to me, sort of feels like I am abdicating my creative process or whatever, outsourcing my creative process instead of allowing AI to help me brainstorm. If that makes sense.
- [15:04]
Kim Box
Yes. I love that. I love that. There was something I was thinking the other day was. Or not the other day, but about when we were talking about this was whenever Katie Lamb did her, like, editing things and she talked about, like, the AI tools. I'm sorry, it was Danielle, not Katie, but Katie has the same mindset. Just like she wants to use those tools to just kind of enhance what's already there. And I feel like you're kind of saying the same thing. Like, you're not just saying, okay, create this for me. It's like, I'm going to give you all the tools you need from my brain, and I just need you to enhance my thinking. Like, just like, narrow this down a little bit. Because we got a lot of things on our brains as women and mothers and business owners and all the things, and we need someone to say, let's cut out this Stuff. And here's what you really need.
- [15:57]
Annemie Tonkin
Yeah, I don't know. Well, and I love that. And I am also a big advocate for and proponent of editing AI tools. Namely because unless you are coming to the table, as I am a photo editor, not I am a photographer, then you may want to put some artistic edit layers on top. But there's really no reason that you have to be sitting there adjusting your tone curves and your contrast and like straightening a picture. That is. We have more capacity than that. I think it's good to learn how to do those things because I think it actually helps you see, see differently through the lens.
- [16:41]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right.
- [16:41]
Annemie Tonkin
As I'm sure if you're a film shooter or back in the film days, going through your negatives and seeing like, okay, this is what was working. This. This didn't work as well. I do think that the learning process is great, but then once you've achieved some level of mastery there, I think allowing that to be something that you outsource is great. And AI is a very inexpensive, fast way to outsource that. And I think that that's the other piece of this. I actually feel like as AI expands its reach and is something that is used more and more and people are worried, understandably, about job security and all that sort of thing, I think that artists and creative people, entrepreneurs, whatever, are among the safest areas. Even though AI can produce some pretty great photos. Anyone. I mean, we're here in the motherhood anthology space. Like, anyone who has a new baby doesn't want a fake image of that new baby. It's not the same thing as having an actual photograph that was taken on a day that they remember. And so I think that in that way, what we have to do is take the opportunity that AI gives us to focus on actual our art. When we don't have to write every blog post, when we don't have to edit every photo, we can really focus on establishing the relationships that are required in our businesses and creating the art that we really want to create. So I look at, or I try to look at it as an opportunity to get even better at what we do. But we do have to have real clarity on what it is that we alone can do versus the things that we can outsource. And that's different for everyone. Like, there are certain things that I think editing is a great example. There are certain photographers out there for whom editing is such a large part of the final product that they deliver, because it is. They're not just looking for kind of true to life edits. They're looking for something beyond that.
- [18:54]
Kim Box
So anyway, yeah, no, I love that we. So I'm a, I'm a Claude girl myself. I like Claude. That's another version, whatever chat GPT. And I know several of you probably already know this. I know Anomie definitely knows this. But like having a project in there where I say I just will, I mean, give it every thought that I have about whatever I need it for. Like, obviously, like I have a TMA project that's like I, I give it any, anything that I've ever spoken on that I could pull a transcript from. I want to know exactly or not me, but like tma, like I need that, I need that voice. I need you to understand what I, what I'm trying to say and not use necessarily that part of my brain that's. It's like, I know here's what I need to talk about and I have that subject matter and I just need your help to make that not sound dumb. Yeah, basically. But I love that you have the project. I think, I think that's one of the biggest things that kind of helped whenever I, when I started and I was like, give me tips to organize my family calendar and like, they didn't know anything about my calendar, my family or anything. And so I like the idea of that, like using it to really like, get like know your brand, know your voice and like really dig into that is really, is really neat. And I mean, I'm afraid of being left behind too. I just think so many people are going to jump on AI Claude, Chat GPT and I don't want to be way back here like, oh, now what, what was it that you guys were using? So I really appreciate that you brought this to the membership because I think this is extremely valuable information today and for the future. I feel like you're going to look back at this education and be like, wow, AI can do so much more.
- [20:55]
Annemie Tonkin
It'll be really dated, I'm sure. But I think that sometimes I in the past have been afraid of producing anything that could be perceived as dated at any point. And the fact of the matter is, I mean, as photographers we all know like the styles change, the photography styles change. Like all those things do change.
- [21:13]
Kim Box
Yeah.
- [21:14]
Annemie Tonkin
It does not mean, mean that it, it does not remove the value of that thing in that time. And these are all stepping stones, especially when we're talking about like a big cultural and technological shift such as the introduction of AI in our. Into our daily lives. In this capacity, I would Love to just check in with you guys because, yes, like, I'm doing a lot of this and I would love to hear, we're talking generally speaking about marketing right now. What are your struggles? Hang ups, what's working, what's not working? I'd love to hear kind of where you are in the marketing world right now.
- [21:56]
Melissa
I've been in the business for about 12 years now. And the first 10 years, I guess Facebook was my outlet. That's the only thing I used. I did not blog. I had a website, but I did no, no blogging. I had no SEO. I had no clue what I was doing. It was just Facebook. And I've gained a lot of clients over the years just from that. And now it seems like it's starting to really slow down now. My, my Google performance is amazing. I am number one in my area for several different category. So that's exciting. And I'm getting more people through Google search as well. But I still want that Facebook interaction. And I don't know if it's the time of day when I'm sharing things. If it's just people just don't care. Like, I just, I'm not sure like what. When do you see that window where you, where you get more interaction, even if it's just likes or anything like that.
- [23:06]
Annemie Tonkin
So I would sort of pull that back and answer that question with like a larger. I guess I'm feeling philosophically chatty today. So one of the things like change is the only thing we can count on or whatever that quote is. I feel like Facebook was huge when we were getting started. You sounds like you started shortly after I did. And it was the place for sure to share your work and all that sort of thing. Instagram came along. Now TikTok came along. Like there is a certain amount of keeping up that we can choose to do or not. And then there's also just kind of reading the writing on the wall. I feel like Facebook is more there. Everybody's on Facebook, no question. Like, people check in on Facebook all the time. I don't think that people are interacting as much on Facebook in general. In my experience, in groups like this, like in the TMA group, that's one thing. So if you have a, if you have private groups that you're part of that are local, I would say focus your energy in those spaces where you can. And I know that it's not always easy to like you. You have to watch the rules in those groups and not promote your work. If you're in a group. But that doesn't mean that you can't have meaningful social connections, which is really what marketing is there. And then people will sort of inevitably kind of end up following you and then they see the posts that you're doing and that sort of thing. But I think that expecting to post a beautiful photo on your Facebook feed and have a bunch of people commenting, liking, whatever, it's just not. And I'm happy for anybody to jump in and be like, nope, I see that, I get that all the time. I'm not seeing it. But that doesn't mean that people aren't seeing, seeing and paying attention. I think that what I would suggest is that you make sure that you are, in addition to sharing, pretty that you are also actively focusing on trying to bring people into a space that you can communicate more directly with them. And I talk in this month's training a lot about email marketing. I really feel like email marketing is the stablest, most reliable way to remain in contact with people until that time that they are ready to purchase. Because for better or for worse, our collective social media feeds, all the different ones have become so first of all, algorithm powered. Whereas once upon a time Facebook, Instagram were like in reverse chronological order, now it's. You're getting fed what they want you to see and, and it's just, it's harder and harder to rely on that as a marketer, as a small business owner. So maybe look into, if you're not already doing this, you've. Hopefully this month we'll put together a really killer lead magnet using one of these custom GPTs. Fresh lead magnets every quarter or so that do not need to be big lifts. Then over time you have five or six that you can talk about at different times and inviting people to, hey, come sign up for this thing. And, and then communicating with them in that space is my own personal recommendation. So hopefully that didn't answer your question, but hopefully it helped it.
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Melissa
It did in a way. It did it away. It's fine, it's fine. I run my mouth too sometimes. But yeah, I get what, I get what you're saying.
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Kim Box
I know.
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Melissa
I think I post also maybe too much about too many different things during a week. Like I had my lavender sessions. Oh, here's a lavender. Oh, but then I'm doing my front porch minis. Oh, but then I've got, oh, this.
- [26:50]
Annemie Tonkin
Fun things coming up.
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Melissa
So I think that I need to really focus on just these, the, what do you call them? The buzzworthy. Yeah, things that, that are coming up So I. I get it.
- [27:04]
Annemie Tonkin
Yeah. And generally speaking, it's also really easy for us because we create so much visual content to lean entirely on sharing visual content instead of inviting people into conversations. So once upon a time, you posted a photo and people were moved to comment and say things and ask questions, whatever. These days I feel like we have all. And I mean, if you think about the way that you interact online, chances are good that you are also more passive these days when it comes to. There's just so much content, there's. And so inviting people to be more social, asking questions. Does anybody have a even. I sometimes find that off topic, things that are not specifically about photography, where you're like, looking for a new book to read or something like that, that gets a conversation started because somebody doesn't feel like they're being sold to directly. And it's not disingenuous. I think bringing the social back to social media is a challenge that we all have to continuously remind ourselves to focus on.
- [28:12]
Melissa
So is that something that you put on. You put that on your business page or a personal page? You put that on your business?
- [28:18]
Annemie Tonkin
I, I would do that anywhere because what I'm trying to do when it comes to marketing, obviously you. You don't want to do exclusively that, but mixing it up reminds people that you are a human, that you have interests and likes and all that sort of stuff outside of what it is that you do that they can connect with you on in the context of. Oh, and I love the photos that she's making. So I think that that's. It's more important than we tend to give it credit for. We want our photos to just do the selling for us. But. But when people are hiring us, they are hiring a whole person oftentimes to come into their homes and interact with their kids and all that sort of thing. It's. It's a very personal thing. So being personal with people has a lot of value.
- [29:05]
Kim Box
I was gonna jump in, actually, because yesterday I posted on Instagram my story that I walked around Costco baby wearing my baby. My whole personality is being a mom of young kids, basically, if you haven't caught on to that by now. But I had posted a quick selfie of me wearing the baby in the parking lot of Costco. And I said something like, does wearing a baby around Costco count as a weighted vest walk? And I just. It was funny. It was silly. I got like 30 replies. Do you know how many replies I get on a typical Instagram post? Like maybe one. And I love My pictures. So I was like but no, I have so I have like almost a thousand views. I usually have like 200. I was like okay, clearly I need to be posting some more personal things. You guys are really, really interested in that.
- [29:59]
Melissa
Yeah, I. I totally agree. If I. I think I shared it might have been my new profile picture on my business page. My new headshot. I got like a. A thousand. Good God, I wish about a hundred likes on it. And that stuff when I share something that's more about me, pictures of my kids or a video, a silly video. I did one the other day. We were going to the pool and I was getting messages. I definitely see a big difference and those two different types rather than just that type of marketing than sharing your own personal juicy business.
- [30:35]
Annemie Tonkin
And I'm. I am. I struggle with this personally because I tend to not. I'm like who cares why. Why does anyone want to know about my whatever xyz in my own personal life I have been proved wrong again and again about that. And so in you have to walk the line between we are running businesses. It shouldn't just be like oh yeah, oh right and I'll take money for services if you. If you want but right like we do want to lead with that but not being afraid to mix it up and. And be. I mean again it doesn't have to be a whole lot more personal than asking for book recommendations or talking about like oh I went to the new restaurant in town. I find that talking about local other local businesses that you love is another really great way to engage conversation or asking for local recommend cause it builds goodwill in your community and all those kinds of things. Shannon posted Sharing my real moments of postpartum depression got me a few clients. They knew that me being open about something so hard they could trust me to hold a judgment free space for them a hundred percent. That's one of those where it's like if you are in a place emotionally, mentally, how however you define that that you are. I love the phrase that I've heard before where it's share your scars, not your wounds or something like that. Like you obviously social media can be a pretty brutal place to share something that you're not ready to share. So be careful with yourselves. But yeah, I mean for sure that kind of openness vulnerability invites people to kind of meet you where you are and probably allows some people to connect with you in a way that is can't be replicated elsewhere. It's not a marketing strategy, it's just you being you Question on that. Sorry, yeah. Can I ask you a question about that? So do you recommend doing that through stories or through posts or sharing the more personal stuff, you mean? It depends. It depends on what it is. If it's something that you. So I'm just going to use the example of my journey with postpartum depression. That's a big topic. And once you're ready to acknowledge it, if you're like, I am going to be public about this, you could do it. You could be as public about it as you want in terms of. You could write a blog post, like a long, heartfelt blog post about it, and then pull excerpts from that, put them in your feed or in stories or whatever, and bring people over to the blog post with something that's that personal and in depth. I might do it that way or I might consider doing it that way because it. It's not like a sound bite, those bigger kinds of things. But if you have something that's sort of personal that's going on and you're like, I want to try to share this, or I want to see what the feedback is on something like this. Maybe you have big political feelings or something like that, and you're like, I don't know how I feel about posting this. Stories are an easy way to do, like a little toe in the water and see what the. What the reaction is and how you feel about that. Because again, all of this needs to be filtered through the. What am I comfortable with? We don't need to set ourselves up to have people coming at us. That's not. It's not really what we're. I feel like that's just good advice in the world when it comes to social media. But. But yeah, I think that stories are a great place to dip your toe in the water and for things like. Because personal, again, doesn't need to be super vulnerable. Personal can be like, oh, we're renovating my bathroom. That sort of stuff is great in stories because it's probably not what you're going to want on your grid. Right. And so I think that those are kind of the two different ways to think about stories. People love stories, though. I mean, it is easy, short form. It doesn't have to be perfect content. Thank you. So iPhone 95. Love that name. I'm new to email marketing. Do you have a favorite platform to start or recommend? Any other suggestions when starting email marketing? I am a Flodesk ambassador. I love flodesk. What's funny and what I am very open about is that I no longer use flodesk for most of my email marketing. I use it for my photography email marketing. But my if you are on the this can't be that hard newsletter that comes from kit. And that was only because at a certain point with a bigger email marketing reach and also like a different objective I was, I needed some stuff that Facebook or that Facebook that flodesk doesn't focus on because they really are looking to cater to small business owners, often creative business owners. But I love flodesk for a bunch of reasons. Their platform is super easy to use and intuitive. It's beautiful. It's very easy to have something that feels extremely true to your brand. I love that they have now introduced not only email templates, but workflow templates. So I run a membership called the Consistency Club that is like monthly marketing material for photographers. So it's email templates, social media templates and sneak peek. In a couple of months we're doing an AI powered blog tool that I'm extremely excited about. It's in beta right now and getting tons of very positive feedback, but yay. No, that wasn't even, I mean it was in the like dream phase but not quite there when we were talking about.
- [36:17]
Kim Box
That's so exciting.
- [36:19]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Thank you.
- [36:20]
Annemie Tonkin
But the email back to my question. Okay. Flodesk. So like for instance, every month when I write these email templates, I then convert that into a flodesk template that you can just click into like you rewrite the parts that you know are like tell a story about X, Y, Z. And that flodesk template feature is very, very handy. So I mean there are other people out there who have flodesk templates for both, for both the workflows and emails themselves. I just feel like it's, it's such a user friendly tool. So that's the one that I recommend. As far as other suggestions when starting the third lesson of this month has a GPT that helps you build a welcome sequence. That's one of my number one things is that we are, once we get sold on the idea of email marketing, a lot of people are like, okay, great, I'm going to create a lead magnet. I'm going to get people onto my list. And then at the time when someone first signs up for your list, that is like your golden opportunity to really cement that relationship where even if it's not the right time for them to hire you, you want to onboard them, so to speak, so that they know exactly who you are. Kind of the what, what kind of work you do what you stand for, whatever. Sending a relatively quick succession of three to five emails, that's just kind of like a, hey, let me tell you about me. Let me ask you some questions. Hopefully invite them to hit reply is a really powerful way to get someone from, like, who found your freebie and was like, oh, yeah, I could really use local restaurant tips or whatever to go from that to they know who you are, exactly who you serve, what kind of problem you could solve for them, whatever. It's a, it's a powerful thing. So start there, start with lesson three and build that onboarding sequence. And then, yeah, the cadence that I generally recommend is two emails a month, I feel like is kind of the sweet spot in photography.
- [38:24]
Kim Box
On the topic of email strategy, I did want to know a little bit about, I guess you've been doing emails for a long time, so kind of talk about maybe like how email strategy was maybe when you started and then maybe what it would look like now for a photographer just starting.
- [38:43]
Annemie Tonkin
Oh, my God. Well, it does not get a whole lot more different than it was. I mean, other than me actually mailing out a physical newsletter.
- [38:51]
Kim Box
Wow.
- [38:52]
Annemie Tonkin
Which I did not do. I think I was probably right after that. But, But I remember the first emails, email marketing emails that I sent were I purchased, I think I purchased on Etsy, like a PDF template of some sort that then you would go in and so I was mailing people a PDF that they had to open that was like, anyway, it's come a long way since then. The general principles, though, have not changed all that much. Basically, you want to engage people in a way that feels authentic. And I mean, it's going to sound like a lot of repetition here. I'm like, go talk to people about you as a human on social media. The same is true across all marketing channels. If you show up like, we are not Coca Cola, right? I am not just trying to sell a product. I am selling an experience. I am selling a relationship. I am selling, yes, my art, but also my reliability as a service provider and as someone who again, you can invite into your home and all those kinds of things. So when it comes to writing newsletters, the number one question so when people join the consistency club, we have them fill out an onboarding survey and one of the things that they are asked is like, what are your biggest challenges with email? And what's your. What are your biggest challenges with social media? And by far for email, the like resounding answer is, I don't know what to say. Like, I know I should be sending a newsletter. I don't know what to say. So the goal of the consistency club really is just to take that out of the equation. Like here we're going to give you a scenario to kind of think about, share your version of. And then, and then it makes it less of a mental challenge. But the. But knowing what to say really comes down to yes. You have to get into that mindset of like how can I share a story or like an experience. It could be wearing my baby around Costco. It's like a great example of the kind of story that you can lead with and then connect that those dots to we moms have to do it all, blah blah, blah. If you're speaking to moms in your newsletter and then at the end having a little bit of a call to action, a reminder that like hey, I'm here, you want to hire me, you can do that. And if you've got one of those buzz worthy events coming up, talk about that or if you whatever and you're peppering some photos in there. The goal to me of an email of course is like yes, please hit reply and hire me. That would be great. Eventually somebody will. What we do is not something that people go to the store and buy every week. Right. It's more like a annual maybe, maybe more than once a year. But usually once a year is about as good as it gets. So we just want to be front of top of mind, front and center in somebody's mind where when the thought occurs to them, I need to hire a photographer. You are the first person that they think of. They know exactly how to find your contact information because all they have to do is like pop your name into the search bar in their gmail and you're right there. And so even if somebody doesn't open your emails every other week when you send them, they're seeing your name in their feed or in their inbox and they're reminded of who you are and what you do.
- [42:10]
Kim Box
Yep. I love that. And I'm not saying I'm, I'm not going to tell that story in my TMA newsletter tomorrow.
- [42:16]
Annemie Tonkin
So if you see it and your newsletters, Allie, are so good. I really do. Like my hat's off to you. You always tell great stories. It's don't if you're, if you're someone who's like, well if my email doesn't look like that, then it's not worth sending. Ali is extra good.
- [42:35]
Kim Box
Oh, that's so sweet.
- [42:37]
Annemie Tonkin
So sweet.
- [42:38]
Kim Box
Thank you. That means a Lot coming from the email strategy connoisseur. Okay, I have one kind of like final question before we get into like some ending things. And I know we've, we've probably talked about this, but just as like a clarity question. So like I, I coined, I didn't coin this phrase, I've heard it. But like as a momtographer who is doing the mom thing, doing the photography thing, you're busy with both and you got to keep up with marketing or you're going to get left behind. But you're like, I have this amount of window of time to do this. What's the biggest bang for your buck? What's the, what's the thing that's gonna to move the marketing needle the most? So really focus that time.
- [43:22]
Annemie Tonkin
Well, I feel like I could take that question in a few different directions. Like as far as what is, if you had to concentrate on one strategy, I mean, I would say email, but I don't love the whole like just one strategy thing because you do have to get people onto your email list and there's a, there's the thing there. So I think that the better answer to that question is really to create systems for yourself. It is so much easier. Like if I go to the grocery store without a list or a plan for like meals, then I buy Cheez its and like pickles and I get home and I'm like, well, we're all going to starve. Because I don't, I didn't, I didn't have a plan. I think that by creating a system for yourself, and that's kind of what I was trying to go for with the marketing windmill and giving you the, this sort of three part. First we're going to plan this event and then we're going to plan the, a lead magnet that sort of brings people to that and some emails. I think that if you have a framework that you use and you're like, without fail, I am going to write a blog post every month, I'm going to send two emails and every quarter I'm going to sit down and plan some sort of buzzworthy something that I can then use to talk about in my blog posts and my emails and my social media. It just becomes much easier. It does have to be done. I don't think that there's any way to get around marketing your business. And, and I think that you also have to just kind of make peace with the fact that that is, you are on that treadmill for the rest of your career. I don't care how popular you get. I don't care. You know how much people love your photos. You always have to be asking for the sale. And that's really, it's ultimately, it's what marketing is all about, is bringing them to, to the place where you can ask for that sale.
- [45:17]
Kim Box
So find the time. Yeah, you got to find the time.
- [45:20]
Melissa
And look for tools.
- [45:21]
Annemie Tonkin
I mean, this is another thing where you're like, if you're not a natural born storyteller, writer, whatever, come join the Consistency club for. It's 24amonth. It's not very much and you're getting like two basically ready to go emails, a bunch of social media prompts and then this blog post thing is coming soon. But. But it really, that was the whole purpose. So I have a woman who is my marketing director for this can't be that hard. And a few years ago we were sitting around talking about like, what is. What do people struggle with? And it really was like, marketing just is this ongoing thing and people are like, I used up all my creativity elsewhere.
- [45:58]
Kim Box
Yeah.
- [45:58]
Annemie Tonkin
What am I supposed to do? It's so important to be consistent. If it's not the consistency Club, find some other place that you can get some of the heavy lifting done for you or use ChatGPT to like help you brainstorm ideas. The tools are out there. Making use of them is really the piece that you have to do.
- [46:18]
Kim Box
Yeah. Kara just said as a mom of six, I only have four to six hours twice a week to work. I take one day early in the month where I schedule my posts and even some newsletters. That helps big time when you're busy. Yeah. Planning out that extra time is just. Yeah. Getting up early before your kids or whatever that looks like.
- [46:36]
Annemie Tonkin
And I, I think as a mom of six, you could hold a masterclass on planning and getting organized and doing all the things. I mean that really is. It's required, it's necessary. Otherwise everybody. Nobody eats. And in business. Yeah. Not getting clients is nobody eats.
- [46:54]
Kim Box
Exactly. Okay, well, Anime, thank you so much. I would love to hear. Let's tell a little bit about you. Also, I need to mention this before anybody starts heading out. Giveaway this month is Consistency Club. So we've talked about this a little bit. So I don't remember if we check. We said how many months of that. That is.
- [47:12]
Annemie Tonkin
I think we were just going to do an annual membership one year.
- [47:16]
Kim Box
You get one year of consistent marketing from Anomie and her team. So one lucky TMA member is going to win that and we are going to change up a little bit how we pick the winner. And so I will post about that in the group. So just be on the lookout for that. And I think that's a huge giveaway. I think that's amazing. So we're super, super excited about that. But maybe tell people where they can find you, what other offerings you have, that kind of thing, and then we'll. We'll wrap it up. Sure.
- [47:47]
Annemie Tonkin
I am all things this can't be that Hard. So I have a podcast by that name, this can't be that hard.com is the website and I'm in the TMA Facebook group all the time.
- [47:59]
Kim Box
So yes, she is.
- [48:00]
Annemie Tonkin
And say, hey, I am. Let's see other offers. So the thing that I'm kind of known for in the world outside of the Consistency club is the simple sales system, which is a system that I. Yeah, thanks for the wave. I created in my own business back in 2017 because I needed to. And then, and then it worked so well that that was kind of what inspired me to get into education in the first place. So. So if you are looking for a way to earn in person sales type money without doing in person sales, go check out the free masterclass on that, which is on the website.
- [48:38]
Kim Box
Perfect.
- [48:39]
Annemie Tonkin
Yep.
- [48:39]
Kim Box
Melissa in our group is a. I mean, huge advocate for Onomy. She was the one that actually, and she told me and Kim, she was like, you've got to talk to Anomie about becoming a mentor. And I was like, okay, let's look her up. And honestly, I was like, okay, I'm kind of intimidated by Anomie. She's like, she's, look at her. She's so fancy with her microphone. I was like, she's so professional. She's gonna be like, who is this girl?
- [49:06]
Annemie Tonkin
Paper wall behind me. It's very fancy.
- [49:09]
Kim Box
I love it, I love it. But we're so. And I mean, Shannon, I'm. I'm echoing Shannon, we're so lucky to have you in the membership. I actually did a, a beach session last night for a girl that was in the TMA membership and we had met because she had gone on the retreat last year and I talked to her and she was like, yeah, I haven't become a member. Like, I had to pause because of my studio, blah, blah, whatever. And she was like, but I saw that on me was this month and I'm joining in July because I have to see her content. So people, people just love you. And we are, we're so blessed. So lucky to have you.
- [49:48]
Annemie Tonkin
Really do it is. It has become such a meaningful part of I never, I never really anticipated getting into education, but I have so enjoyed more than anything the relationships with other photographers that I've been able to establish. And we are. It is. I know everybody says this, but it is can be such a lonely business and I find that this kind of connection and just sharing of ideas and, and kind of helping each other along, it is the thing that fuels my creativity these days. So yeah. So thank you for inviting me.
- [50:23]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Oh I really love Kim and the whole Motherhood Anthology team and community. They are such champions for photographers who are trying to balance business, creativity and family life. Conversations like this remind me that marketing doesn't have to feel heavy or complicated and that with a little structure and a few good tools you can create systems that support your business year round. If you are looking to level up your marketing strategy, you can dive deep inside the Consistency Club which you will find@thiscantbethard.com club. That is where we share marketing trainings along with ready to go emails, social captions and our new AI powered blog builder which are all designed to help you show up consistently without burning out. Thank you again for tuning in my friends and cheers to marketing that feels a little more like flow and a little less like force. I'll see you again next week.
- [51:21]
Annemie Tonkin
That's it for this week's episode of.
- [51:23]
Anna Mi Tonkin
This Can't Be that Hard. I'll be back same time, same place next week.
- [51:26]
Annemie Tonkin
If you like the show, be sure.
- [51:28]
Anna Mi Tonkin
To check out thiscan'tbethard.com to explore all.
- [51:31]
Annemie Tonkin
The resources we have for photographers. And of course it would mean the.
- [51:34]
Anna Mi Tonkin
World to me if you would leave a review of the the show on itunes or Spotify. As always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.