What is a Searchie Hub?
You’ve heard me talk on and on about Searchie—about how I was seduced by it when I was at Tribe Live 2020 and we were given a sneak peek at a Hub before it was even in beta. You may be wondering, what is all the hubbub about? Perhaps you’ve read a few articles or watched a few videos and you’re still a little confused about what the heck a Hub really is.
A Searchie Hub Defined
A Searchie Hub is a site to host, sell, and share your content. That’s the fancy language. In Michelle-speak: it’s a “website-like” place for you to take all the awesome things you have to share with the world and get them out there…all your ideas, material, video, audio, and more. That might be a course, membership, sales page, podcast, or website. The innovative creators behind Searchie, Stu McLaren, and Andrew Ferraccioli are entrepreneurs focused on building long-term client relationships. That shows in the software they’ve built. A Searchie Hub allows you the opportunity to create a truly unique, one-of-a-kind space for your user.
Is a Searchie Hub for You?
Next, you may be wondering if a Searchie Hub is right for you? Well, are you building and selling:
a class or course
coaching (1-on-1 or group)
a consulting program
a workshop
event replays
a podcast
a free product to attract new clients (video, audio, and/or print material)
a blog
Each and every day, people are coming up with new ways to use Searchie Hubs. The way the platform is developed allows you to think outside the box and be imaginative.
How is a Searchie Hub built?
It’s easy to build a Hub. You begin by adding your video, audio, and related material into the media area.
Loading content takes just a few clicks with Searchie’s integrations with other platforms such as Facebook, Google, Dropbox, Vimeo, Zoom, OneDrive, and more. If you have just a few videos or hundreds, you’ll import your content in no time flat. It’s best to think about how you want to organize your content as it’s coming in since it’s now going to live in Searchie (this is when many people drop other paid platforms!).
Drag-n-Drop Builder
If you’re anything like me, when you woke up one day with a passion to be an entrepreneur, it didn’t include a deep desire to do coding in your spare hours (when are those, right?) “Techie” is not in your job description. The Searchie team understands this through and through and developed a simple user interface that works for everyday people like you and me. It’s all drag and drop!
Set It and Forget It
The integrations I mentioned earlier-how you import your material into Searchie…what’s even better is now your connections are made, if you like, you can auto-sync your content. No more thinking or worrying about downloading. Once you’ve recorded your content, it will appear inside your Searchie account!
Searchie Hubs are created using this media (either singular videos, playlists with multiple videos in a series, a grid, or a carousel of videos.) Once you’ve designed your Hub and set up how the content will appear inside it, any new content put into Searchie will be added automatically to the Hub.
An example of how this can work for you: you have a regular coaching or membership meeting on Zoom. Set up the integration on Searchie, create a folder for the media and set it to auto-process, set up a playlist, put the playlist in your Hub, record your session in Zoom, then voila…all your Zooms will now show up inside your Hub! No more to-do tasks to share your videos. Easy-peasy!
Fabulous Features
There are so many things that make Searchie Hubs an incredible software application. Here are just a few:
Searchie Namesake Reduces Overwhelm
The original premise of Searchie was to create a search engine for video content. Searchie was the first-ever application to make it possible to transcribe, auto-caption content, and then make that content searchable by keyword.
Inside your Searchie Hub, the Searchie search bar allows your audience to search through all the video and audio content they have access to within that Hub. Your users only have so much time. This gives them the opportunity to look for exactly what they need when they need it. Additionally, you can create pages of content and curate the searchable content on that page. Filter what playlists your users can search. All of this helps keep overwhelm to a minimum.
Canva Integration
So, we’ve established you don’t likely have a burning desire to hack code every day. The same probably applies to not wanting to be a graphic designer, right? Searchie to the rescue—the native Canva integration! This means you get to design in Canva and then work directly inside Searchie with it. The thumbnail templates you create inside Canva actually provide the creative structure/scheme and backdrop of your Searchie Hub.
For those of you who’ve worked with Canva before, you know how quickly you can design to your heart's desire. Select from the hundreds of free templates inside Canva, switch out the colors with a few clicks, drop in your own images (if you prefer), put in your own language and you’re set to go!
Tailor Content for Custom Audiences
Right now, Searchie Hubs can be either public or private (although with the release of Searchie 2.0 just around the corner, this will be changing shortly.) A public Searchie Hub is “open” and can be seen by anyone who has the URL to that Hub. A private Searchie Hub is “closed” and can only be seen by those you provide access to. A distinctive feature of Searchie is audience segmentation (and tagging) that allows you, in private Searchie Hubs, to customize and control who sees what in your Hub. You can assign certain sections to only be seen by certain groups. Create multi-levels such as silver, platinum, or gold to stratify your course or membership. Make private 1-on-1 or group coaching sessions available only to the people you want. The possibilites are as endless as your imagination or need.
Record like a Rockstar
If you don’t have any content ready for your Searchie Hub yet, no worries. Start recording right on your own computer using the Searchie Chrome Extension. Install the extension on your computer, press record, start sharing everything locked up in your brain, press stop, and you’re done! The video will show up in your Searchie media, ready for you to apply to your Searchie Hub as you like. Of course, it’s “searchieized”, meaning it’s transcribed, captioned, and now searchable for your audience.
If you want to get fancy, you can record your screen, your camera, or a combination of both. Take it up another notch using the annotations feature. It’s so fun to make a presentation and “mark” over it with colored lines, arrows, and more. This new feature makes it perfect for filming tutorials, video messages, and feedback sessions.
The best thing about the Chrome Extension is that all the “hours” are free. For those of you on the Pro plan, this means that everything you record using this tool doesn’t count toward your 15 hours.
If you’re curious how to get the most out of the Chrome Extension, here’s a short video I produced to show people how to use it.
Make Money on Your Content
You’ve been producing videos, audio, podcasts, materials, courses, Facebook Lives, and more—all for free. It’s time to start charging for your time, talent, experience, and expertise! No need to feel overwhelmed with all the logistics, the Searchie Stripe integration makes it a smooth process.
If you don’t already have a free Stripe account, set one up. It takes only a few minutes to connect your accounts so you can accept payment and have money electronically deposited. Then, connect your Searchie to Stripe with the click of a button. Heading back into Stripe, set up any “products” you’d like to sell such as courses or memberships. In Searchie, assign those products to your Hub and you’re ready to release your payment page so people can pay. You can also set up custom coupons to offer discounts, gift certificates, and/or freebies.
What’s great about using the Searchie Stripe integration is that your users can register themselves, have immediate access to their Hub, and (if you like) have a customer portal where they can make changes themselves to their credit card information, suspend or cancel their subscription and view their invoice history.
If you prefer not to use the Searchie Stripe integration, you can use Zapier to link to other payment gateways such as Thrivecart, Shopify, WooCommerce or others.
Analyze and Prioritize
Once your users are in your Searchie Hub and consuming content, it’s not a mindless vacuum. Thanks to Searchie’s sophisticated analytics, you can analyze what your people are watching, not watching, the extent they are watching (% complete), and what they are searching for.
Use the information you gather to make changes to the content in your Hub. If you’ve got a social media course and they’ve been searching for “Facebook Ads” inside your Hub, give them more content on that or feature it in a more prominent way. If users are NOT completing your series on TikTok but ARE completing your series on Instagram Reels, put that material front and center.
Duplicate
Once you’ve created something good, there’s no sense in reinventing the wheel! Who has time for that? Searchie’s duplicate feature allows you to copy playlists, Hubs, and Hub pages.
If you don’t need something in the playlist or Hub you want to duplicate? No worries, just delete a video/s and/or section from whatever you’ve duplicated. What if you need more of something? Duplicate and make a change to the thumbnail art and/or media connected with that playlist or Hub.
Other Cool Stuff:
Personalize your Hub using the “insert” user name, first name, first and last name, or email feature
Differentiate how the content in your Hub appears with a variety of section options
Upload documents, spreadsheets, images and other materials using the attachments feature—either upload directly from your desktop or use an external link (to a Google Drive or Dropbox, for example)
Market your Hub using a custom domain—using Cloudflare, assign a URL that is unique to your Hub so your users know it’s yours and/or can find it easily
See How Easy it Is!
Curious how easy it is to create a membership in Searchie? Watch how I do it in under 30 minutes in this video.
Give it a Try
I hope this has given you a better picture of all that a Searchie Hub can do for you.
What seems most appealing to you?
What is your favorite feature about Searchie Hubs?
If you’re not sure if Searchie is the platform for you, their free trial can offer you an opportunity to test drive it. Curious to see what Hubs looks like? Peruse these 12 inspirational Hubs.
Free Searchie Starter Kit
Free Searchie Starter Kit
This series of eight, five minute videos will walk you through step-by-step how to get started on Searchie and launch your course or membership site.
Top Past Blog Posts
Get Your Searchie Hub Up!
This is really all you need to get started! Personalize your Searchie Hub with a few easy clicks. These clean, fresh, professionally designed Canva templates work right in Searchie. All you need to do is add your own images.
Let’s Create Your Hub!
If you feel stuck or overwhelmed with Searchie, let’s talk. I create Hubs for my clients in a flash.