Building Business w/ the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
The Building Business podcast provides compelling stories of the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce's journey, its steadfast commitment to the local community, and its forward-thinking approach to addressing the needs of businesses in an ever-changing landscape. It stands as an invitation to listeners to become part of a movement that values growth, connection, and the collective progress of the Mount Pleasant, South Carolina community.
Be prepared to be inspired, informed, and motivated, as we provide a rich tapestry of stories that celebrate the dynamic interplay of business and personal growth right here, in our own backyard.
Building Business w/ the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
One-Click Marketing, Real Community
What if your entire marketing workflow—social posts, emails, texts, analytics, and approvals—lived in one tab and actually made sense? We sat down at the Mount Pleasant Expo to unpack a practical way to run multi-channel campaigns without drowning in logins, spreadsheets, and “who has the code?” messages with Rachel Backal, Engagement Manager from Pollen Social. From agencies juggling a dozen clients to community orgs relying on volunteers, we break down how a single platform can reduce friction, restore consistency, and bring your team together around clear goals and clean data.
We walk through real scenarios marketers face every week: hopping between Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Mailchimp, and Google Analytics; rebuilding the same message five times; and spending more time exporting reports than learning from them. You’ll hear how one-click cross-posting and extended scheduling windows keep campaigns on track, while unified analytics from GA, Google Business, Meta, and Shopify turn performance into a story you can share with clients or boards. With unlimited users and role-based permissions, teams can invite volunteers to upload event photos, let leaders view dashboards, and keep editors focused on content—all without paying per seat or risking access sprawl.
AI shows up where it counts. Caption generation helps when the creative well runs dry, image tools fill gaps for promos and recaps, and newsletter helpers speed up drafting so you hit send on time. Most importantly, there’s real human support: strategy-led onboarding, hands-on guidance during your free 30-day trial, and a local team invested in the Charleston business community. If you’ve been hunting for a marketing stack that saves hours, cuts context switching, and still respects your brand voice, this conversation lays out a clear path.
Ready to simplify your stack? Try the 30-day free trial at pollensocial.com, subscribe for more practical playbooks, and leave a review to tell us the one workflow you most want to fix next.
Expo Podcast Sponsor: Pollen Social
Presenting Sponsor: Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce
Studio Sponsor: Charleston Media Solutions
Expo Podcast Sponsor: @PollenSocial
Production Sponsor: RMBO.co
Design Sponsor: DK Design
Committee:
Kathleen Herrmann | Host | MPCC Immediate Past President | Mount Pleasant Towne Centre
Mike Compton | Co-host | Marketing Chair | RMBO.co
Rebecca Imholz | Co-host | MPCC Executive Director
Amanda Bunting Comen | Co-host | Social ABCs
Ben Nesvold | Co-host | In-coming President | Edward Jones
Hey folks, Mike Compton here. I'm here with Stephanie Barrow.
SPEAKER_01:Hey friends.
SPEAKER_00:And Rachel.
SPEAKER_01:Hi! I'm so excited. Macall. McCall! Yeah. I always have to say B as in Boyne A-C-K-L because it sounds like McCall. Right. Yeah. Well, we were just talking about how she's recently engaged, so that'll be changing. Yes, yes. It's gonna be a way harder last name, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_00:What is it gonna be?
SPEAKER_01:It's gonna be Freed for Tag.
SPEAKER_00:One more time.
SPEAKER_01:Freed for Tig.
SPEAKER_00:Bless you.
SPEAKER_01:I know, I know.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. I love it.
SPEAKER_01:It meets peace in German.
SPEAKER_00:We're the building business, right? Podcast, powered by the Mount Pleasant Chamber Council.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, Omar Shrine Center.
SPEAKER_00:At the Omar Shrine Center. Yeah. At the Expo Live. Thanks to Holly Social, which Rachel works for right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huge sponsors and supporters of the chamber. Yeah. And now the podcast. So thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02:And she's on the AMA board. I am.
SPEAKER_00:So worlds are colliding here too. We're almost. What did I say earlier?
SPEAKER_02:We're having like a uh We're having like a Gray's Anatomy meets Reno 911. Because I, you do the we together on the AMA podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Crossover. We're having a crossover episode here. Yes, yes. With the building. We do the AMA, which is a sister podcast to the building business.
SPEAKER_02:Which is what it's all about in Charleston. It's a community. 100%. We both live in Mount Pleasant and we're members.
SPEAKER_00:Much love to Charleston Media Solutions for us able to, you know, just report out of their studios to the podcast. Heart to them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Heart to them. Rachel, you go to the show too sometimes. I do. Every time.
SPEAKER_01:I I love going. I love hearing the different stories. I'm like behind the camera smiling. Like ear and ear. I'm like, yeah, say more, say more.
SPEAKER_00:You are gonna be a co-host of the podcast one of these.
SPEAKER_01:I will one of these days. We would love to. But today we're here with. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:That's your energy, right?
SPEAKER_01:She's got great energy.
SPEAKER_00:Pollen social.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Can you talk about Pollen Social, please?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Where can we find you?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And all the good stuff.
SPEAKER_01:So we are a marketing platform. We do everything from social media posting, email blasts, text messages, an analytics suite. We want to be like a one-stop shop. You can find us at hollandsocial.com. We're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, all the fun stuff. So I have a lot of questions. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So you got 10 minutes, Steph.
SPEAKER_02:I'm an agency owner, right? Yes. So I have 12 social media accounts that I manage. Okay. Can I manage all 12 of them under your platform? You can.
SPEAKER_01:And you can actually easy enough, you can toggle between each uh company all from one email address. So all from one login account, you can switch over to client A, client B, client C.
SPEAKER_02:Right, and I can pull analytics and reports through there.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:What else can she do though?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So when you're doing marketing for your clients, let me know what you're doing. Are you doing just social? Are you doing email outreach?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. I'm doing emails. I do a lot of Google LSA ads. I do a lot of Google PVC, a lot of content updates. Okay. So Google Analytics is important to me. Metadata TikTok is huge to me. I hate running reports. That is my least favorite part of the job. That is sending in voices.
SPEAKER_00:Poland Social can help you with that.
SPEAKER_01:We make it very easy because you're going to all these different sites to get these analytics, right? You're exporting these reports from different platforms. Take so much time. So much time. And then going ahead and understanding what these reports mean and explaining them to your clients. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:That's a whole other thing.
SPEAKER_01:It's a whole other thing. So with Pollen, you're able to pull all these reports from one place Google Analytics, Google Business, everything to do with Meta, Shopify, Mail Training. Shopify too. Yeah. We integrate, we're using Zier. So like any any platform CRM you can think of, we can integrate with.
SPEAKER_02:And you have scheduling tools too.
SPEAKER_01:We have scheduling tools. You can schedule out a year in advance.
SPEAKER_02:You can schedule out a month in advance. Because with Meta, you can only schedule out a certain amount of time in advance, like a month or two. Exactly. So say you're like traveling like I do a lot, you can't schedule those things out. You better remember busy to be posting in real time, which sucks.
SPEAKER_01:And then think about it, you're also posting a meta, but I'm guessing you're using LinkedIn or TikTok or ads. All the things. And then you're individually having to post to those as well. Copying and pasting. Yeah, copying and pasting. What if you could just select TikTok? Uh sorry, not good. Uh Facebook. The check marks. Yeah. Check mark. Um TikTok, Meta, email. Or send a social post as a text message, right? You can have that all there, and all just a check mark away to share. What our thing is we have a patent, it's one-click marketing. So there's really no other platform out there that you can do email and text messaging in one click, the same with posting social media.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I used to work with, I used to a partner with like Sprout Social for that. Very costly. Very costly.
SPEAKER_01:Does it do newsletters? No, it does not do newsletters.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, speaking of the costly part of things here.
SPEAKER_01:So the cool thing about the pollen is every plan, every whether it's annual, whether it's monthly, whether whichever tier you're on, you get a 30-day free trial. Love it. So no credit card required. We want you to be confident and in love with the platform as much as we are before you commit to putting any credit card down. Okay, perfect. So in that 30 month in that 30-day span, you get to work with me and my team. And we do more than just getting you onboard. Really, our my bread and butter, what I'm really passionate about is marketing strategy. So I want you to think of me as your marketing advisor. So customer service is huge, and a lot of these platforms, you don't get to speak to a human. Absolutely do not. So I want to be the person you go to, I want my team, and I want you to feel like whether it's in person, a Zoom, I want you to feel like we are your biggest advocate for your business. So um I love that. Yeah, I lost my train of time.
SPEAKER_00:So we got customer service, right? And you get some you know uh advice.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And and you know, a human person to talk to.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:But it's AI powered.
SPEAKER_01:AI is AI, it's definitely AI powered. We've dipped our toes now into AI uh image generation. Okay, interesting. You can use that. It's actually pretty amazing. We just had um a client do, they had a similar expo, and they're like, we don't have anything to create. And so we're like, let's give it a prompt. It took like two tries to get it the way that they wanted it, but it was good enough where it looked real that you're not looking at it, you're being like, okay, time savings. Really, it truly is. But my favorite thing is our AI caption creator. I love creating content. Yeah, I have no idea what to what the lingo or lingo is.
SPEAKER_02:Sometimes I come up with newsletter headers, I'm like, I don't know, I just wrote this whole thing. My brain is done now. Exactly. I don't know what that kettle is. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And now we have AI to help you create your own newsletters, which I've actually started playing around with for camera. Yeah. Because we have new we do newsletters, and I, Amanda runs those, and I was like, I want the whole team to have visibility of this. Right. What's going out? What are the clicks? And think about we're on MailChimp, and Mailchimp's great. However, getting into MailChimp is a little bit of every time. Let's get the what who's sending the code. Yes. Yes. So everyone on camera will have their own login. So and they'll have different permissions. Yeah. So whether it's just doing social media and you're actually uploading content and posting it, or Mike, who's the president who just wants to look at the analytics and wants an overview. You go in there, you can view the same things that Stephanie can view, that I can view, but obviously the information and data mean something different to you than it means to me, than it might mean to you. Yeah. So a lot of these companies only allow you one login. Yeah. Or one user, right? You pay per user. We are unlimited users. We want your whole team to be involved. Or let's say you have a volunteer helping for an event. We want them to be able to upload the content that day, and that's it, right? We don't want them to be able to access anything else. We just want them uploading content. We've got a media library where we can they do a content dump, right? And then Stephanie or Mike, they're creating the content. We go ahead and edit the content and I can post it right from Holland. I almost did that too.
SPEAKER_00:This morning I went to Harbor Entrepreneur Center and went to the Coffee Connections. Yes. I took a bunch of videos and some photos. I was gonna send them to you.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Because you're really good at recreating those videos. But then I'm like, let's not bother her. Let me download CapCut myself and like, you know, big boy and figure it out myself. I'm still sitting on it right now.
SPEAKER_01:Well, if I was able to upload it, I could take it, make it my magic happen. Absolutely. And then you would never have to worry about the content again.
SPEAKER_00:I'm already signed up in a way, right?
SPEAKER_01:So, yes, we are getting you guys onto the platform. Camma is joining the platform because we're being spotlight in October. So we're getting that set up now, we're getting all the details finalized. And then I will work with the camera team, the board, to get everyone on there, comfortable, make sure their permissions are set up, and get all of our Google Analytics, all those things, fun things connected. So all you have to do is log in. This is such an awesome product. Are you pitching at everybody in town? Yeah. So yeah, yeah, because pollen could be you could be an influencer, you could be a business owner, you could be a celebrity, an artist. And really, you're if you're on social media and you're posting regularly, you can get something out of pollen. So and the tiers are important because you can just, if you it's$19.99 a month, right? If you just want to do social media, right? So it's like, if you think about it, it's a maybe a cocktail at the dewberry. The price of a cocktail at the dewberry. So in that sense, you get access to everything, and we're always releasing beta features so that everybody on our platform can try them out, and if it makes sense to you, then maybe we go ahead and add that as a service, right? But we want you to love it before you're paying for anything. We want it to make sense, and there's different plans we can do for each business, but there's something for everyone. We're highlighting it on camera the month October. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:That's right, yes. That's right, that's right. Um, our sister uh podcast. Yes, yes. Uh why are you at the expo? Like, and what makes the expo so special to you?
SPEAKER_01:So we are just actually Mount Pleasant Chamber Commerce is on Pollen themselves.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So we love supporting our users in any way that we can, whether it's going to an event or it's going to an award ceremony, or if it's just showing up for an opening, right? A new location opening. We want to support them. We love partnering with local businesses. We are born and raised in Charleston, that's where we come from. So, really, we want to start here and we want to make sure that we build the right reputation and confidence in our own community before we go ahead and spread out. So attending something like a you know, Mount Pleasant Expo is super important because there's so many businesses I've never even heard of that we're getting to go ahead and do our spiel with and we're finding out. I need help with marketing. I don't know where to start. And it's just so fun because my favorite thing is helping tell the small businesses story, right? So if it's content creation, whatever it is, being able to share that is like it's everything. It's your purpose. It gives me purpose. It's your walk. I'm passionate about this, as you can tell. I love it. I love it. Yeah, and I we're so lucky to have you on camera in the marketing.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I'm I'm so happy to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's really awesome to be able to have a better understanding of the marketing community outside of just work, I'd say. You know, obviously we're always hot trying to help each other out, but I love working, I love like becoming friends with the marketing community. And Mike, you introduced me to camera. So I want to be here without you.
SPEAKER_00:Don't make me cry, don't make me cry.
SPEAKER_01:But I love it.
SPEAKER_00:No, that's awesome. That's great. So would you suggest coming to the Expo next year?
SPEAKER_01:I totally would. I think whether if you have a booth here, it's a great way to get business exposure, meet new clients, um, or business partnerships. But if not, just attending this and seeing all the different businesses that you have available in the Charleston area. It's so nice. And I love the sense of community. Me too. And it's free, so why not? Come on over.
SPEAKER_02:You have to start, exactly. Look at all this cool swag you can take too. It's gonna get really busy in the afternoon. I know.
SPEAKER_00:I know, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:End of day.
SPEAKER_00:Where can we find you one last time? Socialmediaek.com.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, please follow us on Instagram or Pollen Social. Check us out online, uh, polensocial.com, and feel free to sign up. You'll get a 30-day free trial, and I will become your new best friend. There we go.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's worth it, right?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:I love it, I love it. Thanks for listening to the Building Business Podcast, Powered by the Chinese. Thanks, Rachel, thanks, Stephanie.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Pollen Social is the sponsor for this podcast. Uh make sure you check him out. We'll check you out next time.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks, Paul Buddha.
SPEAKER_00:Food's here.
