Your time as a teacher business owner is precious AND limited. It’s important to decide if blogging and pinning are worth the space that they take up on your already-packed to-do list. Let’s talk about the return that you can expect from investing time and effort into creating blog posts and promoting them on Pinterest.

Episode Highlights:

->  Increase Product Sales

-> Save Time on Other Organic Marketing Tasks

-> Additional Income Sources

Resources Mentioned:

You might also enjoy listening to episodes 2 and 3

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Mentioned in this episode:

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Stephanie 0:00

Your time as a teacher business owner is precious and limited. So it's important to decide if blogging and pinning are worth the space that they take up on your already packed to do list. Let's talk about the return that you can expect from investing time and effort into creating blog posts and promoting them on Pinterest.

Stephanie 0:21

Hey there teacher business owner, it's time to give your bank account a break and pause that ad campaign. I'm your host, Stephanie Royer, and I'm going to show you how to pay less for traffic.

Stephanie 0:33

Welcome to this week's episode. I know back in episodes two and three, we talked about the fact that blogging and pinning aren't dead, that you can still see results from these two organic marketing tools. And I alluded to the fact that they can help your business grow. But we didn't dive too far into specifics. So let's talk a little bit more about what you can expect from the time that you put into blogging and pinning for your business. We're going to focus on three positive outcomes that most TPT sellers discover when they start to blog for their businesses. And I'll even share some examples from my clients. And then from my own blogging experience.

Stephanie 1:15

First, you can expect more product sales when you blog and pin consistently with the right strategy. Now, you might think that goes without saying. But I think that some people, they hope for more product sales when they start to blog and pin. But if you have the right strategy, and you put the effort in, you can expect to have more product sales. The reason for this is because blog posts are the Costco samples of your business. I mean, really, how many times have you walked into Costco with a specific item in mind, and you're thinking to yourself, I'm going straight back to the toilet paper and I'm coming right back out. It's not gonna be like last time. But then halfway to the checkout line, you spot those Costco samples, you notice that they're heating up meatballs that you've seen before, but you never thought to purchase them because you know, your family doesn't like spaghetti and meatballs. But that day, you notice that they're simmering those meatballs in your kid's favorite barbecue sauce, you think, hmm. Now, that's an idea that could work for my meal plan this week, so you decide to taste it and confirm that it is a kid friendly combo. And then before you know it, those meatballs are sitting next to the TP in your shopping cart. And I know this might be a silly example. But honestly, this is what blog posts do for your business.

Stephanie 2:42

Remember, if someone's first instinct was to buy a product, they would already be on TPT. Just like if you had planned to buy meatballs, you would have gone down that aisle. Your blog posts allow you to show your products in action, you can show your products solving a variety of different problems that teachers might encounter in the classroom. And it gives teachers a better chance to visualize how your products can fit into their lesson plans. And this makes it more likely that they will go from blog reader to TPT customer.

Stephanie 3:15

So you might be thinking okay, Stephanie, so I can see how blogging can increase sales with this whole Costco analogy. But I'm also concerned about my return on investment from Pinterest, and seeing increased sales on Pinterest. So we've got to go back to our Costco analogy. And think about the placement of the sample tables. I mean, they always seem to be set up near the aisle where people are already browsing related items. But they're also always at the end of the aisle to grab the attention of people who might not have been planning to shop in that particular section. Now, this is what Pinterest does for your blog posts. It puts you in the right place to reach teachers who could benefit from everything that you've written in your blog post, because teachers are already cruising Pinterest for lesson plan ideas. So it just makes sense. To market your blog posts on this platform, you can create interesting clickable pins that can grab the attention of teachers who were just planning to scroll on by. So when you have the right blogging and pinning strategy set up for your business, you can expect more product sales, not just hope for them, not just wish for them, you can expect them.

Stephanie 4:34

And just to give you an example, I wanted to tell you about a client who reached out to me after we'd been working together for a little while. She told me that sales of a particular product for that month had doubled when she compared it to the same month of the previous year. Now in looking closer at her traffic, she knew that it was due solely to a blog post that was talking about that product. So think about one of your products and what a difference that would make in your business if sales of that product doubled. Think about all of the additional teachers who would be supported with that resource all because of a blog post that was promoted on Pinterest.

Stephanie 5:17

I also had a client share with me that after focusing on blogging and pinning her annual TPT sales, when she looked directly at sales that came from her blog, they had increased by 20%. So she already had an established blog, and you know, was pretty steady in her sales. But just by adjusting her strategy and focusing more on those traffic sources, she increased by 20%. Now, that might not necessarily be flashy, like quadrupling her sales, but organic growth is more modest, but that also means it's more sustainable.

Stephanie 5:55

Now let's talk about the next thing that you can expect when you invest time into blogging and pinning. You can expect to save time on other aspects of organic marketing. You've probably heard a blog post referred to as long form content before. Now the beauty of long form content is that you can easily repurpose it into other organic marketing content. And this saves so much time in the long run. You can use snippets from your blog posts for email marketing, or social media captions, you can use the bullet points from a section of your blog post and turn it into a carousel post for Instagram, the entire content of your blog posts can be turned into a script for other long form content like a YouTube video or a podcast episode. Once you've put in the effort to create long form content, it becomes an asset for your business that you can use in other ways.

Stephanie 6:53

But let's not forget about Pinterest, the efforts that you put into creating pins can actually help save time on your marketing efforts as well. Your pin graphics could be repurposed for email marketing, or your Instagram stories. You could even resize your pins and repurpose those graphics for grid posts. And, you know, if you've written a really awesome pin description, and think you can bank it and repurpose it for a social media caption, that's another great way to save some time. I know that it can be hard to want to blog and pin for your business, especially if you have other marketing tools that are performing pretty well for your business. So instead of feeling like it's either / or, try to look at it as the time that you put into blogging and pinning could actually save you some time with those other marketing tools that seem to be performing pretty well.

Stephanie 7:51

So for example, if your email list is one of the best marketing tools for your business, you might look at how blogging could save you time on your email marketing. So maybe you decide to use the topic ideas from your blogging schedule to inform your email marketing schedule, or you decide to repurpose the actual copy from your blog post into your emails. No matter how you decide to do it. If you look at blogging as an opportunity to save time on other marketing efforts, sometimes that can make it a little easier to make the time to blog.

Stephanie 8:30

The final thing that I want you to expect from blogging and pinning for your business is additional income sources. Because blog posts don't just have to sell your TPT products, you can have a blog post with an email opt in. And as you use your blog to build an engaged email list that can become a significant source of income for your TPT business. On this podcast, we're going to talk mostly about promoting your own products in your blog. But you could also decide that you want to write a few roundup posts of your favorite teaching tools and get some affiliate income that way. It doesn't have to be Amazon. If you regularly mentioned a tool in your blog post just because you love it so much. Consider just looking into whether the company has an affiliate program.

Stephanie 9:21

So just as an example, I've shared this on Instagram before, but I love airtable I use it every day in my business. And I also use it to stay organized at home as a mom. And I actually wrote a full blog post on my mommy blog about how I use airtable to stay organized in this one particular way. And even after five years, I continue to earn enough airtable credits from that blog post to pay for the pro version for my business each year. Now, it's not cash money, but it makes a huge difference. In my life to earn those credits through my blog. And then just one more example of affiliate income, that's not Amazon. Nothing wrong with Amazon, I receive that income as well. But I wrote another mom blog post to review an app that I use daily. Because I just, I noticed that there weren't any good reviews online about it yet. And I loved it so much, I thought this app deserves a review. So I wrote a full blog post about it. I plugged an affiliate link in there. And I continue to receive affiliate income from that blog post every month. Because there wasn't a lot of competition. It has solidly ranked number one on Google for years. Now, this isn't going to make me a millionaire. But those small income sources can add up.

Now again, I know that your primary goal for blogging is to promote your own products. But I just wanted to show you what was possible. If you decide to spend time blogging for your business, that you can find other blog post types, we can we'll talk about this in a future episode. But there are lots of different types of blog posts that you can write for your business. And if you decide that this is going to be a part of your marketing strategy, you can expect to add additional income streams. You might even decide as your blog traffic grows to host display ads in your content. This is a hot topic, but it can become an additional source of revenue for your business.

So there you have it with the right blogging and pinning strategy, you can expect to increase product sales, you can expect to save time on your other marketing efforts. And you can expect to add more revenue streams to your business. So you might be thinking, Well, what do you mean by the right blogging and pinning strategy. Now these strategies are not one size fits all. But we're going to start talking more specifically about creating an effective blogging and pinning strategy. And we're going to focus first on your blogging workflow. This is going to be a great opportunity for you to dive in to how you're using your blog for your business. And we're going to look at each step of the blogging process one by one, so that you can hopefully identify the things that are sticky for you.

But before we get there, I would love for you to take just a moment and think about the three things that we discussed in this episode, increasing sales, saving time and adding revenue streams. So while you can expect all of these outcomes in some degree, with the right strategy, I want you to think about which one of those is the most important to you in this phase of your business, you're going to want to jot this down so that you can keep that priority in mind as we start to look more specifically at your workflow. Because if you've spent any time in the blogging space, you know that there are a lot of shiny objects when it comes to blogging and Pinterest. And so having that priority in mind is just going to help you stay laser focused on your goals so that blogging and pinning can truly serve your business and you can get the results you're looking for. So be sure that you're subscribed to the pay less for traffic podcast, so you don't miss out on these strategic Saturdays. I'm really looking forward to it.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it if you could share it with a teacher because bestie you have created high quality resources. Now let's help teachers find them. I'll see you next time.