As a teacher business owner, you know how important it is to have quality images to use in your marketing. With so many options for how to get these images, it can be difficult to know where to spend and where to save. Let’s talk about how you can make the most of your time AND money.

Episode Highlights:

• Stock Photos, Branding, and Mock-Ups…Oh, My!
• The Image Pyramid
• Give and Take

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Stephanie 0:00

As a teacher business owner, you know how important it is to have quality images to use in your marketing. With so many options for how to get these images, it can be difficult to know where to spend and where to save. Let's talk about how you can make the most of your time and money.

Stephanie 0:19

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 0:30

Welcome back to the podcast and another installment of the Let's Pay Less series. If you're not familiar with this part of the podcast, on the last Saturday of the month, we take a closer look at one popular budget buster to see if it's something worth incorporating into your organic marketing strategy. The point of this series isn't to give you a definitive answer, since you really are the only person who knows the ins and outs of your business and your budget. Instead, my hope is that this episode will give you the food for thought you need to make an informed decision about where your marketing dollars go.

Stephanie 1:12

So let's dive right in. In this episode, we're going to talk about images. This month, we've been focusing on Pinterest, which is a highly visual platform. In fact, the entire world of TPT marketing relies a lot on visual content. There are mock ups and banners, stock photos, branding photos, screenshots, and videos to create - just to name a few. With so many needs in the photo and video department, it can be hard to decide where to spend and where to save. So that's going to be the focus of this episode. The format of our discussion is going to be just a little bit different. I'm going to share some of the most common visual content that people spend money on, for their blog and for Pinterest, when we think of images a lot of times, we'll think about TPT product images, and there is a lot of overlap, but there are also some other image options that people might spend money on, or they might try to save money by using these other image types. Anyway we're going to talk about all of them in this episode, but to keep ourselves organized and to kind of give you a mental visual, we're going to use a pyramid a la Abby Lee Miller and Dance Moms. If you're not familiar with the show Dance Moms, don't worry. You really didn't miss much, but after their weekly competition, the dance instructor ranked the dancers by placing their photos in a pyramid and then revealing them one at a time. It was totally toxic, I realize this, but this pyramid is going to be super handy for us as we rank the different types of images that you might need to spend money on in your business, specifically for your blog or Pinterest marketing. So there will be a bottom row of three, then a middle row of two, and then finally, the coveted spot at the top of the pyramid. So the criteria for this image pyramid, it takes a few things into consideration. So the first thing is obviously cost. We need to take into consideration how much each type of image costs, because that will help us determine how we can maximize the return on the investment. The second thing that we're going to consider is the ability to repurpose these images. Can the time or money that you put into that image for your blog or Pinterest? Could it be used in many different ways? And then finally, effectiveness? Because, believe it or not, certain types of images are more effective on a blog or on Pinterest, and so is that image the best way to propel your business forward with your organic marketing.

Stephanie 4:15

So without further ado, it's time to reveal the bottom row of the image pyramid. So starting in position six, we have free stock photos. Now, these might not pop into your mind, but a lot of people use stock photos on their blog posts, and a lot of people choose to use stock photos that are just readily available through Unsplash or Pexels. You know, you go to the website, you find a few images that will work, you download them, and you're ready to go put them on your blog, create pins with them, and they're free. So when it comes to cost, that's awesome. When it comes to repurposing, yes, you can use those on social media. You can use them on your blog. You can use them on Pinterest. The main issue comes when we talk about the effectiveness of that image, because as handy as it is to be able to download free stock photos, they are not worth the time that it takes to scroll through them, or the space they take up in your Google Drive once you download them. And I know that that sounds harsh, but here's why. Even though they're free and you can use them in multiple ways, they are unlikely to give you the results you're looking for on your blog or your Pinterest account. In fact, they could have a negative effect, since free stock photos can be grabbed by anyone at any time, chances are they're being used all over the place. And so just as one example of why this is a problem, it can easily confuse the Pinterest algorithm, because when you want the image on your pin to be associated with your blog post topic. It can be counterintuitive when that same stock photo is being used for a bunch of other unrelated blog post topics from other websites, so it really is best to skip them. Now moving to the number five slot on the pyramid is a very closely related thing, but that is paid stock photos. Now, I have a few reasons for having these in two different spots, because paid stock photos are a little bit better, because if you have to pay to use the image, you're already cutting way down on the number of people who will be using that same picture for their blog or their pins. The other positive that I didn't mention earlier about stock photos is that having the ability to use stock photos, it can really help you prevent a bottleneck in the content creation process, because you won't have blog posts just sitting there waiting for you to take new pictures for your blog post. If you can quickly grab a stock photo to plug into your blog post or to create a pin, you can keep your content creation process moving and prevent those bottlenecks. However, I still don't love stock images. They they kind of create a disconnect in your content between you and your audience, because stock photos are just they're kind of impersonal, and I think Google is starting to take note of this too, because I have seen some statements from Google that talk about stock photos and AI generated photos as low effort content. And so it's possible that, I mean, I'm not going to say this is for sure going to happen, but you could possibly send the wrong signals to Google about the quality of your content if you are only ever using stock photos. Another thing to be careful about is that certain stock photo companies, they license their paid images to services like Canva. I know I used to buy these packs of stock image credits, and they were a really great deal for a long time, and they were a great way to get more unique stock photos for your website. But once I started using Canva Pro, I noticed that those images I just used my paid credits for were available to me on Canva Pro and so with more and more people using Canva, there are going to be more people using those paid stock photos. So they might not be quite as unique as you might think they are, depending on how that website licenses their content. Moving to the number four slot on the pyramid. Before I reveal it, I want to remind you that I'm analyzing these from the perspective of blogging and Pinterest. So number four, we have the free mock up templates. And these are amazing for creating product photos for TPT, but I'm looking at it from the perspective of blogging and Pinterest. So looking at cost, obviously it's free, so they are amazing that way, the repurposing is a great opportunity, because you could use it for TPT, you can use it for social media, and you could use it for your blog and for Pinterest. However, I'm still going to go back to that third criteria of being effective. Because they are so adorable, these mock ups, and they are free a lot of people are using them, and the more people that use a particular mock up template, the harder it's going to be to stand out. Because if you think about it, the difference between the image you create with that mockup, and the image another teacher business owner creates using the same mockup is likely just a couple of screenshots of a worksheet. Overall, those images are going to look pretty similar, and so that's why I've put the free mockup templates kind of in the same camp as stock photos, just because of the sheer number of people who are likely using a very similar graphic. So now it's time for the middle of the pyramid, in the number three slot. We have custom mock up templates that are made specifically for your brand. And you could make these, or you could hire someone to make them. And these are very cost effective because you're not paying for individual product photos, and you have the flexibility to use them for a variety of different product lines. These are a much better idea than using free mock up backgrounds, because you have the control of how many images are circulating out there with that particular background. If you're going to pay for custom mock ups, be sure to ask that service provider if they are using, you know, embellishments and paper placement and things that are unique to your brand. I think that would be a really important question to ask. And so when it comes to cost, there is a cost, but it's definitely going to be less than, you know, paying for multiple photos of all of your products. You can definitely repurpose those. You'll be able to use them on TPT. You can use them for social media, in your blog posts, on Pinterest, all the things, and they will be more effective because they are unique to your brand. The only thing I would caution you about when using paid mock up templates is that you don't overuse them. Brand consistency is important, but variety is also really important when it comes to the images that you use, especially on Pinterest. And now it's time for the number two slot on our pyramid, and that is actually going to go to video. I know we've been talking about images, but in today's marketing climate, quality video content is gold. You can repurpose it into pins, reels, website content and more. If the video is high enough of a quality, you can also just screenshot parts of the video to grab different like product in use photos so like half colored worksheets, those are very effective on Pinterest right now, if you hire someone to create your video, just be sure that you have the go ahead to take screenshots and use those stills as images. But really, video can help you showcase your content in a way that photography can't, and video content is also really helpful for Google SEO. So overall, if you take the time to create video, or you are paying someone to create video for you, that is going to be a really good use of your time or money. But when it comes to that top slot on the pyramid, I have to give the number one slot to individual product and brand photos. There's a reason why product photography reigns supreme on the pyramid, even though it is one of the more costly or time consuming options, if you do it yourself, it is worth the investment to create high quality images of your products, either by hiring someone to do it or doing it yourself. So we've talked about cost, that if you hire out, it can be fairly costly to have this photography done, but the number of ways that you can repurpose this because your own product photos are going to be ideal on Pinterest and on your blog, and you'll be able to use those images on TPT, you will stand out on social media because they are specific to your products and your brand, and overall, they are just going to be much more effective. And then, if at all possible, I would suggest just trying to get a variety of different angles and different pictures of the product. Product being completed, so like a half finished worksheet, or if it's a craft, you know, get it at each stage of completion, because those photos, those in progress, photos, like I mentioned earlier, are really, really great for Pinterest. But then I would suggest that you take your brand specific photography just one step further and schedule a time to have some branding photos of yourself taken. You can take them yourself. Just try to show your face and personality, especially on your website, because in the current Google climate, it's essential that a website has a real person behind it. Have some pictures taken of yourself so you can sprinkle them throughout your website. And just so, you know, I'm also preaching to myself here, that's on my to do list to get some branding photos taken.

As much as I'd love to say that we can run our businesses successfully with free stock photos and other templates that content creators share so generously. It really isn't the case, because the images you use in your organic marketing can have a significant impact on the success of your pins and your posts. This is definitely one area where it is worth it to invest the time into taking your own product photos or hiring a photographer to do that for you. And you can also give and take you can create a combination that works for you and your budget and your circumstances. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to do the pyramid, to show the different pros and cons, and to make it easier for you to prioritize, where you spend, where you save, where you do things yourself, and where you hire out.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, I will never give anyone a hard and fast suggestion for how to spend their marketing dollars. The goal of this episode was to show you, from my experience as a blogger and Pinterest manager for TPT sellers, the best types of images to use for content creation. I hope that you're able to move forward with a plan for making the most of your money and time.

Next week, we'll be diving into some topics surrounding websites, so be sure you're following the pay less for traffic podcast so you don't miss out on the discussion.

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 biz bestie. You have created high quality resources now. Let's help teachers find them. I'll see you next time.