After all of the prep work and planning, it’s finally time to start writing your blog post. Don’t fall into the trap of making your blog post an extended product description! Let’s chat about how you can avoid this mistake and write blog posts that convert to sales.

Episode Highlights:

• Don’t Squander the Opportunity
• Serve Before Selling
• Talk About Your Product

You might also enjoy these related episodes:

Episode 7 - Beginning with the End in Mind

Episode 8 - The Lifeline of an Outline

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Stephanie 0:00

After all of the prep work and planning, it's finally time to start writing your blog post. But you don't want to fall into the trap of making your blog post an extended product description. Let's chat about what I mean by that, and how you can avoid this mistake.

Stephanie 0:16

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 0:28

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to continue our content creation audit, that we are looking at your workflow step by step to see if there are any hurdles that might be getting in the way of creating consistent blog content for your business. And so we're at the point now where you have figured out the product that you want to feature in your blog post, you've created an outline, so you know what your talking points are going to be, you've done some keyword research. And now you're ready to write the content of your post. Now, I have read a lot of teacher blogs over the years. And there's one pattern that I noticed sometimes not all the time, but people sometimes will treat their blog posts, like extended product descriptions. I mean, it kind of makes sense. You're trying to sell your product. So it would make sense that you want to talk about your product, and walk people through it. But we're going to talk in this episode about why that's not the case and how your blog posts will actually be more successful in getting traffic to your TPT store. If you write them in a slightly different way.

Stephanie 1:35

I want you to think of your day to day life as a teacher in the classroom. So whether that's a recent memory, or a more distant one. But I'm sure you can remember that you had 1,000,001 tasks to take care of during the day. But you started to create a rhythm of when you could take care of certain types of tasks.

Stephanie 1:55

So a quick phone call or a bathroom break or a few copies. Those types of tasks were perfect for the short breaks that you had during recess. But there were certain tasks that had to take place during your longer and precious prep periods. Because there are some tasks that you just knew there is no way that I can get this done during recess. And you knew that if you didn't get them done during your prep period, you would have to stay late or come in early. There was literally no other timeframe to get those tasks done. And you wouldn't dream of using those longer prep periods for any of those easy tasks that you could take care of at other times.

Stephanie 2:41

Now this reminds me of the different ways that you can communicate about your products. So there are quick and easy ways to share about the features of your product. You have your description on TPT you have a preview video, you have your Instagram stories where you can do walk throughs, you have social media posts and captions, there are so many ways that you can talk about the features of your products.

Stephanie 3:09

Now your blog presents a unique opportunity to have fresh eyes on your products, and to highlight those products in just a different way. But as we talked about in episode seven, you won't have their eyes for long. You want to make the most of each blog visitor by writing a quality post. And not just an extended product description that lists the features,

Stephanie 3:32

The way that you can ensure you're making the most of the opportunity to have someone reading your blog post is to serve them before selling to them.

Stephanie 3:41

Choose topics and keywords for your posts that allow you to address a specific pain point, your product is going to be part or all of the solution to that pain point.

Stephanie 3:52

So let's talk about a specific example.

Stephanie 3:54

I have back to school season on my mind. So let's imagine that I've decided to write a blog post with the goal of selling my kindergarten readiness screener.

Stephanie 4:04

I might think that writing a blog post titled kindergarten readiness screener will be enough to sell this product. I have a printable kindergarten readiness screener. I'll talk about it in the blog post. I'll show the different pages included, and then people will buy it.

Stephanie 4:21

Now in theory, this could be a blog post option, but we need to consider another factor that if someone wanted to buy a printable kindergarten readiness screener, they could probably already be on TPT.

Stephanie 4:35

Your blog post is going to catch people whose first instinct is not the TPT search bar. It is colder traffic. So this is why it's important to serve your blog visitors before you sell to them. And by showing them how your product can address a very specific pain point.

Stephanie 4:54

In the case of my kindergarten readiness screener, this product could address several possible pain points for a busy kindergarten teacher.

Stephanie 5:03

They might be trying to figure out the best way to create groups for centers. A kindergarten readiness screener is a quick way to get the information needed to create balanced groups.

Stephanie 5:13

They might be planning their first kindergarten roundup event and aren't sure what they should include in their plan. My blog post can include a list of the most important things to include at a roundup event, which could include a readiness screener.

Stephanie 5:27

They might be having trouble administering assessments to their new young squirrely students, and are looking for some tips. My blog post could give tips for assessing young students with one of those tips been to use a developmentally appropriate screening tool, like the one available in my shop.

Stephanie 5:47

Don't let this episode make you think that you shouldn't talk much about your product in the post. In fact, I'm actually a proponent of making the sell section of your post very obvious,

Stephanie 5:58

because remember, in the last episode, when I talked about how people tend to skim blog posts instead of reading them, if you only hyperlink a couple of words, to send people to your product, it's highly unlikely that they'll a even see it and click on it.

Stephanie 6:15

So don't be afraid to draw attention to the selling part of your blog post. Use a header, include a product cover image, add buttons, whatever you need to stop the scroll.

Stephanie 6:28

But there's one more thing I suggest you do when you talk about your product in the post. Discuss the features of your product in terms of the pain point that you were addressing in the post, connect the dots for the reader to make it an easy, yes.

Stephanie 6:43

So let's go back to my imaginary kindergarten screener. So if I was spotlighting my product in that first blog post that was addressing the pain point of creating groups for centers, I would talk about the features of my screener that make it easy to create balanced groups. I might talk about the simple phonological awareness and letter identification tasks that make it easy to group students for literacy centers.

Stephanie 7:10

In the second blog post that talks about kindergarten round up, I might talk about how my screener is quick to administer because that would be a huge selling point. For someone planning a round up event, they want to get their results that they need as quickly as possible. I might also emphasize that it's a very approachable way to screen those timid students who might be hesitant to participate in a full assessment.

Stephanie 7:35

And for the third pain point of having squirrely kindergarten students. If I was spotlighting my screener. In that blog post, I would talk about my product in terms of why it's developmentally appropriate and easy to administer. The reason this can be so effective in your blog post is that you truly are continuing to serve the reader even as you're talking about your product, you're explaining to them why you think it would be so helpful to them in terms of that pain point that they were searching for on Google, even though they didn't choose to go straight to TPT to purchase a product. A post written in this way, is more likely to get them to click over and check out your product.

Stephanie 8:19

It might be a bit of a mindset shift to serve before you sell. But it really isn't too difficult to keep your posts from sounding like an extended product description for your upcoming work session. I would suggest that you read a few of your most recent blog posts with these thoughts in mind. Are you making the most of the opportunity to have eyes on your blog post? Are you serving before selling? Are you shining a spotlight on your product and sharing the specifics of how it addresses the reader's pain point?

Stephanie 8:50

If you're still not 100% sure whether you're making this shift successfully, I have an easy temperature check for you. Just read over one of your blog posts and take a mental note of how many times you say I versus how many times you say you - your blog posts should have a lot more yous than Is if it's written with the reader in mind.

Stephanie 9:13

We're going to continue with our content workflow audit in the next episode, so be sure to follow the pay less for traffic podcast so you don't miss it.

Stephanie 9:22

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.