Teachers Pay Teachers Conference July 2014 Session 3 Notes

I am really enjoying sharing my experience and notes from the TpT conference with you!

If you missed my previous posts, you can find them here:

                                                                   Keynote
                                                                   Session 1
                                                                   Session 2

All of the presenters uploaded their session handouts to TpT for free.  You can find the handout for this session here.

Today I am focusing on what I learned during my third session which was presented by Rachel Lynette. Like yesterday, I don't have a ton of great pictures for you because of the seating I was in, but I did manage to take this one.

I also found this adorable photo of her on her blog.  She is being hugged by Paul Edelman, the founder of TpT.

Those blurry words say, "Let's Network" In all of the sessions I attended, the speakers really spoke about networking with other sellers.  It may seem counter intuitive to network with other sellers who would appear to be your "competition" but all of the successful sellers collaborate A LOT!  If you have followed teaching blogs for awhile you have no doubt come across linkies, giveaways, and even collaborative blogs.  One thing I really love about the Teachers Pay Teachers and teacher blogging world is just that collaborative spirit. 

Web Presence 

Rachel Lynette recommended having some sort of web presence beyond your TpT store.  That could be Facebook, your own blog, a collaborative blog with other sellers, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. 

Provide Value

Before you post on any of these channels, you should ask yourself, "Does what I'm about to post bring value?"  According to Rachel, the answer to that question should be "yes" at least 80% of the time. In essence, 20% of the time your posts should focus on direct marketing (i.e. this is my newest TpT product) and the other 80 % of the time should be something else that provides value to your followers. She mentioned that in an earlier session, Laura Candler had said it could be 50/50 but then again Laura Candler's Facebook page does have over 460,000 followers, so what works for her might not work for everyone else.  Rachel Lynette kept saying "If it works for you - keep doing it!"

She asked us to look back at our own posts and reflect on them.  

Do our last few posts follow this rule?  

Pay attention to the posts and pins that are most popular.  Ask yourself, what made them so popular?

What value are they providing?

She suggested making lists for each of our social networks and thinking about all the different ways we could provide value to those followers.  She suggested looking beyond freebies, sales, and contests.  What about an interesting article you read?  What about a blog post by another seller that you thought could be helpful?  What about an inspiring quote or a joke to lighten their day?

You can have the most amazing product that has ever been posted to Teachers Pay Teachers, but if no one is looking at it, you won't make any sales.  So, how do you attract buyers to your store?  

Rachel says that right now there are 3 main social networking platforms that are the best bet for driving traffic to your store.  Ideally, you should be using all 3 together.  She provided a picture of this (you can see this in the slides that you download as well).

Blogger

This is your home base.  This is where you should provide value to your customers through lesson suggestions and ideas, how-to's, contests, freebies, full-out product demonstrations in your class, etc.

Rachel's blog is here.

Facebook

This is your community where you can interact with your followers and buyers.  Rachel suggested using this as market research.  You can ask buyers, "Which cover do you prefer?"  "Do you like colored or black and white task cards?" "Would this type of product be useful?"  Not only do you get feedback, but you are pre-marketing the products you are making.  Rachel's Facebook is here.

Pinterest

This is your reach.  Buyers will find you based on pictures that are shared by you and by others.  This is how you grow your base even larger. Rachel's Pinterest is here.

Action Steps

1. If you are missing one of these above components. Fix that and get it!

2. Learn how to create appealing, pinnable pictures.  You can use PowerPoint or a number of on-line apps such as PicMonkey to do this.  Larger pictures (vertical) are more pinnable.

3. Revise old blog posts with more pinnable images.

4. Take a good look at your sidebars.  What are you promoting on them?  Your products should be in these spots not links to other blogs!  This is valuable real estate.  Take a good look at Rachel's blog.  See the way she uses her sidebars.  She is not about to be the second TpT millionaire for nothing!

5. Choose one of your products to focus marketing actions around.  Think of three ways you could promote that product.  Track sales to see the effect.

You have probably all heard the saying, "What goes around comes around." or possibly "Give to get."  Rachel says that these sayings are certainly true in the Teachers Pay Teachers marketplace as well.  When you give your time, knowledge, and energy not only to your buyers but also to your TpT colleagues, you will benefit in ways that you can not even imagine.  This was a resounding theme throughout the conference!

Action Steps

1. Create a collaborative opportunity.  Maybe it is a a group Pinterest board where you invite other sellers to pin, maybe it is a contest or giveaway where you invite others to donate their items.  Just collaborate!  I know personally, I have received a ton of benefits not only from hosting my own giveaways, but also in joining with other blogs for their giveaways.

2. Reach out in a positive way to at least 3 other sellers you admire.  Think of how you could help them.  Perhaps you have used one of their products in your classroom and you blogged about it, share the blog post with them.  

When I created my product Can We Get A Class Pet? I wanted to include resources about having a class pet.  I reached out to Erica Bohrer to ask her permission because she had posted about it and even had a collaborative blog about classroom pets.  She not only gave me permission to use her information, but she invited me to post on that collaborative board.

3.Look at the collaborations you are currently working on.  Are they worth your time and effort?  Leave boards that have low repinning rates.  It is ok to say, "no", you don't have to take every opportunity that comes your way.

4. When you are part of a collaborative board FOLLOW THE RULES.  If the board owner says only pin three times a day - only pin three times a day.  If you make a newbie mistake, ask for forgiveness, teachers are generally understanding people.  Just make sure you don't make that mistake again!  We all have our limits on patience!

Rachel says that ideally, when buyers come to your store, they should not leave until they have purchased something.  Of course, that is in an ideal world, but what are you doing to make sure that the likelihood of purchase is increased?

Action Steps

1. Look at your store from a new perspective, your buyer's perspective. Do your product pages tell them all they need to know to make an informed decision?  Have you provided accurate information?  Is the grade range correct? Are your best comments listed first.  Remember that Mark Guy from Jen Jones' presentation?  Use him!

2. Update your product pages to include links to other relevant products.  If you don't know how to make your own hyperlinks you can use this generator.  It makes them for you!  (That is my own tip - not from the conference).

3. Is your store easy to navigate?

4. Do you love your logo? If not, do some research and make changes.  I did this with my blog recently, I didn't love my design, so I had Megan from A Bird In Hand Designs create a new one for me!

According to Rachel, freebies should be just like those freebies in the store, a taste, not a meal.  She also gave us a few reminders.

1. Your pages should all have the name of your store and copyright info on them somewhere.  What if a teacher has downloaded your fabulous freebie, and then wants to buy more from you, but he/she can't remember where he/she found it?  Make sure your info is there for them.

2. Select a product from your store and make a freebie that complements it.  Make sure the freebie is top-notch.  Include a promo page for the original product including links. Then, blog about it, pin it, share it on Facebook, and other social networks.  Track it to see if it effected the sales of the product.

3. Submit your best freebies to the newsletter every week for a month. Make sure that freebie is complete, unique, and not out of season. If it is not selected, choose a new freebie.

These posts are really helping me remember everything I learned in such a short amount of time, and I am glad that they appear to be providing value for you as well!  Remember to come back tomorrow when I give you my notes from Erin Cobb of  Lovin Lit's presentation.  She grew her store in a very short time, and her presentation was about accelerating your growth on TpT.  

Teachers Pay Teachers Conference July 2014 Session 2 Notes

Thank you so much for all of your positive feedback about my posts!  Honestly, I am learning even more as I process my notes to write these posts so it is a plus for me as well! If you missed my previous posts you can find them here:

                                                               Day 1: Keynote notes
                                                               Day 2: Session 1 Notes 

All of the presenters uploaded their session handouts to TpT for free.  You can find the handouts for this session here.

I wish I was able to share some great pictures with you from this session, but this was my view.  The room was packed!

I did learn a ton during this session, so I will share that with you! Ryan opened up the presentation with this really cool Mario Brothers themed app of some sort that would go off every time someone in the room made a sale.  It was really neat and I wish I could have shown it to you!  He did give us the average earnings for everyone in the room.  It was pretty amazing!

That number is $6,899 if you can't see it.

Being the "Data Ninja" Ryan gave us some helpful tips on how the search ranking works at TpT along with a few other key tidbits.

Search

Search is personalized for each buyer based on items they have looked at and purchased.  That is one of the reasons why we don't usually see ourselves in the featured seller page (we don't buy from ourselves!).

When a person searches for a certain term, the algorithm factors in the buyer's past purchases along with the sales performance of the items. Top sellers' items might come before items that haven't sold as many.  You can see the exact details in the handouts with the (scary looking to some) page with the equations.  It is under the heading How Sorting Works.  The next page shows how items that are sold more have preference in the rankings using the conversion rate which is the # of times a product is sold divided by the # of product views multiplied times 100.  The higher percentage this is, the higher you will rank in the search.

If you don't read any other handout from the conference - read this one!

29% of users search right from the TpT website itself.

How Can I Optimize My Products For Search?

Product titles should be descriptive and simple.  Save the cute names for the covers.  For example, if you title is Dunking Time (a basketball themed division game of some sort) it might not get as many hits as a product entitled Division Review Game.

Ryan pointed out Kelley's Good Morning Work products that garner top page views when searching for good morning work.  Did you know that there are over 185,000 searches for morning work?

If you want to know what buyers are searching for, look at the top bar where you search.  If you click in this box a list of suggestions comes up.  These are the top 5 searches from the day before. I just took this screen shot as I was typing this post.  I had also peeked at it Friday night (the words were the same), so I think it would be safe to check it out weekly if you wanted to know what buyers are looking for.

He suggested putting the parts that will most likely be searched for in the front of your titles.  I already fixed  my own products Kicking It Math - I changed them to have the fact fluency in front instead of the Kicking It Math.  These products are for helping students master their math facts, and that might not be obvious from the name.

He assured us that changing the name does not effect any previous links you may have had anywhere else.  What do you think of the title change?  Is it more descriptive?

Tagging

As of right now, the common core standards that you click on are not included in search.  Keep clicking on them because it is coming, but you will want to list them in the product description as well if you want them to come up in the search.

Don't over tag grade levels.  Don't put K-12 on letter recognition items.  It isn't fair to the high school sellers when your item comes up and it really isn't fair to the buyers who are looking for something else entirely.  Just use the tags that truly fit your product.

Goal Setting

Next up was Kelley Dolling from the Teacher Idea Factory. She told us a little but about her story of turning lemons into lemon-aid when she was forced to take time off her teaching job because of a surgery.  During her recovery time she turned to Teachers Pay Teachers to keep her busy and keep her mind off of what she was missing at school.

Kelley is a pro at ranking high in the search engines at TpT and in tracking her data.  In the handouts are samples of the sheets she uses to track her goals.  Kelley says that she keeps these goal sheets posted on her wall near her desk to keep her on track. She can look up at it and see if there is anything she needs to tweak to meet her goals.  She says it is also helpful to be able to see the growth from quarter to quarter and year to year.  I started keeping a similar goal sheet and I have to agree it is fun to see the growth, especially on those slow days.

Some Tips:

* Track data from many sources (sales, followers, votes, Facebook, blog followers, etc.)

* Put goals where you can SEE them.

* Make changes to products where you don't rank high or areas where you aren't ranking high

As I was commenting on blogs this morning, I noticed that Jennifer White from First Grade Blue Skies has shared some notes and handouts from her presentation.  I did not get to attend her session, so I was excited to see this and wanted to share the info with you as well! Her session was on making your products pop!

I have donated items to a few giveaways going on right now, so you will want to head over and enter to win some amazing prizes.

The first one is in honor of Searching for Teacher Balance's 1st Blogiversary.

The second is our Hot Summer Giveaway where we are giving out a ton of gift cards!  Just in time for back to school!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TpT Conference 2014 Session 1 Notes - Jen Jones - Hello Buyers! Provide Top-Notch Customer Care For Your Buyers

As I said yesterday, I learned so much during the TpT conference on Friday and I am excited to share what I have learned.  Today I will be sharing my notes from the first session I attended with Jen Jones of Hello Literacy. 

If you missed yesterday's notes from the Keynote, you can find them here.

All of the presenters have uploaded their session handouts to TpT for free.  You can find the handout for this session here.

See how the cover of the handout says, "Someone Tweet this!"  Well, I follow directions well, so I did! LOL!

Jen Jones retweeted me!  I felt like a fan girl for sure!

She even replied on my Instagram! Throughout the conference I was amazed at how giving and sweet all of the presenters were!  No one seemed rushed or like they were too busy or good to talk to you, they all stopped to take pictures and answer questions.  They were really amazing!  I sat near Jen Jones during my last session and took a picture with her.

Enough of my fan-girling and time for the presentation info!

When we walked in the door, her hubby handed us these lanyards and raffle tickets.  

On the badge is a QR code which takes you to a SlideShare of her presentation which she said we could share.  You can find it here.

She started the session with a brief introduction of herself.  If you don't know about her (where have you been???) you can find her TpT site here and her blog here (you will want to take some time to scope this out, it is like PD in a blog!  Just don't say I didn't warn you when you spend 2 hours or more there!).

Then we participated in a clock buddies activity so we could meet each other and network (one of the points of the conference, right?). While I was walking around I got the opportunity to meet Katie Knight from Teacher to the Core.  Love her! I totally forgot to take a picture with her, but she gave me this card which I thought was a brilliant marketing idea, so I am sharing it with you!  She didn't say I could share the QR code for the freebie, so I cut that part off a bit, but I did want to share the marketing idea.  

Remember how I told you yesterday that Deanna Jump said she gave out freebies when she first started out?  Why not have some of these printed out to hand out when you go to teaching conferences, training, etc? If you couldn't see, on the card it offers and exclusive full-sized freebie for her amazing product Shout Outs. It is postcard sized and has a picture of the product cover along with the QR code for free download. You can see her intro to the left.  The other side of the card has links to all of her pages (blog, facebook, pinterest, and TpT).

I had already bought this when it came out and love it!  It is a great way to recognize your students throughout the year.  

Then we came back to our seats and took a poll using poll everywhere. Jen Jones said it is a great way to keep students engaged when they have cell phones, from the classroom to PD.  Even adults love to play with their phones right? Then she talked about customer care before the sale.

Your Profile

Before you make a sale, your buyer finds your product or your store.  Make sure it tells them everything you can! Jen suggests sharing as much information about yourself in your profile as you can.  If you were teacher of the year let everyone know!  

Get a blog 

If you don't have one, get one now.  Having a blog adds to your authority.  Teachers may not buy a product right away, but as they see it again and again and see the value you add through your blog, they will buy the product eventually.  As Jen says, "Blog it! Preach it!"

Social Media

You need to have a presence on social media, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, etc.  If you want to start with just one, make it Pinterest because that is where 25% of the traffic comes from to TpT.

Q&A

Your Q&A section can make or break you!  Answer questions quickly and respond professionally.  This is the time to show new customers that you are available.

Custom Categories

Jen talked about how even when you go to the same grocery store every week, you still find yourself looking up for the aisle directories. Your store should have custom categories that fit your products to help buyers find more of what they need.  Help them out!

Cognitive Fluency

We learned a new phrase.  Cognitive Fluency is your brain's response to favoring the familiar.  You go to the same store, order the same meals at a restaurant.  Cognitive Fluency at work.  Your products should be the same. Similar but different.

Use What They Give You

Make sure you are using all of the tools available on TpT when you sell your product. Make sure you use ALL 4 thumbnails, the preview, and a complete description.  All products should have a preview.  Many buyers won't buy without one.  Buyers don't like the one page previews with the itty bitty pics that they can't see what they are buying.

Freebies

Freebies get buyers through the door.  Do not make them garbage, make them your best.  Don't make something and then think, I don't really like it and make it a freebie.  Just don't.  Your freebies should reflect the best you have to offer.  They are your Showcase! Make sure they include: credits, terms of use, and information about your paid products.

Always include your store name on EVERY page of your freebie.  What happens if a customer downloads your freebie, loves it and wants to buy something else from you.  If they can't remember where they found it, they can't find you!  I definitely need to add this to my products.

Reviews

60% of consumers want to read a review before they buy something. Mark is your friend! Who is Mark? The mark as useful button!  You can mark good reviews (the ones that leave substantial, constructive feedback) using the mark as useful button and it will rise to the top! You can help other sellers out when you buy items by leaving meaningful explicit feedback.  I know I buy from other sellers - I will definitely make sure to make my feedback even better.

Notes to Followers

Jen suggest sending a note to followers once a month.  Remind them about your store. Tell them something good.  Make them want to read your note. Have a giveaway. Let them know about it! Don't send them during peak times (sales) when everyone else is sending them.  Keep them short and sweet!

Customer Satisfaction

Jen says you need to think long-term.  Don't think about that one sale, you want the customer to come back.  Even more, you want them to talk about you (in a good way, not a bad one!).

Happy customers tell 3 people

Unhappy customers tell 10 people.

Get the 3, avoid the 10.

Demands in the Green Room
Jen reminded us that you just can't please everyone.  For that once in a while customer who is just unreasonable, don't worry about it or let it steal your mojo!

And those are my notes.

Tomorrow I will be blogging about my second session: The Data Advantage (Optimize Your Store) with Ryan VanMeter (Head of Data at Teachers Pay Teachers) & Kelley Dolling from Teacher Idea Factory

Remember if you have any questions you can email me or leave a comment below!  I loved the feedback from yesterday and I will respond to all of you tonight - but for now I am off for some much needed family time at the water park!

Teachers Pay Teachers Conference July 2014 Keynote Notes

I have spent the past few days in Vegas for the first Teachers Pay Teachers Conferences and let me tell you it was amazing! Keeping wit the spirit of the TpT way of working in collaboration and not competition, I wanted to share some of the things I learned with you this week.  The TpT presenters are also sellers and were amazing about sharing with us and I would like to pay that forward. Keep in mind that we were limited to the sessions we attended, so my posts will only be about what I learned.  

However, the good news is that I saw camera crews there and it was said that TpT will be sharing the videos of the sessions in some way or fashion in the near future.  I am really excited about that because I learned so much in the sessions I was able to attend, and I absolutely want to learn more from the ones I couldn't attend.  If you weren't able to make it, be sure to keep your eyes out for them because they are phenomenal!

My plan is to write a post a day about each session that I attended starting with the keynote today.  The next few days will be as follows:

July 13th will be Hello Buyers (Providing Top-Notch Customer Care for Your Buyers) with Jen Jones from Hello Literacy

July 14th will be The Data Advantage (Optimize Your Store) with Ryan VanMeter (Head of Data at Teachers Pay Teachers) & Kelley Dolling from Teacher Idea Factory

July 15th will be Build Your Magnet Marketing Plan with Rachel Lynette from Minds In Bloom

July 16th will be Accelerating Your Store's Success with Erin Cobb from Lovin' Lit

July 17th will be All About Me and my experiences at the conference.  Kind of the ins and outs of why I went, why I am thrilled that I went, my memories, etc.  Also, why you really should go next year if you can!

The keynote in a nutshell was everything about what makes Teachers Pay Teachers the amazing place that it is.

Amy Borrell Berner, the Head of Community and Editorial for Teachers for Teachers Pay Teachers opened up the conference.  She was warm, and bubbly and a great way to get us started and as an introduction to Teachers Pay Teachers.

We had our very own Oscars moment TpT style when the CEO of TpT, John Yoo, took a selfie to show his teens he was a cool Dad. He said it probably wouldn't work, and as a mom of teens, I think he is probably right.  Us sellers definitely thought he was cool though!


I stole this pic from TPT's Facebook because I was on the other side of the room!

Paul Edelman, the founder of TpT was amazing!  He is so down to earth (look at him rocking those blue jeans) and personable.  As he took the stage he got a standing ovation which was well deserved.  The reason I believe it was well deserved is because he has really empowered teachers through his website.  He has allowed us to profit from our intellectual property just like book authors, and songwriters.  It was humbling to hear him say that we deserve it!  I found this article on-line that has many of the things he said in his keynote if you want a more in depth look.

He told us we (teachers) were super heroes who help other teachers make magic moments in their classroom.

And he told us what Teachers Pay Teachers super power is.  I agree, don't you?

They shared a few TpT stats:

They reminded us of the history of TpT.  This is what it looked like in 2008 when I joined.  I was only one of a handful who stood up when they called that year out.  

Yes, I started in 2008, but you might have never known it.  I will share more when I share my TpT story later this week.

Deanna Jump's keynote was so inspiring! Again this is a swiped pic from TpT because I was sitting right there!  Can you see me? LOL!

 I had read her story on her blog and had heard about it in various interviews she has given, so I didn't expect to cry when I heard it live - I was wrong.  I cried!  There were very few dry eyes in the house. And although her story was sad in some places and told of struggle living on a teacher's salary, she is so bubbly and upbeat about everything!  

She shared this quote with us as she told us her story. She didn't just become the number one seller on TpT because she was bubbly - she WORKED at it.

* She sent out freebies to teachers around the country to get them to look at her products.

* She worked with other sellers to collaborate on giveaways, linky parties, etc.

* She learned about marketing her products and making them better.

* She sought out places to speak and teach.

She had a few missteps in the keynote but she handled it with grace.  A quote we will not soon forget from her is "It's about Quantity not Quality!"  She quickly caught herself and made the correction, but it is so true!  As sellers we really need to remember that the quality of our products should always come first! 

My favorite quote of hers happened when a cha-ching went off in the audience and she said, "For every cha-ching that's a teacher who believed in you and your products and used their money to buy it.  Money that they might have needed to purchase something else."

That was so inspiring to me.  I really do appreciate everyone who has purchased a product from me and placed that confidence in me.  It has helped my family in so many ways, and I hope that it has helped you as well.  

To my teacher followers who are not sellers (yet - you may catch the bug, and if you do I would love to help in any way I can), I appreciate you indulging me this week as I post about the conference.  I will be back next week with more teaching ideas.

To my followers who are sellers, I hope you enjoy hearing about what I learned.  If you have any questions, feel free to email me or leave a comment below!

I am linking up with Burst of First for her What happens in Vegas linky party.  Check out what the other bloggers have to say about the trip as well!