43. The Value of a Content Audit with Jaime Miller

Stephanie 0:00

Welcome to a special guest episode of pay less for traffic featuring Jamie Miller from a spoonful of learning. Jamie graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor's degree in education, then went on to teach first grade, third grade, and kindergarten. She found her passion in kindergarten, where she was honored with Teacher of the Year. She took her passion as an educator and started creating fun and effective activities to use in her classroom and share with her colleagues. This led to the creation of a spoonful of learning. Jamie is passionate about making hands on and engaging lessons and activities that both teachers and students will love. She wants teachers to think of her as their virtual teaching friend. She's here to help busy teachers save time by providing them with ideas and resources that lead to student success. I am so excited for you to hear this chat with Jamie. It's the perfect follow up to last week's episode where we talked about auditing your existing website content before moving forward with your new strategy. Jamie shares her experience with hiring someone to help her with a content audit, and then she talks about the value that it added to her business moving forward. I think there's a lot in Jamie's story that will resonate with you.

Stephanie 1:24

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 1:35

Well, welcome to the podcast, Jamie. I am so excited to finally speak to you live and in person, because we are, you know, internet buddies, we've talked back and forth for a while now, but never live and in person.

Jamie 1:47

I know I'm so excited and honored to be getting to do this with you. So thank you so much for having me.

Stephanie 1:53

Oh, of course. Well, I would love if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, your teaching experience, and then your journey with TPT.

Jamie 2:02

So my name is Jamie Miller. I am a mom of two children and a wife to a wonderful husband. I have been teaching for, gosh, it was like 14 years, I would say. I started with first grade, and then I moved to third, and then I stayed - so I probably did that for about four years between the two, and then I stayed with kindergarten for the rest of the time. And that was just, I just loved, loved kindergarten, loved the little ones. So basically, I used to work in a inner city school where I taught kindergarten, and I worked at a school that just didn't have a lot of support for the teachers. We didn't have a lot of funding and everything and so I found myself creating resources - all just activities for my kindergartners all the time. And in kindergarten you have to have, like, an activity every five minutes. And so I would always like, look for activities, but I always would think of different ideas that I was like, I'm just gonna make this on my own. Like, I'm just gonna make this activity and the kids were just learning so much. I was very high populated ESL school. Most of my students not speak English, and I got just the activities I was creating not only did it teach them English, but it also we had the such amazing scores on so many things. And so other teachers started noticing that and seeing my activities, and they'd come up to me and be like, hey, like, where did you get that activity at, where are you getting this at? like, Oh, I just made it myself. They're like, really? And they're like, Can I use that? I'm like, Yeah, sure. And they're like, we would pay for this. If someone, like, actually made this, like, like, and sold it, I would buy this. And you're like, Would you ever think about, like, selling something? I'm like, Ah, that's a really good idea. And I was like, I have no idea what to do with that. And so this is almost like, you should, like, look online. And I started finding, like, blogs of other teachers creating blogs. And then I soon realized, like, I can actually put the stuff that I'd make on my blog for people to buy, and the only, only thing that was available at that time to do that was teachers pay teachers. So I was able to use my blog and people find my blog when they were looking for teaching ideas, especially for kindergarten at the time, they would find my blog, and then what they liked, what they saw, they would then click and get onto Teachers Pay Teachers. And so, long story short, that's how I got started in Teachers Pay Teachers. And it's been quite a big journey since. And I started that, I would say, about 12 years ago.

Stephanie 4:31

That's amazing. And so your blog really started around the same time you started your TPT store then, they kind of went hand in hand.

Jamie 4:40

They really did, yes, I would say I probably did about three posts of just, like, showing my class, like, my classroom setup and everything. And then my husband was like, Well, if you're going to put all this effort into this, like, how do you sell this online? Like, there's got to be a way you sell this online. And so that's when we figured that out. And so soon after that I would show everything every single week, what I would do in my class, and then I had like little like units or activities, and yeah. And so I start getting that little link on there that send them write the teachers pay teachers, yeah

Stephanie 5:12

Oh awesome. And so I think a lot of people can resonate with your story and your early blogging days, that it was definitely almost like a weekly journal of your teaching.

Jamie 5:23

That's such a good way to put it,

Stephanie 5:24

and you would like link them to your products. And so then was there a point when you felt like your blog could maybe be playing a bigger role in your business? If so? Like, what triggered that for you?

Jamie 5:37

As we all know, teaching can kind of be hard sometimes, lots of things going on behind the scenes, not just within, like, the classroom, and it could be very, very, very stressful. I was finding that my blog was almost like, like, you said, a journal. Like I it was such an outlet for me to just share without like, the stress and like, see all the successes that I had within my classroom for the week. And I've had so many people reaching out to me, like thanking me for the ideas, and I've saved them so much time in their lives for not having to plan all these activities. And I soon realized, like, this can be something bigger than I realized, like, if I put the effort of time into this, like, my blog can really help a lot of people. And I was realizing how much I was enjoying helping other people, almost, which I hate saying. I just love teaching, but like, I was almost starting to enjoy it more than being in the classroom. And so I just, I had some goals for myself, like how well I do blogging and selling on teachers pay teachers, and if I surpass certain goals and stuff, then maybe I would look into it, doing it full time.

Stephanie 6:39

So then you had those goals set, which I love, that you created those, you know, benchmarks for yourself. What kind of action steps then did you put in place, like, what steps did you think you needed to do in order to kind of increase the results that you were seeing from your blog?

Jamie 6:57

I was kind of seeing what was working, what was selling well, and kind of make a plan of ideas that was similar to what was working, but in different content or different areas, whether it was seasonal or a specific subject. I noticed that I needed to come up with more ideas that worked just like the ones that I already had. And so then I would, you know, make a list of all my ideas and kind of categorize it to priorities and not I would have like, like line, like units, where I would create like bundles. I just kind of had to make a game plan to and unfortunately, with Teachers Pay Teachers, it's either like, you can't really predict what's going to happen. That's the thing. You can't predict what's happened, but you can just make a game plan, try see if it works, and hopefully it does. Otherwise, you keep, you know, redoing your your plan, but yeah, just basically creating a plan for myself is what's what was working, what wasn't working, and how I can keep doing that.

Stephanie 7:54

And you know, as I mentioned earlier in the episode, like we've been in contact for a while. And so I know that you know you did that part with your products, but then you also thought, I need to maybe do this with my blog, like, figure out what I've got, what's on my website, what's doing well, what we need to fill in the gaps. And so you actually did a content audit of your website. And so what made you decide to get help with that? Because I know you hired that out, what was kind of your deciding factor in that?

Jamie 8:28

So I feel like, as we all know technology changes so much, so much, and I'm on the side of just creating and just doing the basic like it was like, what blogspot.com, or something like that,

Stephanie 8:43

yes.

Jamie 8:44

And I always had such great traffic, such such great traffic on it. And then I saw, like, a decline slowly of my traffic, and out of like nowhere. And then I would be like, start searching, like, what's happening? And then, like, you know, like, Why? Why could that be happening? And it was saying that, like, just my stuff's not up to date, or it could be that it's not doesn't look professional enough. It also, I just think my a lot of myself is just, like, starting to be outdated. And when I would start looking at other people's blogs that I knew started around the time that I started, I was like, wow, their stuff looks really fresh and new and updated, and they have all these like ideas of blog posts that they're doing, and you could just tell that they're using just being really smart with like their words and everything, and it just looks so much more professional than what I had. And so I just I knew I needed someone that knows how to do things behind the scenes, to go dive in to tell me, where can I improve and like, what do I need to do? What can we do together to help make my blog up to date and so that it could get out there more in like, the Google search is like, I knew that when I type stuff in that I was writing about in my blogs it wasn't in the Google searches, and I have no idea how to make that happen. And I read that, you know, a content audit could do that. How do I engage my audience more? What do I do? What is the content audit? You know, like noticing that I need to do to be more engaging to my audience.

Stephanie: 10:20

And so you don't know this, but in a different episode this month, we talk a little bit about auditing older content. So all the listeners have heard a little bit about what a content audit process is like, and so we won't go into that too much, but I was curious, after the audit, did you start taking the steps to clean up your older content, or is that something that was an extension of the audit, like, what did that process look like?

Jamie: 10:45

Yeah, I was definitely, I was given like, a wonderful plan of like, what was working, what's not working, and things I could do to clean up everything, to make it just overall, a better experience for my audience. And as I said, I don't really know the stuff behind the scenes, and I have not trained in how to do that stuff, and I didn't feel comfortable with myself to do that, but I knew that the person with doing the content audit was very well trained, and I could have probably taken the time to maybe learn how to do but I still knew I was not going to. I chose to do this route of creating because that's what I wanted to do. And so I felt very confident with how well my content audit was, that I felt I can trust, you know, the person to do the next steps.

Stephanie: 11:36

Everybody talks about the zones of genius, and you were very keen, you know, about what you wanted to spend your precious CEO time on, and then what you were willing to outsource. And so I absolutely love that. And I think it's good for listeners to hear that, that there are options, that you don't have to go it alone and try and figure everything out yourself, that sometimes it's faster to just hire it out and get it done and then move forward.

Jamie: 12:03

Yes and my husband always tells me, your time is very valuable. Your time, everyone's time, everyone's time is very valuable. I bought some courses. I took some classes to learn how to do like the SEO optimization and all that stuff, and I still did not understand it. But there are people out there that do understand it great, and you know what it is worth - it's just worth your time to have help whenever someone is much more experienced than you. I knew if I wanted to make my blog, my website, get to the next level, like I needed to trust someone else with this that knew what they were doing. Because I knew, as much as I wanted to know, I could not do it.

Stephanie: 12:45

It's actually been interesting for me to watch, because, you know that I have a course for people that want to DIY, there is that option for people, and I've had people take the course, they learn all the steps, and then they still come back to me and say, you know, I know how, but I don't really want to.

Jamie: 13:00

No exactly,

Stephanie: 13:02

I can make, you know, this many new products for my store in the time it would take me to do it real.

Jamie: 13:07

And that's very true, yeah.

Stephanie: 13:09

But they are always grateful that they do know how, because then, then they're able to interpret the results that they're given and all the things. But

Jamie: 13:17

yeah,

Stephanie: 13:18

they know what they're looking at for sure. So then you audited your content. You started cleaning up the old stuff, writing new stuff, creating new products. So what changes did you notice about your own mindset when it came to blogging? Because I know it's so hard when you see that traffic decline like you were saying you were kind of comparing to other people. What kind of changes did you see in your mindset?

Jamie: 13:46

I felt like I had hoped to get back to where I was first off. Like I didn't feel like, you know, like, Oh, this is done with I there's just no way I'm ever going to get back to where I was. I felt excited. Changes are good sometimes. I mean, everything changes in life, and as hard as it is and scary as it is, sometimes having that help, knowing that, like, I don't have to figure this out on my own, this is the steps I need to do. I felt that stress off of me, of like, okay, I have a plan, or I now have a plan that someone has helped me achieve, and that's going to make my website wonderful again.

Stephanie: 14:23

Did it make it easier? Because I know one of the biggest hurdles for people is just figuring out what new topic to blog about. Did it help you to like, come up with new topics?

Jamie: 14:34

Yeah, 1,000% it definitely helped. I learned a lot too, just like how important it is to, like, combine and consolidate blog posts, sometimes meaning like, hey, why don't you talk about this? Even though you already talked about this in another post, you can now touch base on this little area. And now we can then, once they're reading this new topic you're talking about, we can link an older post, and now they're still staying on your website, and now reading about something else which can lead to more sales or the audience is like almost going down a rabbit hole on my website now.

Stephanie: 15:09

yeah,

Jamie: 15:09

that was nice. And then also, yeah, I just felt like I didn't realize how many things you can write about. I thought I was a lot of ideas like, what else am I going to write about? You know, but there's just so much that you can do, and the content audit helps you understand that with like the SEO and all of that, it's really amazing how much you can write about that you didn't realize.

Stephanie: 15:32

Yeah, and I have noticed that, you know, with my own clients, sometimes they'll say, I just don't see that there's much else to write about. And I'm like, let's talk. I think when you dive into your products and you really think about the different - all of the different problems that you can solve with that one product, then you realize, oh, well, I can write a post about that problem and about this pain point that teachers are experiencing. And so, yeah, I love that you mentioned that.

Jamie: 16:04

It's almost like there's like, so many branches within a product that you don't even realize until you do the content audit. And it's just pretty amazing.

Stephanie: 16:12

Yeah, and then once you have all of those different blog posts, then you can start, like, doing the roundups of your own content, you know that you're able to consolidate that for your readers and have all of these different ideas in one post, which is also another great, great thing to do. And so then I know you've been publishing optimized blog posts to your website very consistently since your audit. Can you just give us an idea of how that regular, consistent blogging has transformed your business?

Jamie: 16:44

Yeah, I just think, oh, gosh, there's just so many areas that it's improved. First off, it's helped realign my business goals and my priorities within my business. It's really improved my SEO and my Google Search tremendously. I know there's quite a few areas that I went from probably never being able to find because I'd give up looking on what page it was on Google, to being on the first page and some of the first rankings, top few rankings of certain areas, which is amazing. I think my brand awareness and authority has really, really improved as well. Also, I think I look more professional. I think my whole website looks more professional now, and it doesn't just look like someone, someone's just playing around and like, you know, like, I think it just all comes together now. I think that my customer engagement has improved. I think that it's keeping them on my website longer, rather than looking for a second and then coming right off, which then, I think, leads to more sales, because they're maybe finding something, or maybe they're saving something that they want to look for later. And yeah, so it's been so many wonderful things.

Stephanie: 17:55

Well and I love that because, you know, hearing your story and basically being an accidental TPT seller and an accidental blogger and business owner, you know, like it's a path that you've taken. And, you know, I love that when you talk about the looking more professional, because I think a lot of TPT sellers can relate to that that, you know, I started this as a teacher, creating a blog, journaling my journey, and now all of a sudden I have this business,

Jamie: 18:25

yeah.

Stephanie: 18:26

And so I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to,

Jamie: 18:30

yeah.

Stephanie: 18:31

Well, so then looking forward into the future, you know, because there's a lot of doom and gloom about the internet life and Google and all Pinterest and but what's next for you and your TPT business when you look forward into the future?

Jamie: 18:47

I am hoping, I would really like to expand more within my age group that I offer my resources to. I would like to create some more curriculum. I really, really am looking forward to doing that more like I have a lot of like, thematic units and just seasonal things. And I'm really hoping to create lines of products that's more just specific skills within, like a grade. And then if that goes well, I can hopefully extend to, like older grades and everything. So my right now, I currently, I I'm very fortunate to get to be with my kids at home, and I will officially have both kids in school next year. Yes, so I am looking forward to getting to work during the day and not till like three o'clock in the morning every night. And so

Stephanie: 19:45

that is a game changer.

Jamie: 19:46

It is, it is, and maybe my brain will, you know, be better, not so tired. But yeah, I'm just looking forward to getting to get to have just focus more during normal hours and also just creating more new resources and continuing my blog, to be honest, like definitely continuing my my weekly posts and continuing improving my website.

Stephanie: 20:08

That's awesome. Well, I absolutely love your resources. I think they are wonderful.

Jamie: 20:14

Thank you.

Stephanie: 20:15

How can people keep in touch with you and see what you're up to?

Jamie: 20:19

So I try to post pretty actively on Instagram and Facebook, and you can find me just under a spoonful of learning. And then my teachers pay teachers store, also a spoonful of learning. And then my website is www dot a spoonful of learning.com.

Stephanie: 20:37

Thank you so much for chatting with us today. I think a lot of people like I said, will be able to relate to what you said, and also to hopefully maybe get that permission slip to hire out for a content audit, but at the very least to just kind of pause for a second, regroup, and see what they already have on their website before they start focusing on the new stuff.

Jamie: 21:03

Yes, and if I just wanted to add, I feel like one thing that I really struggled with, like, was feeling like I couldn't do it all, and I don't want to take anyone else's help. This is my business, like I did for so long, like I'm talking probably almost 10 years. I just like, I didn't want to trust anyone. Or I was like, I can do it all, if this is mine, but you can't do it all sometimes, and sometimes it's it's worth your time, and your business to ask for help and to get the help, especially when you feeling like something is not right, or maybe decrease, you know, not, not doing as well as it used to, and allow other people that know those areas more, such as the content audit, to help you, because it's the best decision I've ever made. Because I don't, I can't even imagine, like I would have gotten out of the slow rut that I was getting into. So very, very thankful for that.

Stephanie: 21:59

And I love that you said that because, you know, the focus of this podcast is paying less for traffic, but that doesn't mean paying nothing.

Jamie: 22:07

Yeah,

Stephanie: 22:07

that making investments in our business, the right ones, the strategic ones, can make such a difference, and can bring us more of an ROI for, you know, our time investment. So I love that you brought that up because you are not alone. You know, these TPT businesses are precious.

Jamie: 22:27

It's scary, and like you said, it is an investment, but it's an investment that will pay off, and you just as scary as it is, in the beginning thinking like, Oh, what did I just do? There's so many wonderful things out there that can help you, and you just gotta take that leap of faith and that investment, and it will pay off in the end.

Stephanie: 22:47

I love it well. Thank you again so much, Jamie, and we'll talk soon.

Jamie: 22:52

All right, sounds good. Thank you.

Stephanie: 22:55

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.