Welcome!
Today, I listened to 2 sessions that kind of centered around the same topic, adding consistency and cohesiveness to your products and store to add value and look more professional.
She also talked about making sure to have a mission statement. I've never written down a mission statement for my store, but here's what it would sound like:
I help 2nd grade teachers with filling the gaps in their standards and curriculums by creating engaging and rigorous supplemental resources.
That's definitely been my mission over the first 8 years of my TPT store.
Now, here's the caveat... This next year, I'm moving out of the general education classroom to fill a different position at my school. I'm not sure yet, but it's very likely that my mission statement may change to something like:
I help Kindergarten - 5th grade teachers with filling the gaps in their standards and curriculum by creating engaging and rigorous supplemental resources for their reading core and interventions.
We shall see how my product creation changes in the next year, because, usually, I make things according to my own classroom needs.
The second session by Kirsten focused more on consistent branding to keep your store and products cohesive. So... once you've made a product with all the bells and whistles to add value, make it fit your store branding.
My biggest takeaway from Kirsten was that I need to do some redesigning in my store so it's more cohesive.
I was scrolling through my store as I was listening to her, and I need to update a lot of product covers and thumbnails. (Probably even need to... eventually... update a lot of my original products, too, but we won't think about that at the moment.) As of last year-ish, I started giving all the new products square covers. So, there's a lot that needs an update:
Same or similar fonts. Square covers. Easy to read titles and text. Changing out the "created by" to just showing my store logo in the corner. So, yeah, that's a literally a BIG takeaway. It'll be a mountain of a task.
I was also thinking it would make my store look more cohesive if I gave my freebies square covers, too. I even thought it might look nice if they all had the same colored light blue square behind them.
Kirsten also mentioned templates. I've heard that word a lot during the TeachersPayTeachers conference.
Oy! I definitely need to make this happen. What a timesaver! Even if it's just saving 5 - 10 minutes off of every product. Big deal over the course of a year. Or the summer (because I'm more of a summer creator than a year round creator).
Well, I sure do have some work to do!
