Northeastern Regional TpT Meet Up #TpTFlock17

Oh my goodness, how is it already April 17th??? The weekend of April 8th I had the joy of attending the Northeastern Regional TpT Meet Up in Rochester, New York at the beautiful Woodcliffe Resort. This was the second time I attended and was no less blown away. The amount of effort and energy that went into cultivating the perfect environment for motivation and inspiration was incredible. Each detail, from the delicious breakfast, to the creative decor, not to mention the incredibly skilled speakers, was done with excellence. 

The keynote speaker, Art with Jenny K, was breath-taking. Kindness and creativity oozed out of her, for lack of a better description! She spoke about her journey on TpT, but never once did she make it about the money. It was about how honored she felt to be contributing to the education of students around the world. 

She spoke about how each time she sold a product, she viewed it as investing in the lives of 30 different students. I thought that was a wonderful way of thinking about it. Creating materials for my own students is definitely exciting to me, but having the opportunity to participate in something worldwide is humbling. 

She also gave us each a piece of paper with a design on it and colored markers and crayons. We were given a key as to which colors to use on the paper... again, her creativity is astounding (more details on why later...)

My first break out session was a Tax Seminar, which really isn't really my domain but interesting to listen to. My husband is our tax guy, so he sent me in with a bunch of questions. It is mind boggling to me how much extra income TpT provides for so many educators! So cool!

Next I had the privilege of listening to Tabitha Carro from FlapJack Educational Resources. She did a lecture on Smartphone Marketing last year and I learned a TON from her. Once again, she did not disappoint. She taught us how to do pinterest marketing using a smartphone. My takeaways were both exciting and overwhelming... I am actually going to go get a new smartphone this week so I can have enough data to hold all the apps she recommended. 

It's so interesting, I love pinterest, and use it mostly for personal things... I.E. millions of recipes and crafts for my daughter. However, I never really noticed that the most popular and attractive pin covers are vertical and sized 9 x 16. Tabitha showed us apps that easily size and allow for designing collages such as Adobe Spark Post. It's WILD... It takes completely artistically incompetent people, such as myself, and allows them to create something that looks like this on the first try! 

She also recommended a bunch of other apps like Word Swag, Phonto, InShot, Canco, PicCollage, and PicLab Studio. Incredible! Thank you, Tabitha!! 

The next session was perfectly timed... right after Tabitha's smartphone pinterest marketing, I attended Jamie Sears from Not So WimpyTeacher: Keys to Pinning Success. She has an outstanding amount of knowledge about pinterest and how it works. Basically I learned that everything I have been doing is wrong, haha! 

My new goals for Pinterest:

- Create new pinterest covers for my blog posts and create a separate board for my posts

- Create new pinterest covers for my products

- Reorganize my boards to have 40-50 total (by creating secret boards and repinning so as not to lose the work I have already done)

- Look into using Tailwind

- Do some more research on advertising on pinterest since it only charges per click, as opposed to per view on Facebook

Lots of work to do, but I am hopeful it will be worth it!!! 

The last break out session I attended was with the FAMOUS ERICA BOHRER. She is also very knowledgeable and has been with TpT since the very beginning. I have a lot of respect for her because she is killing it on TpT but she's still in her classroom and that's her first priority. 

My big takeaways from this session were to first, clean up my crumby instagram photos and second, and more importantly, find a group of people that can post for each other. She gave us this great organizer to get started so I am hopeful to execute this by the beginning of May! Oh, and I am looking for teachers that would like to use my products in their classrooms and send me pictures that I can post. I love being a stay at home mom, but it does put me at a disadvantage for posting photos! Any takers?!? You can have the products for free! ;) 

We concluded the day by hearing from TpT staff and Amy, the director of seller happiness (which she truly is). She talked about how TpT is an ecosystem, we all need to do our part for it to thrive. Then Jenny K. came up and showed us how all of our tiny pieces of paper we colored came together to make a beautiful poster. 

Overall, the TpTFlock17 conference was a great experience and I can not wait for next year! Thank you so much to all of the hardworking crew that tirelessly worked to make the day perfect for us all.