203. Baking it Down - Reasons to Start a Blog

Summary

Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪

Episode 203: Baking it Down - Reasons to Start a Blog
Release Date: March 18, 2025
Hosts: Heather and Corrie Miracle

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1. Introduction to the Episode

In Episode 203 of the "Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing" podcast, hosts Heather and Corrie Miracle delve into the pivotal role blogging plays for local cottage bakeries. They emphasize how a well-maintained blog can significantly enhance a bakery's online presence, drive sales, and improve business management through effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

2. The Importance of Blogging for Local Bakeries

Heather (02:03):
"Blogging has been around for a long time, and it's a powerful tool beyond just lifestyle content."

Heather and Corrie discuss how blogging serves as a dynamic component of a bakery’s website, beyond static pages like "About" or "Contact." A blog allows bakeries to continuously add relevant content that not only engages customers but also supports SEO efforts by providing more material for search engines to index.

3. Overcoming SEO Challenges

Corie (06:07):
"SEO is a buzzword, but it's essential for ranking in Google searches like 'sugar cookie baker near me'."

The hosts acknowledge the competitive nature of SEO, especially against large brands like Crumbl Cookies, which have substantial resources dedicated to SEO. They stress that while larger companies dominate search rankings, local bakeries have a distinct advantage by targeting hyper-local content that bigger brands often overlook.

4. Crafting Local Content Strategies

Heather (25:00):
"Google's algorithms favor geographical relevance. Incorporating local topics can significantly boost your rankings."

Heather explains the concept of geographical relevance in SEO. By creating blog posts that focus on local events, landmarks, and community interests, bakeries can better align their content with what local customers are searching for. Examples include writing about local farmer's markets, popular local restaurants, or community events that align with the bakery’s offerings.

5. Blogging Best Practices

Corie (30:37):
"Don't come to me with blog posts less than 500 words. Quality and depth are crucial."

The discussion highlights the importance of creating substantial, well-written blog posts. Heather and Corrie recommend aiming for at least 500 words per post to ensure content is rich enough to satisfy both search engines and readers. They emphasize covering all aspects of a topic to provide comprehensive information.

6. Repurposing Blog Content for Maximum Reach

Heather (12:12):
"Updating your blog gives you valuable social media content to share, driving traffic back to your website."

The hosts outline how blog content can be effectively repurposed across various platforms. By sharing blog links on social media, newsletters, and other marketing channels, bakeries can direct more traffic to their websites, enhancing visibility and engagement.

7. Avoiding Common SEO Mistakes

Corie (26:32):
"Keyword stuffing is counterproductive. Focus on natural, quality content that resonates with your audience."

Heather and Corrie warn against the pitfalls of keyword stuffing—overloading content with specific keywords in an unnatural manner. Instead, they advocate for creating meaningful, relevant content that organically incorporates keywords, ensuring a better user experience and higher search rankings.

8. Managing Existing Content and Website Migration

Heather (52:50):
"If you have an old blog, consider migrating it to your new website to consolidate your content and SEO efforts."

Addressing listener questions, the hosts discuss strategies for handling existing blog content, such as migrating old posts to a new website. They advise ensuring that content remains relevant and updated, linking old content to new pages, and avoiding duplication to maintain SEO integrity.

9. Listener Questions and Practical Solutions

Listener Query (50:51):
"I moved my bakery 40 miles away and updated my Google business profile, but I'm not ranking in my new area. What gives?"

Heather and Corie respond by emphasizing the need to create localized blog content that reflects the new location. They suggest generating blog posts about local events, businesses, and community topics to establish geographical relevance and help search engines associate the bakery with its new area.

10. Conclusion and Actionable Takeaways

Heather (42:36):
"If you were looking for a challenge of the week, I would say write a blog post."

The episode wraps up with a call to action for listeners to start blogging, even if it means committing to just one post per month initially. Heather and Corrie encourage bakeries to leverage blogging as a multifaceted tool for SEO, customer engagement, and social media content generation.

Key Takeaways:

• Start a Blog: Essential for enhancing SEO and driving traffic.
• Focus on Local Content: Tailor blog posts to local events and interests.
• Maintain Quality: Ensure blog posts are substantial and well-written.
• Repurpose Content: Share blog content across social media and newsletters.
• Avoid SEO Pitfalls: Steer clear of keyword stuffing; prioritize natural content.
• Manage Existing Content: Migrate and update old blogs to maintain SEO strength.

Notable Quotes:

• Heather (02:03):
  "Blogging has been around for a long time, and it's a powerful tool beyond just lifestyle content."

• Corie (06:07):
  "SEO is a buzzword, but it's essential for ranking in Google searches like 'sugar cookie baker near me'."

• Heather (25:00):
  "Google's algorithms favor geographical relevance. Incorporating local topics can significantly boost your rankings."

• Corie (30:37):
  "Don't come to me with blog posts less than 500 words. Quality and depth are crucial."

• Heather (42:36):
  "If you were looking for a challenge of the week, I would say write a blog post."

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a treasure trove for local cottage bakers looking to elevate their online presence through blogging. Heather and Corrie provide practical insights into optimizing blog content for SEO, crafting local-focused posts, and repurposing content to maximize reach. By following their expert advice, bakeries can transform their websites into robust marketing tools, driving sustained growth and customer engagement.

For more detailed strategies and resources, join the Sugar Cookie Marketing Facebook Group and explore their extensive library of free Facebook Live classes and resources tailored for sugar cookers turned business owners.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content segments to focus on the core discussions and insights presented in the episode.

Transcript

[Heather]

Hey Corey, I thought today we could talk about wrong dog.

[Corey]

I don't know what that means.

[Heather]

Wrong dog.

[Corey]

Wrong. Wrong dog.

[Heather]

Uh huh. Okay.

[Corey]

I don't know what it means.

[Heather]

Just talk about wrong dog.

[Corey]

What's wrong dog?

[Heather]

You know, I'm glad you asked. A couple of weeks. Can you do that to your husband tonight? That's wrong. Anyways, not the topic of today. Corey wanted to talk about starting a blog in terms of SEO, which is a buzzword a lot of people want to talk about. But before we get started, welcome to.

[Corey]

The Baking it down podcast.

[Heather]

We are your twins, hand in arms, inside the vehicle at all times until the podcast has come to a complete stop.

[Corey]

We are a spin off from a group on Facebook. So the group on Facebook is sugar cookie marketing Group if you're pending. We're letting people in. Me sorted up, gotten people where they needed to go.

[Heather]

Every Monday I'm letting in everyone who answered all the questions. Yeah. Unless you're joining as a page, profile page.

[Corey]

Yeah. Like it's too hard. You guys are running rampant. We can't track you. I don't know who his. His glory Patty's.

[Heather]

Patty's Bakery LLC is just breaking all the rules.

[Corey]

So customer bashed.

[Heather]

We don't allow pages of join but some people create profiles as pages and those we don't allow to join as well. We tried it. It does not.

[Corey]

It just seems like when there is.

[Heather]

An any in any capacity, you can.

[Corey]

Run crazy because no one can track.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

So if you are requesting to join, we are letting people in. So please join us as yourself, as yourself in that group though we can see the problems, tribulations, trials of many of the bakers and what they run into. A lot of times we address like customer relations. We have podcast on that, we have podcast on, you know, how to run your bakery more efficient.

[Heather]

But last week we talked about CTA's call to action, specifically digital marketing. And in that same genre.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I wanted to talk about blogging in terms of a local cottage bakery, which adds a subtle nuance.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

To what a blog is.

[Corey]

Blogs have been around for a long time. Blogging turned to vlogging turned to these channels that you can see like TikTok and things like that. But blogging has been around for a long time and a lot of people are like, well I, you know, I'm not trying to be a lifestyle blogger. Blogging is so much bigger than that. That's where it probably took off. And a lot of people, a lot of us found blogs through someone's Lifestyle blog.

[Heather]

Right. I think that today, like people are like, what could. I'm not lifestyle blogging.

[Corey]

How my baker can I talk about? I showed up turn the oven on.

[Heather]

Yeah. So when you think in terms of a website specifically most of the websites that bakers are going to use, you're going to have the homepage, the about page, products page.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You're gonna have a contact page. And then maybe you're gonna have like a classes page or something like an asterisk, like a one wildcard page. And then we typically see most websites, whether cottage, bakery or plumbing or remodeling have these five basic pages.

[Corey]

And that is a good foundational website structure.

[Heather]

If I looked at a website and you had five basic pages, I said, your foundation is laid correctly. Now if each of those pages was outfitted to speak to the customer as well as support the topic.

[Corey]

Oh, you're, you're a little bit more. The thing is a lot of us think we set it and forget it. You set up the website once it's done and then you're like, why do.

[Heather]

I get no leads from my website? I set it up. I did everything I was supposed to do. What gives? How do I rank in Google for search terms like sugar cookie baker near me.

[Corey]

Because so many bakers didn't start off as marketers. They think of a website as where you send someone to check out for.

[Heather]

Your Easter presale, which is fine as the in immediate need.

[Corey]

But your website in terms of online marketing can be your number one sales getter.

[Heather]

Corey and I always call it the salesman who never sleeps. Yeah. 24 7, 365. Because as long as he is ranking in search engines like Google, you can.

[Corey]

Be getting leads, which someone getting leads for you versus you having to post, beg people to buy, stay front and center.

[Heather]

That's a lot.

[Corey]

But if you could have another one of you getting the sales, just imagine the load taken off your shoulders.

[Heather]

So you can say, okay, well I have the website girls, I have a square website. It does have a blog component. And that's one of the biggest things I would say is don't start a separate website. Blog blogs specifically started out kind of in the sense of blogger, which is a Google owned property. And then you'd go to Blogger and then you'd create your blog and that would just be literal entries towards this content of whatever you wanted to. Our older sister used to do it a lot.

[Corey]

She did.

[Heather]

Now we have websites incorporating blogs, which is where the magic happens in terms of SEO and SEO is a buzzword. Search engine optimization. What's a search engine? It's Google, it's Bing, it's Safari if you use that, you poor selves. But for the rest of us, it's anything that you can search on can be optimized for search engine optimization. Now, just like for social media, we are held to an algorithmic standard yet again. Social media grades you off of which content people like to watch.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Search engines grade you off of content people are searching more likely to want to click on. Right. So remember, Google's product is its search engine and its customers, everyone who makes a search. Right. So as everyone who opens up Google and types something, Google's like, I need the first thing they click on to be what they actually wanted because then they're more likely to use Google. Okay, how do we get that concept in your website? Merit. Right, so content, Right, Because a website, a website with five pages, a very basic website, but is it going to answer the user's query, which is what we call anything you type into a search engine. The question, yeah, I'm looking for a sugar cookie baker near me. Well, I'm a sugar cookie baker near you. Why isn't it showing me? Because remember, there's only one first spot in Google.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And every baker near you is fighting for it.

[Corey]

Is fighting for it.

[Heather]

And a lot of times big, like crumbl cookies is going to rank really well. It's a giant company. It has a very, very deep pockets and it's very focused on SEO. And Cory and I always say, like, SEO is if something goes up, if somebody's ranking higher, something must go down. And, and it would be great if you could get into the first spot and never have to stay there and be like, ah, we're done. But somebody's always vying for that first spot. And somebody's website has always got more content. Somebody's website always answers the query better. Yeah.

[Corey]

The great thing, because you're like, wow, Heather, thanks. I have no chance to ever rank. The great thing about being a small local baker in your local town is most bakers aren't marketers. So there's a big chance, there's a lot of opportunity that you can get in there to that top search and get more leads just for the fact that no one else is trying.

[Heather]

Right. So I want to lay the expectation. I always see that someone, someone says, you said create a Google business listing. And I did. I'm not getting any leads. My first question is, when did you make it? And they were like, Three days ago. Like right, yeah. None of this is immediate. Remember that a search engine sends out little robots and the robots crawl through websites and listings and then the robots try to determine what is the best website listing. Something to put right there. Right. So it's never immediate because the robots are not immediate. There's millions of websites.

[Corey]

When they're not crawling on you, they're.

[Heather]

Crawling on someone they're trying to decipher. And again, we don't know how the algorithm works. And that's the worst part of SEO.

[Corey]

Is reverse paging too.

[Heather]

Reverse engineering what these algorithms may decide. And Google never tells you, it never.

[Corey]

Tells its little secrets.

[Heather]

Okay, so we say let's. So why a blog? Why not just put the content on your website? True. Blogs are known to be constantly updated. Right. That's how we're conditioned to think of them. So on a website you could add. You meant 50 pages.

[Corey]

Here's @ the end thing you have to think of when a client does get on that website, we can't lose them in the sauce of so much content.

[Heather]

So let's say we. Let's say we never add more than our five pages, but we need to add more content because that's what the robots are reading. Well, your homepage could be so long that it actually is inhibiting the end user for making the purchase. Because remember, we're always talking to two people. The robots.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

And to the person who's got the money speaks the same way. So our homepage needs to be welcoming, it needs to be high converting. It needs to drive people with those call to action, which you did cover.

[Corey]

A really good one which was so Corey.

[Heather]

We have Corey's homepage. Imagine that we keep adding content and the page is like forever long. It gets longer and longer.

[Corey]

It's. The CTAs are now so spaced out because I put so much content in between them.

[Heather]

And that is a strategy. It's not the strategy that I think is becoming to a website that's high converting. It may be a website that does well for robots, but I think our end user be like, whoa, this is weird. Yeah, I don't. You know, best date nights in D.C. is not for a homepage. Maybe. Right. So okay, then you incorporate this blog, which a lot of your website builders already have it maybe a tab you toggle on. I know Shopify as Corey has it has a blog incorporated. We're using Podia has a blog incorporated. I know Square comes with it. Wix comes with it. I think most of them know because it's such a needed thing. It is because of the reasons we're going to talk about today. So the first one is Website SEO, which we've been talking about.

[Corey]

SEO stands for search engine optimization.

[Heather]

Okay, so you're like, well, how does the blog help the website rank? Well, the blog allows us to produce a lot more content than we can just put on the homepage. Just like Corey and I said, too long of a homepage and it's kind of a weird experience.

[Corey]

But the blog allows you to do the little snippets, the little bite sized pieces of the blog and then they're taken to the blog, which is typically not found on just the homepage.

[Heather]

So a great example is the newsletter attached to this podcast. So if you go to sugarcookiemarketing.com, you'll see everything that we kind of offer in very succinct forms with just very little mentions of what each is. But I want to add the Wednesday, Wednesday newsletter content to the website. Am I going to add each one of those newsletters to my homepage? We send these out every Wednesday, one.

[Corey]

Day Wednesday newsletter has been going on for years at this years. Imagine years worth of Wednesday, Wednesday on the homepage. And you're just trying to find out how to contact Heather and get a free stupid car trip.

[Heather]

So my content couldn't live on the homepage. So I'm going to put it on my blog where it is very naturally sounding because the blogs are constantly updated, which we'll talk about that in a second. So when we have a website with SEO in blog is just right there, it almost is a necessity. Okay, so you say I want, I want. And if you go to sugarcookingmarketing.com and you go to the blog, you're going to see all those Wednesday newsletters. And I'm updating them constantly. Because blogs are meant to be updated, right? They are timestamped. They actually I could toggle it on and off on this website, but you have a timestamp and nothing says, nothing.

[Corey]

Says, look, I've not been here in a while.

[Heather]

Corey and I have another website. The Sugar Cookie Glasses website has a blog component to it. And she and I, I don't know, there's not enough money in the world to get us to write this blog anyway. So we focus on the websites we want to rank because that is the goal here, right? So website is great in terms of driving traffic, getting people to buy things, and that's what our number one. But we also want our website to be a lead generation source so that the website, the blog is going to bring in a lot of that SEO benefit. And you're like well I don't really know what that is. Don't worry about it. What I just said is do it, do it. And you know it's kind of those if you build it, they will come, the robots will come. Yeah, the better your content, the better quality, the better results. That's how it always works and everything. But and don't worry, we're not going.

[Corey]

To just lead you with the better the quality, the better they come. We'll dive into these next few things.

[Heather]

Corey said, save the SEO breakdown to the end.

[Corey]

It's just because it's like if you're going to check out, you're going to check out.

[Heather]

I want it to be number one in our topic today because it is kind of the most important. But we're break it down because it is a little nuanced and kind of buzzwordy. Number two, Corey says updating your blog post gives you social media content to share.

[Corey]

We're always looking for social media content. One thing that the buts and Google love is when someone clicks to a website stays on there. It shows that you're have a valuable website. People like clicking to it. So if you're looking for social media content you could write a whole blog post in cross post. That means take that link Sharon, put it on social media and you are one. Two birds, one stone. One. You're more eyes on your website which we love to you have a whole content bucket. Now that we're to the robots when.

[Heather]

Someone clicks to a page Google's like there's, there's something new here. There's a disturbance in the force and it's like well people are clicking on this page. We shouldn't, we should rank it.

[Corey]

And the easiest way you're if you're like well I just made my website. No one's clicking to it right now. A great way to jumpstart it Claire is to share on social media where you've been growing that audience and that audience is like oh wow, they have a website.

[Heather]

We've already the slave to one algorithm. We can use that one algorithm to suffice the other one.

[Corey]

It's beautiful, it's beautimous.

[Heather]

Now my biggest asterisk here does Facebook want you to take traffic from. So when you share your blog post it's not going to get as many reactions at all. You're using an external link going to your Website Facebook says we don't want our users to leave. We like them seeing our ads and you're taking them from us. Okay then, well, maybe I shouldn't post it. No, it's just not going to perform as well. And as long as you make peace with that. But it's still going to get 200, you know, impressions.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Maybe we'll get two clicks, but that's two more clicks than you. And it's also a diversification of content.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Sometimes I think we get in the rut of I bake this. This is fun to bake. This is baked by me.

[Corey]

I think in the rigmarole of bakers, we want to post the coolest, most complex set because that gives us the most reactions. In those reactions, we do get a little ego dopamine hit and then we're.

[Heather]

Like, you know, the big thing is reaching and it's getting more reach. Yeah.

[Corey]

And I get it, I get it. But here's the thing. We have to work like a well oiled machine. And it's a circular thing. It's not just post many viral content.

[Heather]

Working together to support the overwhelming goal here of making sales online.

[Corey]

So when you post that blog post link on your social media, it won't get as many clicks, I can promise you that.

[Heather]

But people is actually watching where that referral traffic came from. When I open my Google Analytics, it says, hey, this blog post you posted was clicked through from Facebook.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

Which can be a. They call them social signals in terms of ranking. Because if something does well on social media, Google may say, well, this might be worth it for us to give it a little boost in our own search engines.

[Corey]

We love that.

[Heather]

We love that.

[Corey]

So it's being well oiled, not being just, if I have to post viral content. Viral content, viral content. Because you one will burn out. Two, you'll be making such viral content, you'll no longer be a baker.

[Heather]

The beauty of sharing a blog post to social media is when you do get the click and the person does leave social media to your website, they're surrounded by your call to actions. Now on all sides, we've got order button. At the top, we got the call to action. Midway through, we got the footer that says order here. So in a land of Facebook where we can't always put our order button. No. When they get to our website because they want to read that content.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Then they're like, you're pretty close, you're pretty close to making an order here.

[Corey]

I know. And if they're not Ready? They have that sign up for my newsletter. Right.

[Heather]

There's a lot of conversion we can do on websites and websites that are stagnant, websites that are never updated. It's kind of hard to constantly drive traffic there because the user's like, what changed in that?

[Corey]

Then I will say, when we were looking for a new cat for Heather, there was many, many a dead website that I have clicked to. And I was like, the biggest takeaway.

[Heather]

Here is the only reason these cats are even getting purchased is because there's limited supply.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But they're the. If there was a high supply, demand would force these people to actually update these websites.

[Corey]

And that's the great thing about Cookie.

[Heather]

Earth is there's a lot of competition. Yeah.

[Corey]

We're not having to bake something for nine months or whatever the gestation period of a cat is. We can put it in the oven, bake it to the.

[Heather]

A lot more, I don't think. How long does it take a cat to have a baby? No way. How long does it take a cat to have kittens? Two months. Two months to have four to six cats. You're living my dream. You had four. Six. I had better than nine. So, yeah, the social media content and like Corey said, it gives us a reason to update the website because our homepage, okay, maybe once a quarter, we got four quarters, you know, change it to an Easter glass. Change this button to Christmas.

[Corey]

Typically, what I see most bakers do is just change a photo. Which photo? If you think about a website has even less.

[Heather]

But imagine I'm like, hey, Corey, come back to my website. I've changed my photo. Nothing else has changed. You gain no knowledge. But come back.

[Corey]

Right?

[Heather]

Please. Right. Don't be a stranger.

[Corey]

It's not enough to be like, to wake someone to waste their time to click over, like, right.

[Heather]

What am I? But now when we have these interesting blog posts, which I think you'll find yourself if you guys click on every week, I uninstall all entertaining apps. Weird. So I find myself in a desperate drive for some sort of morsel of dopamine from the Internet. I read articles because I don't know Android phones, and I almost hated that they had this. When you have an Android phone and you swipe right, it brings up the list of Google topics you selected to be interested in so I can read about it. Frontier Airlines offers free checked bags. I was reading about Southwest Airline removing free checked bags. So now I'm reading these articles.

[Corey]

Yeah. These are blog posts.

[Heather]

All of these are blog posts.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And I'm reading them because it's something about that content piques my interest. Yeah. Now let's say a news source never added any articles. Would you go to their website? No. Same thing applies to the baker's website. But you're like, but I'm not a news source. But we still want the traffic. And that's where blogs fill in this gap. Okay. And I know what people are thinking. Right. About what then.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

Free checked bags at Southwest.

[Corey]

Right. Right.

[Heather]

I'll read it. But no, we want to stay on topic. So we don't want our blog to just cover hot button topics. Yeah.

[Corey]

We don't want to say drinking Bieber and Selena Gomez should have ended together.

[Heather]

We're not a breaking news source. We're a breaking cookie source. Right. So we gotta stay on topic because we want the coherency of our website to always signal local baker sugar cookies. That's always the goal here. So all that content needs to kind of support that in some way, shape or form. If it doesn't. Baking. It needs to support local.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

So we got two options there. And I think a lot of people sleep on the local side. I think some of you guys are going to know what I say when I'm talking about baking topics, but you're sleeping on the local side. Yeah.

[Corey]

So you have to think a lot of times what bakers will do is post topics about baking. I want to tell you who is the only person interested in baking?

[Heather]

Bakers.

[Corey]

Bakers. Unless you are selling two bakers, which most of us local bakers are not. We want to stay away from how to cure icing bleeding, because that's not going to be what Mrs. Hilburn down the road wants to see during her.

[Heather]

It's like an actual name because I think that's Archie's art teacher or something.

[Corey]

I don't know a Hillburn.

[Heather]

No, you don't? No. Who's Archer's artist teacher? The art teacher that you keep talking about.

[Corey]

I thought it was purdy.

[Heather]

Okay. I was so far away from Hilburn, I feel like a Hillburn would paint something. Okay. Reference topics. What I find here to still incorporate baking is consider. If you taught a cookie class, what are the questions asked? I would turn.

[Corey]

What do I need to bring to a cookie class?

[Heather]

Yeah. And so you're like, okay, an apron. We're going to get wordsmithy. You may be tempted right now to power fire up chat GTP and get it to write it. Don't do that. Actually, I'm going to challenge you not to use AI at all when writing these blog posts because you need to train yourself on how to think like someone who'd write a blog post. It is. They're calling it the death of the Internet. When AI writes blog posts that AI reads to write blog posts that AI will read to write blog posts. So it's great to actually flex your. Your brain and really write out this content in a way that.

[Corey]

And I want to say AI amazing the way AI writes. I can spot it.

[Heather]

A million words, words out. And it's one thing. And I saw somebody, somebody wrote this the other day on a topic I was asking in the main group. They said, I use AI to get me started.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And then I'll go back in and edit it. And that. Using AI as a framework. Awesome. Using AI to write your entire blog. Lazy. And you're not going to get what you want.

[Corey]

The word delectable. We'll be in there for future.

[Heather]

As the sun cascades across the countertops, as my kitchenaid glistens in the distance. What we want to do is, you know, still stay concise. Kind of what the call to actions talked about last week. But we want to answer the topics. Asking a cookie class, because imagine this. Imagine I teach this class and someone asks all these questions and I send out that final email where I give them all my resources, my other resources, like, hey, guys, for you guys who purchased a DIY kit, here's an article on my website where I talk about remixing that icing, which is something I mentioned in class today. And I link to that. Then I'm going to say, hey, a couple of you guys mentioned you wanted to freeze your cookies for a party we're having later. Please click on this article to read about my best practice tips when it comes to freezing cookies.

[Corey]

1. You're making your email concise. It's not a word. It's not this long. No one has that much time.

[Heather]

We're not going to put this much about freezing cookies in the email to.

[Corey]

Cookie classes, but what we want is in our class attendees, we want them to say, sign up for the next Easter class here because we want them to go there. If you bought a DIY kit, let's just say half of them bought a DIY kit, so that link is only pertinent to half the thing.

[Heather]

We set up all our DIY kit instructions to only half the people. We're keeping our email short because we know short and sweet gets more clicks and reads, but we're still allowing those people to have an article which is on our blog on our website.

[Corey]

Right, right. I mean, here's what I was even thinking. Like in the college we have the cookie class playlist and it's basically the PowerPoint you get in the cookie kits. And Julie in the college actually takes the steps and makes them into a little PDF. You could even have that on your website and have your audience click to your website to do their DIY kit for Easter.

[Heather]

Because remember, Google sees all and knows all when it's a website. Google is watching where they came from. And I'll even know that they came from that email. It's actually. It's looking at where they went to. It's. It's logging how long they were on that website and it's looking at where they click to next.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

So if somebody came to your website and immediate immediately leaves, that's going to increase your bounce rate. It's going to decrease your website stay. Time is a fancier word for it than that. So these articles written for cookie class attendees are going to be real resourceful and they're going to read the whole thing because it's a content that they needed at that time. Yeah.

[Corey]

One thing I want to say. Sometimes we ask a blog post to do a lot like, can you do my dishes?

[Heather]

You can also tell us how to dethaw frozen Eddie cookies printed six months ago.

[Corey]

That's why you can make. And it's so important you can make multiple blog posts that cover different topics.

[Heather]

You should.

[Corey]

And you can link to those. Sometimes we were like, I don't have enough. What can I write about? Okay, I'll write about everything in a DIY kit, plus sign up for my.

[Heather]

Cookie classes, plus buy this, plus do this, plus two cartwheels. Here's how I learned how to do the splits.

[Corey]

Here's my sister's name and her favorite color. At the end of the day, because the blog is in a blog section, you can have so many different blogs. You should that cover a totally different gamut.

[Heather]

There is no cap. There is no like. That's one too many blog posts. Now we'll talk about thin content in a minute. Quality blog posts. And there's not quality. If you have a bunch of quality blog posts, I ain't going to tell you to stop. You're going to rank above everybody else. How dare you. You're doing great. So Corey, Corey said, well, we don't write to bakers, but you guys just gave us a bunch of baking topics because we're writing to our class. Attendees to write for me who doesn't bake. Yeah. To write an article that is interesting enough about baking for Corey to click on is going to be hard because I'm punching above my white class.

[Corey]

Right, right, right.

[Heather]

But I do teach sugar cookie classes, and I can write in a way that sometimes somebody who took my class for the first time they've ever seen a sugar cookie yesterday, I can say, hey, listen, what you're having an issue with is you're not using that scribe. Here's my scribe best practices. And also a link to Amazon where I purchase these scribes. You know what that link can have, can be an affiliate link. It can. You just have to tell them that. Yeah, but there's many resources. There's many. There's a lot of money left on the table without having a blog, for sure.

[Corey]

And then you might be listening to this and you're like, girls, I don't even teach classes. I'm just Debbie Abby back or I'm just starting out. You can. And this is what Heather loves, local content.

[Heather]

And that's my number four local topics. So you can say a baking website could have a lot of baking content in its blog. And I'd be like, that's real healthy. But we're not just a baker, we're a local baker. So what we want to do is geographical relevance. That's a buzzword for saying local.

[Corey]

Yeah, Right.

[Heather]

So the Google's going to be like, well, I know this website's about baking. That's what I'm sure they have some great blog posts on Dethawing cookies. So I'm going to let them rank for when somebody says dethawn in Google. But we were like, we don't. We also want to rank when Corey lives in Woodbridge, we want to rank for Woodbridge baker. Well, how do we incorporate Woodbridge in baking? Well, Corey, here's a. Here's a great idea how to do.

[Corey]

This, and I really like it when.

[Heather]

I see websites do this. Best date ideas in Woodbridge. So what Corey's going to do is list five great date ideas. One's going to be going to Occoquan Regional Park. The other one's going to go to the Stonebridge Town Center. But number three is going to be signing up for her local cookie classes. Well, now we've got relevance. We've got Cory the baker.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Cookie classes and local content. We have mentioned Woodbridge in terms of Stonebridge. We mentioned Woodbridge in terms of Occoquan. We've mentioned Woodbridge in terms of going to Lisylvania State park or taking the train ride or something like that. But we've also connected Woodbridge and sugar cookies.

[Corey]

Yeah. And then you're like, okay, I see your guys. Creative juices are flowing. Things to get Woodbridge area teachers for Teacher appreciation Day.

[Heather]

That's a very long term keyword. But guess what? Corey's the second on the list is going to be.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Custom sugar cookies from. You never guessed it. Corey herself.

[Corey]

You're right. So when people don't have blogs, sometimes you'll go to a website and they'll keyword stuff. So you're like, well, I don't really want to buy a blog, Heather. That's too much time, too much effort. And you'll see Corey, who bakes in Woodbridge, who loves baking. Woodbridge. Because she lives in Woodbridge, who bakes in Woodbridge.

[Heather]

Here's five things she does in Woodbridge. And you should do these five things too.

[Corey]

And that's not natural, it's not converting. It's called keyword stuffing. Because you're like trying to bypass little bugs. Yeah.

[Heather]

You're saying, I don't want quality content. I'm just going to tell the robots I'm a, a baker in Woodbridge and they should rank me. And, and Google's like, listen, we're not going to send a user. Our user, our person. Yeah, our client to you to be lambasted with the word Woodbridge.

[Corey]

Because you have to think, just like Facebook wants to keep its users on its platform so it can serve it ads, Google wants its end users to.

[Heather]

Always find what they're looking for. In terms of, let's say Ross.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Which is a discount store like a TJ Mac. If you don't have one, you go in there and Ross wants to. Whatever it thinks you want, it wants to have it on the shelf. Right. Because it knows if you go in there and you find it, you're going to come back to RO next time you need something. Google is the same way. Unfortunately, Google is pushing people away from its website constantly. So it needs to make sure that first click. 70% of clicks on Google go to the first list.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So it want to make, it wants to make sure that first click is the one. So answering of the end user's question that the end user will be like, I'll just Google it next time.

[Corey]

Yeah. Right. To stay on googs.

[Heather]

Right. So we're going to have really high quality lists because look now back to the social media content. Let's say you say, okay, well I came, came up with really five great date ideas. Actually they're so great. I've done them. My. Yeah, Cory and I oddly go on twin dates a lot. I could write a great blog post about 5 restaurants in Occoquan I would or wouldn't write to.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

And I could post that to my social media and guess who's going to want to read that? Yes, my baking client who lives in Woodbridge and is only used to ordering cookies from me. They may be like, oh, I'm looking for some date ideas.

[Corey]

Well, see now you've become a resource and not just buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff.

[Heather]

So while we're also working on ranking Google, we're producing really solid content for Facebook. And Corey's fifth point is for our newsletter, a of people say, well I don't, I don't know what to put in my newsletter. It's going to be buy from me, buy from me, buy from me. It's going to be like, hey guys, I just added a new blog post. Here's a five date night ideas. Here are five date ideas I would, I would do in Woodbridge.

[Corey]

You might look at Heather and be like, why are you putting the Wednesday Wednesday newsletter on your website when you're sending it out each week? Here's the thing, when she sends it out, there's no ranking potential there.

[Heather]

It is going to your dies within.

[Corey]

That week and that's it. So that content is not evergreen. A content on your website is evergreen. It's on there for life. It's on there and for growing, for clicks.

[Heather]

So because, so the newsletter I sent out two years ago could answer someone's question today. And you know where they're going to find themselves on my website? You know what's on my website? A link to sign up for the cookie glass, a link to sign up for the cookie college, a link to join the Facebook group. And you can kind of see how this all works together. Like Corey said at the beginning, as.

[Corey]

This well oiled marketing, it's honestly, it's two birds, one stone. Here's how I would honestly do my newsletter. Hey, okay, four different places you gotta check out in Occoquan. And then in my thing I'm gonna put three in my newsletter to read. Number four, head to my website and what you're doing, you see that circle where it's well oiled and one is watering, the other is watering, the other is watering it. That is how you have a well oiled market machine. It's never just one thing to focus on. It's never that diversification of lead sources.

[Heather]

So, okay, well, Facebook's where I get most of my leads. What happens if your page is gone?

[Corey]

I know in when someone's like, I don't get anything from Instagram. You're telling me that you've not watered there. So because you've not watered there, it is not valuable to you. But there is value there to be had, and someone else is taking your value because they're there.

[Heather]

If there's a spot to fill, somebody will feel it.

[Corey]

Someone is filling it.

[Heather]

So why not consider your website in the spot in terms of SEO? And SEO can get so in depth, and it could be overwhelming. But all you need to take away today is a high quality piece of blog content. And if you want to think in terms of SEO, here's some topics to consider. So the length of content. This is where I meant. Thin content. There's such a thing as too short of a blog post. If you're writing 250 words, girl.

[Corey]

250 words. If you have to think about it, it's like if a tweet is 150 characters, you got two Tweedles.

[Heather]

Well, that's characters we're talking about words.

[Corey]

Words.

[Heather]

Considerably longer, but still not enough. Still not enough.

[Corey]

Whatever I was saying, I was right on track.

[Heather]

Just a few tweets, but okay. So I tell Gory, don't. You know, she'll send me a blog post she wants me to add to her website, or I'll ask her to write something I said, if it's less than 500 words, don't even send it to me. Just delete it yourself. Because, Cory, I'll be like, because you can make open a Google sheet and then make it count the words. And I'm like, oh, this is true.

[Corey]

I want to tell you, when I'm in Microsoft Word, the thing that's open at all times is word count.

[Heather]

Because I need. I want thick content. Thin content is like, hey, guys, you can feed your cookies tomorrow. No, no. Here's how we're going to bring them in. We're we. The Laffy Taffy scenario of marketing is what I always like to think. Like, hey, guys, here's why you'd freeze cookies. So if you have your cookies frozen, here's what you're going to expect. If you had them in an airtight container, if they're wrapped in cellophane, if you had them for three months, if you had them for six months, here's your Best practices that's going to allow you to write enough content, it's going to be thick enough that the robots will be like, this is pretty good. I'm going to. I'm going to let it rank. I'm going to let it. And not only rank the individual post, but the whole website rises.

[Corey]

Yeah. A great way to think about writing content is for someone. Someone who's never experienced it before. We are bakers, so we've been around freezing.

[Heather]

You and I were talking all that time the other day. I told Corey I want some beginner content. And she's like, well, I don't really know what. I said. No, no, no, you're talking. I want you to talk to somebody who's. Who's just finding out about sugar cookies.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Because Cory's like, well, I don't know. I feel like a lot of bakers know that if you just use the word bakers. That's not who I'm talking to.

[Corey]

You a beginner baker, Let me help you. I'm gonna say sugar cookies. We're gonna talk about dough, what to look for in your dough, how it's overcooked. So you have to think. If someone's never heard the word before.

[Heather]

Which most end users haven't. That's why we're so anti.

[Corey]

Because we're been bakers for so long and we freeze cookies all the time, we lose the essence of explaining it to someone. Imagine your customer being like, I don't think I like that you freeze my cookies. They seem old. How would you, in turn, talk to them? Talk them off the ledge? That's your blog post.

[Heather]

And Cory's got a great example. Talking to that customer who knows nothing is how you're going to write these blog posts. Because that's your end user. You may be saying, but I'm teaching my end user listen. How to unfreeze cookies isn't teaching your end user to be your competitor. It's teaching that person who you're about to tell them you had to freeze their cookies because there was a storm. They couldn't pick them up.

[Corey]

What's so funny is sometimes I'm like, I can't think like a beginner, but I'm doing good.

[Heather]

I'm doing that.

[Corey]

I've just been in it for so long, but I actually went to a hair spa. I talked about this last week, and I was so thirsty. My hair was thirsty, and I was thirsty for information on how this appointment was supposed to go that I. I'm literally going through a website like, guide me through what a hairspot appointment is. Well, think about you go to a.

[Heather]

Doctor'S office and they're like, yeah, I'm gonna give you a tretinoin, right? And you're like, what? Right. And the doctor, it's the doctor's. Ought to be like for a skin condition. I'll help with anti aging. Here's how it works. And cellular rejuvenation. That doctor's taking something technical and breaking it down for us. Yeah, you as a baker, taking something technical. You may not think it's technical. It's technical to the average person. You're breaking it down for us. You're talking about me? Yeah, pretend you're talking to this.

[Corey]

Pretend how they're staring at you and saying, what do I need next?

[Heather]

Sometimes I'll be like, Corey, like, I don't get what meringue powder is. I don't understand it. Well, Cory could write a whole blog post because you know what we say at cookie class. Hey guys, one of your most expensive ingredients will be meringue powder. We don't have enough time to explain. Hey, you know, after class I'll send you out a resource list and you guys can learn about meringue powder, what it is, and actually the products I recommend. And if you use Code Twins, you can get 10% off a jacket. So you see how we're even getting passive income, Right?

[Corey]

Right, Right. Blog post. We're all sleeping on them. I can tell you it. It's like pulling teeth. And I know the benefits of it.

[Heather]

Literally why we were storyboarding this one. Of course I gotta write.

[Corey]

Yeah, it's pulling teeth for me to sit down and write them, but it's so valuable. And here's the thing, you're thinking the same way as I do. I'm not getting leads from my website, so why add a blog post? The reason you're not getting leads from your website is cuz you haven't written a blog post. When you start getting those leads and people are like, yeah, I found you on Google. You'll be like, wow, wow, why? Why wasn't I writing these blog posts years ago? You have the information in your brain, your brain's got it.

[Heather]

Suddenly you're actually posting to social media already. So why not post it to like, Corey and I mentioned Facebook. You can post it to Instagram, which I post the Wednesday, Wednesday newsletter. Instagram to Facebook, to the page, to the group. You can post it to your newsletter, which we send out the website.

[Corey]

Post it to your Google business profile.

[Heather]

Under Update business profile. You could even turn it into a TikTok. Hey guys, new blog post up here. Here's three things you're gonna wanna hear and I think you're gonna like never. You know that kind of thing that gets you in there. So you can repurpose this content.

[Corey]

That content can, you can pull it out so much. It doesn't just have to be one blog post and be like oh crap now. Now what? Now I hope someone sees it eventually. No, it can be repurposed into so many different things and it waters one, waters the other. You got a reel from it, you got a TikTok from it.

[Heather]

Another. I think Corey, I'm gonna actually, I think you might've written a blog post, but I'm gonna make you do it. Corey's gonna go to the Dale City farmer's market and she's gonna take her camera and she's gonna take pictures of the parking lot. She's gonna take pictures of the venue, she's gonna take pictures of the cost, she's gonna take pictures of the signage, of the hours. And then on her website, mixing bell, she's gonna say everything you need to know about the Dale City farmer's market. And then she's gonna say, hey, I'm a local cookie baker and I'm always looking for great treats. As somebody who bakes, I also like to eat. And here are the things you need to know about the Dale City farmer's market. Make sure you stop by guy booth number, company name because I really liked the breads that they sold. Corey's going to go to her social media, she's going to post this and she's going to tag at bread company.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And she's going to tag at Dale City farmers market in this blog post she's written. But in the caption she's going to do that and it's going to tell these two people who love the Dale City farmers market and the bread company because it's them. Yeah, they're going to read it and guess what they're likely going to do. They're going to share that. They're just going to share it.

[Corey]

So if Heather, one time we did a collab and it was called a main street marketing collab and you literally went and chose a very well known business in your little town and you featured them in this collab. That is a fantastic way if you wanted to get more corporate orders to focus on that. There is a business owner and a person with a beating heart behind that other page. So you're like, well, no, my post didn't get that many likes, but the person that you wrote about saw it.

[Heather]

And it doesn't work every time. But Corey and I, when we work for clients, we're like, you know, we're a. We're a social media marketing team trying to talk to another social media marketing because they've hired somebody to run their social media, either internally or externally. And they're going to be like, we want content. Like, if someone wrote a blog post about sugar cookie marketing, you best believe. And here I'll tell you this. If you write on your website a blog post about the sugar cookie marketing group and you and you let me know in an email or tag us, I will share that right to my audience.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

Thousands and thousands of people. Because it's so hard to get that content. If more people realize how thirsty the person who's like, I don't know anything to post. Oh, I just got featured in a blog post from a local baker as a best date idea restaurant to go to.

[Corey]

I know the odds that they would share it to now their audience. Who isn't your audience that you. My chance. At the end of the day, though, there's some Helter Skelter older people behind those pages and sometimes they don't get the sharing part. You can't be like, well, they didn't share it, so I'm giving up on the whole thing.

[Heather]

Here's a. There's Occoquan we keep talking about. It's this quaint little old town on a river. So a lot of people like to go there. Corey likes this restaurant called. Which one? The one that's you. Just.

[Corey]

Oh, Bistro Lehmerton.

[Heather]

Yeah, Bistro. I caught the French cracker because the walls have a bunch of friendship, but it's not cheap, it's expensive. You really like the food. The service is really great. So Corey made this whole video about it. They knew we were making the videos. We asked them if we could. And it was just one of those TikTok type things. And Corey's like, it's a shame because whoever's running their Facebook page is the owner who has got to be over 70.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

And doesn't understand what the sharing is. But Corey's like, still, the content's so good because everybody likes this very eccentric restaurant.

[Corey]

Yeah. And a lot of people want to try it. They don't know, like, do you need a reservation? So at the end of the day, there's still value that I can get by writing about Bistro La Hermitage.

[Heather]

You did a great tip there. Instead of Corey, like, everyone knows about this restaurant. What am I going to say? Cory's going to talk about parking. She's going to talk about you got to have a reservation. She's going to talk about where the bathrooms are. These are things that people would want to know, especially people with anxiety, parking anxiety, before they get there. And that's going to be. It's going to be weird content, but it's going to be local, quality content. Now here's what I wouldn't put on my website. Say I'm a local Woodbridge baker who went on a cruise to Cabo or wherever that is where I haven't been. Obviously I would not say, and here's five things you need to do in Cabo because I don't care about ranking in Cabo. I care about ranking in Occoquan, which is a service area for Corey. Right. So I'm going to focus on local only or baking only. We got that right. So we're really focused on these two things. It's got to be about baking, it's got to be about location.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Uh, length of words. I always want something to be 500 words. There you could get really wordy.

[Corey]

Heather loves a thousand words.

[Heather]

I think a thousand words is going to answer the who, what, where, when and why of the topic. Yes. A thousand words is hard to do. It's hard.

[Corey]

It's 1050.

[Heather]

Real strong. Yeah, real strong.

[Corey]

500.

[Heather]

You're phone in 250. Don't even come to me with that frequency. So some people like. How often should I update my blog post? The more the better.

[Corey]

At the end of the day, something is better than nothing.

[Heather]

So if you want us to set a goal for you, do two times a month. Yeah, do get. Give me one. Battery died. I'll just keep it going.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

Sorry, guys. You get the one. So I would say two times a month and make one baking in one location. Yeah.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

That's not too hard. Yeah. 24. If you, if you miss one, you. 23. I'd take 20. I'd take. Hey, anything over zero, I take. Yes. In terms of. If I was your. If I was your SEO. Okay. Within the blog post, there is a bit of strategy and nuance here. We want imagery. Right. Because when you go to post to Facebook, what populates, it needs to be an image. If she's covering the restaurant, I want it to be a picture of the restaurant.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I don't want to. Everything you need to know about A reservation at La Bistro Hermitage. French. What I call it Cracker Barrel. Cracker Barrel. And I want to have a picture of a random set of Easter cookies. That doesn't make a ton of sense. Now, if Corey did that Main street collab and cookified their love, absolutely. That would be my poor. Yeah. If not, then a picture of the restaurant. Again, we can't take photos at ours. You'd have to go there and take that again. We're being. We're investing here. Right. And like I said, if you're there, take a photo of the parking lot, Take a photo of the front door. Ask me twice.

[Corey]

I want to go. All right.

[Heather]

And Corey went the other day. She really likes it.

[Corey]

I'll go.

[Heather]

You bring me. So once you write that, the blog post, you're going to invest in header tags and H1 tag. You can see them on Facebook. You can add them. Now, H1 tag is that big text at the top. You can only have one H1 tag per blog post. Blog post. That's best practice. Everything else would be an H2. So think in terms of an outline. Why date night ideas in Woodbridge. That's gonna be H1. H2 is going to be all my date night ideas, which would be about 5. If I have an H3. It's going to be why this specific date night idea is a good one.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And you're going to have links. So within a blog post, you can reference other blog posts or other content. You can.

[Corey]

They call it a website structure. You have to think like, if you're. If you have five pages, you have a. A. A very good line.

[Heather]

A good line. So our homepage would likely lead to the about page, the contact page, and the products page. Yeah.

[Corey]

So we got a good little line going.

[Heather]

Our blog, though, is a lot more sticky, we can say.

[Corey]

And you know what?

[Heather]

That's something I covered in a blog over here.

[Corey]

Click here to read as the Eiffel Tower. You see, the Eiffel Tower has a bunch of lines in it, but they're all connecting to each other to create a really solid structure.

[Heather]

And at the top is you ranking first and for sure. Right.

[Corey]

But you see everything underneath, it supports that little top pinnacle.

[Heather]

And the more lines, the stronger the website, y'all. So that is. I feel weird now that I'm the only person on camera. It is going to be posted with just me.

[Corey]

That's fine. And you know what?

[Heather]

Yeah. I thought I charged it last night. I charged him last night. I had to teach that Facebook Live get to know.

[Corey]

It's probably good that they're not seeing me. I had a zit that I played with as one does your pimples.

[Heather]

Okay. That takes us through that. So. Okay. If you were looking for a challenge of the week, I would say write a blog post.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Or at least turn on your blog post feature again. You got to write them. It takes a while to rank them. You can submit them and this is a little bit more technical. You could submit them to Google and say, hey Google, these are, these are ready to be ranked. And Google be like, oh, thanks, we didn't even know you wrote that. I'll add it to my list of things to do and then you can keep just creating that content. Now things can naturally rank on their own, especially if you're driving traffic to it through social signals.

[Corey]

And I do want to say, I do want to add. We're in a slow. Not the slowest time for cook years. We just came from our super bowl, which is the Christmas time. Whatever you do now. Whatever you do now.

[Heather]

I was telling Gory, I was telling my hot tip. My hot take is that the people who spent all November December posting about politics haven't seen the repercussion of that yet.

[Corey]

They have not.

[Heather]

Because I'm a huge, huge proponent of separating your personality politics, your personal beliefs from your business. I don't want to know who my mechanic votes for. I know I just went the wall change. Yeah.

[Corey]

But if you can take that into perspective, what you do now during slower times, maybe set the stage during the high times when people are searching on Google.

[Heather]

That's a great point. Let have I. What if I said the what from the point that you post it to the point that it starts ranking in any capacity. Because remember, ranking could be on page one, but it also could be page 30.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

In ranking any whatever. I said that was a two month waiting time.

[Corey]

Oh, then I think people would be like, I gotta do it now.

[Heather]

Gotta do it now. Because I need to set the stage for busy, busy season. And you may be like, I got enough needs and you may.

[Corey]

I don't need it.

[Heather]

Okay, I'm talking to your competition then and I don't need you to go ride it.

[Corey]

You have to think I have so many leads. I'm the top of my game. I'm going to one sleep on my newsletter. I'm going to sleep on my website.

[Heather]

I have too many leads.

[Corey]

You're leaving the door open for that. That next baker to come in and take your spot.

[Heather]

My challenge to the baker with that attitude is raise your prices. It'll lower your leads. You'll make more money, get more lead sources, build up that new spare time. You have to build up these lead sources. You'll have more leads at a higher rate.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And that is how you scale your business.

[Corey]

What's so funny was on my on my dinner with the two bakers I had last week, they're like, how do.

[Heather]

You just never guess where she went?

[Corey]

B they were like, how do you have any time during the day? But I can honestly say, well, I and not writing blog posts. Like, right at the end of the day, you're gonna pull from something and you're gonna take away from something else.

[Heather]

So. So where do you want to water? And I think it's a different not. And I said, okay, I challenge you to two a month. But if you did one a month, I'd still tell you.

[Corey]

But one a month is still fantastic.

[Heather]

You could write while you're watching tv something you're not interested in listening to. You could write a blog post that is 500 to 750. Yeah.

[Corey]

And I would tell you while I'm watching TV at all times, I'm surfing Etsy. So I it can be done.

[Heather]

I'm gonna pull up. I think Corey sent me a blog post for Webster about my website.

[Corey]

I did and I It was extensive.

[Heather]

It was extensive. So I'm going to actually, like read to you her H1 tag, meaning the title of her post is Sugar cookie classes and language Risky. Click. But she really wanted to associate the website with language. So she's not going to word stuff that she's got it in the H1 tag. I'm going to read her H2 tag. I know because I said it as an H2 which supports the primary header tag. And this is SEO. And it's something you got to know and you know it can be overwhelming. Don't let it be overwhelming. H1 first one is what you should know before taking a cookie class. Then she has a bunch of supporting text things to bring for cookie classes are H3 it supports to it supports her what you should expect her next. Stage two is what are cookie decorating or when are cookie decorating classes. And now she's referenced her own cookie decorating classes. We have them on Saturdays at 11. We do them throughout the year. Where are the sugar cookie or where the cookie baking classes now you can see. And I kind of helped her with this. We did cookie decorating. We did cookie class and now we have cookie baking you see that we're not not doing exactly the same keyword over and over again, but we're making sure we encompass it in every way. Yeah, this is getting pretty close. But it's not because we've used diversified versions of the phrase that people might search for. And then who can take a cookie class? So she's got, oh, she keeps going what happens, what happens in a sugar cookie decorating class? So that's, that's how long this is. And I think you got it to a thousand words. It was over a thousand words. So she's covering this now when somebody says, hey Corey, I know I ordered custom cookies from you. Do you guys teach sugar cookie classes? She, she's like, click, here is everything you need to know. But also she's telling Google, hey, I teach writing, making cookies.

[Corey]

But even as the one person who says, Corey, do you teach classes? And I send them this, well, fine tuned everything you could possibly want to know about the cookie classes that I teach. One I'm going to get someone who would most likely sign up for a class versus like here's my, here's my eventbrite page figured out. Hopefully I'll see you on those.

[Heather]

Assuming that the in our know our eventbrite page has a ton of content as well because at the end of the day people make decisions off of how much information they me in the.

[Corey]

Head spa, I'm like, please let me know.

[Heather]

Our little sister got her first ever massage. She had gone out with her friends to this resort and someone was like, there was just never enough information at any given time for a half naked person. Like she was like, do you take the undies off? Do you cover yourself? And I'm like, when you go to a massage in any capacity, there's never enough instruction.

[Corey]

And I want you to be like, take your pants off, leave your underwear on, put the robe on.

[Heather]

But I'm sure the masseuse is like, girl, don't you know?

[Corey]

And the answer is no. And the masseuse is right for thinking that. She's been doing the massages for years though. So she's thinking it's common knowledge. It's n. It's not. Just like cookie classes are not common knowledge. You've seen the people who've come to your cookie classes for the first time and they're like fish out of water. Like, what do I do with my purse? Like, they want the guidance. So you have to think people want the guidance. You can't talk to them enough. I'd rather give someone Too much information than not enough information and lose the sale.

[Heather]

And the blog post can cover all that information without clogging up your homepage. Your about page isn't going to be a place where Corey's going to tell you what a piping practice sheet is.

[Corey]

Nar.

[Heather]

Yeah, we're not going to go to our services page and see how to defrost a cookie.

[Corey]

Yeah, the contact us isn't contact me piping practice sheets.

[Heather]

So if you truly grasp what the podcast today was about, you should see so much more opportunity for content. Content. Content you've wanted to add, but you've made it a post on Facebook and you're like, it gets lost. You're like, oh, I can put that post I spent so much time on. I can judge up the character count, the word count, and I can post. I can add some images. Images delectable. Google actually looks at images as well.

[Corey]

Because it's a ranking factor.

[Heather]

It's a ranking factor. You can actually. Some strategies of SEOs is to rank the picture nice because they know they'll get someone to click over. And that's another lead source as well. Moving on to stupid car tray. You use code Sugar. Sugar. The check out 15 off stackable stack. You sent me a photo. I need to post it of a stupid card tray and cookie practice.

[Corey]

It was being used.

[Heather]

It was being used. Okay, we have only four texts this week, so a a 25 chance to win for these people who dialed in.

[Corey]

Going with number one.

[Heather]

Number one is a person who texted in yesterday.

[Corey]

Texted in yesterday.

[Heather]

This is Iron River, Michigan. Iron River. Iron River. Send me an email at heather sugarcookiemarketing. You have seven days to claim your free stupid car tray.

[Corey]

I feel like Iron river is a peaceful place with a lake and obviously a river.

[Heather]

What if it's a river made of iron and that was like a bridge and they're like, oh, no, it's stunning. It's a river made like ironish rocks.

[Corey]

Oh, nice.

[Heather]

Oh, lots of snow. You guys get there very high next to Caspian.

[Corey]

Caspian Sea.

[Heather]

Back to the question at hand. Hello again. This may really be a stupid question. I've listened to the podcast two times through and I'm working on my third. Bless your ears. Wow. You Would you ever consider going through a things you should consider or do when getting into cottage baking business episode. I know we focus on marketing and dealing with clients, which is super helpful. I'm in my third year as a cottage baker and sometimes I wish there'd been like a checklist of things to look into. I realize it may be different for everyone depending on your area. Like for example and ever so important, number one, getting your cottage food registration, attaining insurance, talking to an account accountant, which is terrifying but sometimes necessary. Amen. Maybe talking to a financial guy is that different from an accountant because that's still on my list. Making sure you figure out costs, get the socials going, et cetera. I hope this makes sense. Thank you for your continued nuggets and laughter. I hope this podcast never ends.

[Corey]

I want to say that is like talking to someone brand spanking new. We have so been in the world of marketing and baking so long that we talk to people who are already in the thick of it.

[Heather]

It really SEO. It's cta. Yeah. And I think that's is a great. You're right topic is that we can get drowned. Lost in the sauce.

[Corey]

Lost in the sauce. Where someone who's like I'm just starting out and they said cta. What do those letters stand for?

[Heather]

Maybe we should do a series on like the fundamentals.

[Corey]

Oh, I like it.

[Heather]

The fun of the mentals kind of the baker's business basics is the fundamentals. I created it because people would sign up for the college and say this is too advanced and I want the foundational right. But we could cover. There's only 13 of them that we covered too. Great topic. And Iron River, Michigan. Please send me an email and I'll get you that shape McCartray from Phil. Congratulations.

[Corey]

Thank you for such a great topic that we should definitely cover.

[Heather]

Also kind of tying it back into today's podcast about getting too me and.

[Corey]

Iron river had that planned out.

[Heather]

Iron River's like I get you got yours. Podcast question. This is not a winner but you can text in next week. Apparently your odds are very close at a 25 chance. Podcast question. I have an old WordPress blog. It's like we paid these people that I've had for about 12 or 13 years. Is it an easy way to switch that old blog into my new cookie website? You're gonna hate my answer. WordPress ranks really well, I'm guessing. So there's a WordPress.com and WordPress.org one is a website and one is a blogger competitor. Well, blogger went kind of the way the dodo and so did the WordPress. I think it's.com, the one that kind of did that. So you can still have your blogs on there. It's just not integrated with the website. So you can spend all this effort on this. This These rank. But we're still not on our website where products are, where cart is. So she's saying, they're saying, can I get this content over here? Now, I think what you're going to have to do, depending on your host, there may be an import feature. Yeah, I believe that, like maybe a plugin. If you have a WordPress.com site or WordPress.org site and you're migrating from WordPress.com you could probably. There's something to do that. If not hire a virtual assistant.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Or do it yourself. Love that. Yes. So Corey and I, like we mentioned, we have two years of newsletters. Only one month has been added to the website, so that's a ton of work. Do I do it myself? Well, there's no manual import, so yes, I would have to go through and transpose that content like we just said in today's podcast. Is it worth it? Absolutely, depending on what the content is. So you've been doing this for 12 or 13 years. Those posts probably rank really well. Here's what I would do.

[Corey]

Some of that content is outdated where businesses come and go.

[Heather]

Right. So maybe depending if you have a baking. Let's say it's a baking blog. Right. Yeah. I may go back there and edit that content to link it to my current website and edit some of that to link back to my current website. It still can support. It's considered a backlink at this point. So you have two separate entities, but it can still support that. If that content's always already ranking, you don't want to duplicate it. Right. You don't want to have duplicated content because Google looks at two identical pieces of content, says, well, one's got a. I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to pick one and the other one, I'm gonna. I'm gonna call it a duplicate and. And delist. It can. Even so you'd either have the choice if it's ranking really strongly already. And do you think it could be a lead source? I would link it back to your current website. I would not paste it over.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

If that blog content gets no traffic at all. But you really like the content, I would copy and paste it over. Then I would deactivate the WordPress blog.

[Corey]

Nice.

[Heather]

Once the content's posted.

[Corey]

Great questions, great questions.

[Heather]

Again, just so to. To realize it's. If she copied this blog and posted over here, it would take a lot longer for this content to rise. That's why there's a strategy here. It just. They don't just Pop up.

[Corey]

I wish they popped up like daisies or what is the flower popping up now?

[Heather]

It seems the daffodils.

[Corey]

The daffodils. If you would like a chance to win a stupid car tray, level out your passenger seat, create great customer service and have your cookies arrive in one piece. You can text the podcast in at 571-556-5644.

[Heather]

The next one is a question about Google search.

[Corey]

That's a good one too.

[Heather]

I'm just gonna read it. Okay. Hi twins. Actually already won a stupid card trace. If you pick my number, go to the next one. Very nice of you. My question, apologies if it's long, is about Google business profiles. I set up a Google profile a couple years ago, got some reviews and I was quickly ranking in the near me searches, meaning people saying baker's near me or a cookie or near me. Yay. And then I moved 40 miles away, updated my profile and included my address and then I was de verified. I had to go through Google hell to get re verified. Now my profile is correctly set as a service area that includes my current location and my previous city. Meaning. So she's still in a 40 mile radius. She's got. She was set up as an address which is not allowed. Google when she moved flagged it. That happens all the time. She had to prove that she is actually a cottage. Baker had to switch over to service area and then they let the profile go up. I don't rank in near me search in my current area. Cookies 50 or cookie is 50 miles away rank above me but I still rank in my previous location. I get clients from that area through Google search but not my current location. My orders here come through only Facebook. What gives do you think? Do I need to pay someone to figure this out? Thanks for reading all the way to the end of my convoluted question. Your question is extremely typical. Yeah, it's actually not convoluted in the SEO world at all. Basically what she said is she created a Google business profile which follows SEO practices as well. Well, she created the profile, she ranked, then she moved. She's like why am I not ranking in the new place? Well, I don't know the distance between when she moved to the time distance, but it takes a lot of time. Frankly, her Google profile is associated with that old location because she's made so much content over there. What she's going to do is listen to today's blog post episode. She's going to start creating that hyper local content about her current Location and she's going to take that content from her website and she's going to put post it to her Google business profile and then she's going to keep doing that and it's going to take some time and you're going to keep linking to all this content so that your Google business profile gets a new association with location. Right. You're still pretty close to your old location and that's why you're getting that old traffic. So we need to start that new association with the new location sometimes and it's very hard.

[Corey]

It's one, it's already hard to get reviews. But two, if someone offers to write your review, sometimes I have a customer like how can I help help you? And this is where I take off my very cordial Corey hat and I put on my marketer ad. I need Google reviews and I need you to say that somewhere in their.

[Heather]

Lake Ridge the person who writes the review, the the text now is a ranking factor.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Meaning Google reads the review now when you pull up a business it'll say the reviews often mentioned. And that's because the robots can now read reviews from the past. That couldn't happen.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Heather]

So now not your responses. No. The review itself is now has a keyword weight to it.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So let's say person who texted in who already won the supercar trade, somebody who bought from you was like, how can I help you? You're like, hey, can you mention that you live in actually I can tell you where she lives. Kankake Kake. If you can say, hey, I was looking for a baker in Kankakee, Illinois and I found found baker name that's going to better readily associate your profile with your search query.

[Corey]

Some of my husband's police officer friends order from me and I have no qualms with asking for reviews from them. But I'll be like, hey, just wait, I'll write the review for you.

[Heather]

I'm sure she's violating 50 rules. So I'll be like it's so great.

[Corey]

To have a local sugar cookie baker in Lake Ridge, Virginia.

[Heather]

But what Corey's doing is better associating her Google business listing which is very SEO centric. SEO again maps is searchable. So we got a search engine. Corey's associating Lake Ridge, which is an unincorporated city in Woodbridge, an incorporated area.

[Corey]

I technically do prefer Woodbridge.

[Heather]

Corey had a bat on her website because she is Lakeridge, which is a part of Woodbridge, which is a bigger city. I know. And Occoquan is Part of that too. But people only search it.

[Corey]

I know. It's so crazy. You would only know it if you're local know.

[Heather]

Tell us about the cookie college.

[Corey]

The cookie college. The cookie college is a monthly membership and guys, I wouldn't sing its praises if I didn't know that it was tried and true and proven. Thousands of bakers have come and gone and have seen the benefits of the cookie college.

[Heather]

Somebody wrote a post yesterday, Jennifer Lister. She had joined the college. The class kits.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And she was like, if you have any doubts at all about the margins the class kits can bring you listen to me. Me. Come to me, my children, my huddled masses inside of the class kids, because we do all that work for you.

[Corey]

Once me and Heather were talking about our marketing business and how, you know, we're not ideas people because if we say that we're going to do something, we have to do it. We can't promise you the world and only give you half of it. So when I say that this will work for you, believe me, it's because it has worked for somebody else.

[Heather]

What I can't have in my life is sell a product and people are like that didn't work and I still sell the product. I know I couldn't. I have to make sure you guys are doing okay.

[Corey]

If you are trying to up your business, get more sales, get more leads online. The cookie college isn't how to bake cookies. It's not how to do the latest, coolest floral trend. It's not watercolor. What it is do is how to run your bakery more efficiently, how to get more sales, how to overcome customer objections, how to streamline the process so you make more money and more dough in your bakery, both figuratively and financially.

[Heather]

Oh, make that dough. I'm making that dough. One thing this year I focused on the classes is passive income. Teaching a class this month on Amazon storefront which you can send to your cookie class attendees.

[Corey]

Fantastic. Fantastic way, right?

[Heather]

The Amazon storefront and Amazon Associates are a little interchange with people but they're different things. But we talked about making cookie cutters at home with a bamboo, a one minute mini 3D printer and that is going to reduce cost. Yeah, I think we're in like, like a pinch of the economy. We got inflation, we've got the fed interest rate. So we see a compression in our lead source because of what are people going to cut out? They're going to cut out their splurges, their expended their luxury expenses which is cookies. So how can we as cookies during a pinch time lower our production costs. So we can still maintain that bottom line because we can take fewer orders if we take in. If we lower our cost, cost will still have the same profit at the end of the year. So that's the focus this year, is passive income and cost reduction.

[Corey]

Right. Right. So if you want to. If that's your focus and you're. And you listen to these podcasts and you're like, you know what? That aligns with my goals for 2025. We'd love to jump on the dough train with you and help make your bakery more efficient. You can sign [e-mail] we just dropped the Mother's Day cookie class kits. And the great thing about the college is it gets everything. Anything we've ever offered, the college gets it. So if you see the other memberships and you're like, well, that one sounds good. If you sign up for the college, you get it. So you can ignore those because you already have it once you sign up for the college. I am working on the next cookie class, kids, is think of the mayo.

[Heather]

And I love me a chip and sauce.

[Corey]

And there is a chip in there. There is a chip in there.

[Heather]

Hasn't he got some queso on him or not?

[Corey]

I think he does have some casso on him.

[Heather]

He has some. So if you want to learn more about the cookie college, you can go to the cookie college.com or you can always ask about it in the Facebook groups. Just tag a twin and then they will respond. If you saw Jennifer's post and you're.

[Corey]

Like, you know what? I think I'm just trying to get my foot wet in cookie classes. You totally can. We have a membership just for classes. It's everything you need to teach a cookie class. Not necessarily streamlining your business and creating websites and things like that.

[Heather]

It is how we taught a cookie class, what you need to teach.

[Corey]

So it's the themes, it's the colors, it's the designs, it's the step by step PowerPoint, the little videos, the little everything you need to teach a cookie class. All you got to show up is make the dough purchase cut from sweet.

[Heather]

Ping and stand in front. Yeah.

[Corey]

And that is called the cookie class kits. It's $63 a month.

[Heather]

Finally, remember that. How much is a cookie college?

[Corey]

It's $76 a month.

[Heather]

Just think of 1776, 1763 Declaration of Independence, which we're actually doing in the class. Kids, after Cinco de Mayo, it's father's day. And then after that, it's Independence Day. It is an Independence Day because people had asked for a Fourth of July class. We find that month to be hardest to sell.

[Corey]

It is, but you can use it for a DIY kit. And I love using the class kits for DIY kits. That is my favorite.

[Heather]

What a money maker. What a passive moneymaker. If you don't like standing in front of people, just do everything. Just don't teach a class. Cory does it all the time.

[Corey]

All the time.

[Heather]

She'll be like, can you tell me the playlist?

[Corey]

And you know, if you're like, I'm bad at pre sales. DIY kits are the stepping stone into strong pre sales. Because people like DIY kits. It's so much less involved than imagine.

[Heather]

A bonf on DIY kit.

[Corey]

Oh, my goodness.

[Heather]

What they are. How to. How to freeze them when you take them home if you're buying them for the kids, how to defrost them, how to incorporate the icing.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

So much content. Possibilities.

[Corey]

Next up, without our sponsors, this would not exist.

[Heather]

Actually, I have a new sponsor. I haven't actually sent her the invoice yet, but Cory and I will be speaking at. What's it called?

[Corey]

Wait, Cake Pop Con.

[Heather]

Is it called Cake popcorn? That's adorable. I think it is Daisy Makes.

[Corey]

If you. You know her by the name Daisy Makes, her name's Amy. But Daisy makes is is just bombarded the world of cake pops with these cake pops, cutters and discs.

[Heather]

Amy in her tagline, her signature is always popping.

[Corey]

She's always popping. She is the guru of cake pops.

[Heather]

Let me just say she has just. What's poppingcon.com?

[Corey]

What'S popping con?

[Heather]

It's very cute. If you want to check that out. It's what poppingcon.com. don't sign up just yet. She said she might give us a discount code to pass along.

[Corey]

To pass along. But it is maybe may the May.

[Heather]

4Th through 6th through 6.

[Corey]

May the 4th be with you. Because when I told my husband we were going, he said, well, there goes our wedding anniversary. I said, you didn't have anything planned anyway, sir.

[Heather]

He's lucky. You're lucky. In Ohio. In Kent, Ohio.

[Corey]

Yes. So we would love to see you there. I know I'm just a baby in the world of cake pops, but I would love to meet you and you to bestow any knowledge upon me.

[Heather]

You can give Corey cake pop knowledge. We'll be teaching marketing there, which is universal. I always say change the noun and you can sell cars or Cake pop you can. What a cute little website.

[Corey]

You can't bite a car but you can bite a cake pop.

[Heather]

You could try Pops by Rachel is a keynote. This is a very, very cute one. She's very, very sweet too.

[Corey]

Just as sweeter. Cake pops. They love a good cake pop Fun is what I do know.

[Heather]

Yeah. Cake pops just lend themselves.

[Corey]

Absolutely. Stay tuned. We'll bring more details. This is their first year but hopefully definitely not their last.

[Heather]

Yeah. And Cory and I I will be.

[Corey]

There, be there, be square. Unlike a K pop which is round.

[Heather]

So I'll have more information on that. Don't buy the tickets yet because you mentioned she mentioned a discount code and.

[Corey]

So we'll get some deets on that. Next up is the backers code. The backers co is a done for you. Honestly, a photography studio that transforms your house into something that it's not.

[Heather]

Well we talked about it in the blog post. Right. When writing a blog post you have to have imagery. The more image images the better. The better the images, the better the content. And it's again part of that well oiled machine.

[Corey]

Absolutely.

[Heather]

If you can have the better website in the world and the ugliest photography and I'm gonna be like you're still.

[Corey]

Not gonna make money.

[Heather]

Stop writing blog.

[Corey]

Right. You, you're almost shooting yourself in the foot because you can bring as many people to your website but if you're. If your photography doesn't convert, if it doesn't look appetizing, if it doesn't look appealing, people aren't going to buy. So these photography backdrops from the backers go are the bees needs and she has them just in about every color under the rainbow that you could pop.

[Heather]

Adding and she's constantly adding.

[Corey]

I have used the green ones in the other ones because St. Patrick's Day was yesterday.

[Heather]

So I had some fun cont.

[Corey]

This one's that they're cute ca but she has ones if like my branding is orange and she has this nice sherbet orange color.

[Heather]

Corey really wanted her website to be cohesive with branding so she busted out the oranges and then said you can.

[Corey]

Actually save 20% right now using the code sugar cook cookie on her website. But you can actually go to her Instagram and see how people are using them so you can kind of get ideas and you can see like the different marbles in wood grains in action. So you know they work really good when you buy two of them because you can do that L shaped one. So if you want to see what two look like together. That's a great way to do it.

[Heather]

Very nice. Corey is a huge fan. Big fan.

[Corey]

Big fan.

[Heather]

Never not last either. Not least ever. It's Bakedy Bake Meringue powder. Meringue powder? What is that? It's every everything.

[Corey]

It's technically called royal batch Boy. Baked by.

[Heather]

You can use code twins. Don't listen to the words I'm saying. But it has corn syrup, it has vanilla, it has white food colors and vanilla extract. It does.

[Corey]

It has all three in there. I actually made a batch this morning. I make a batch each week, but made it this morning. And I was like, you are just so delicious.

[Heather]

Somebody had asked. They said, I have icing bleed with it. What's the secret attack? Did you get back to him?

[Corey]

I did not because someone had put court.

[Heather]

Courtney's.

[Corey]

Courtney Post is the owner and she'll sometimes fly in like a superhero and help people if they need it. Here's the thing. The. The main cause and what I have learned and I have suffered from color bleed. Heather knows. She was in this.

[Heather]

This is Corey for this stint of color Bleed era. She would come to me and she'd be like, do you like the cookies? I'm like, oh, the cookies are so cute. She's like, I can't wait for them to bleed all over. Yeah. A couple years ago, it was really.

[Corey]

The bane of my existence. It was so frustrating. I got stressed out with every order because I am heavy handed with the colors. I've never seen a pastel. I haven't oversaturated.

[Heather]

No. Thank you.

[Corey]

The thing you have to realize with color bleed is your meringue is not stabilized yet. When it is not stabilized, it is not. There's no structure behind it and that's what causes the bleed. You really do need to whip it and whip it real good. Stiff piece is probably the most important part to get that stable because it holds a color. And I'm not sure the science that's happening, but the science is happening in that stage.

[Heather]

I'd like to think the meringue is like, come to me. You're not leaving.

[Corey]

Yeah. It's like really like money. Like, you know how gluten builds in sourdough? It's the meringue building in the eyes.

[Heather]

Probably technically not right.

[Corey]

But when you can whip correctly to the stiff peaks and then water down to your flood consistency, it is so much more.

[Heather]

So you're getting him stiff and then your water?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

That was your secret.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I thought you took a squirrel scoop.

[Corey]

Out that it's definitely like meringue powder. A lot of people will experience color bleed no matter what brand. And it's really the structure of the meringue hasn't been stabilized.

[Heather]

So your first solution is stiff peaks, then add the water back.

[Corey]

So I did my same recipe with a different meringue powder last week. No color bleed. So it really is the stabilizing factor.

[Heather]

We all need stabilizing. We need stability.

[Corey]

You know, we're the Eiffel Tower of your eyes.

[Heather]

Cory. And the IC and the word actually today, actually, actually.

[Corey]

Last but not least is Eddie, the edible food printer. Eddie, you're like, what is that word? It is a direct to food printer.

[Heather]

Let me tell you. Corey got a Neiman Marcus order yet again. He hasn't paid his bill.

[Corey]

But Eddie is a director food printer. And a lot of times you think icing sheets. No, throw out the ice sheets sheets. We're printing directly on the top of that stabilized royal icing.

[Heather]

That stabilized bake, that royal icing.

[Corey]

You can put it directly. It looks like a printer. I can't explain it.

[Heather]

It is a printer. I think Eddie really hits a stride come Easter where you do your peeps.

[Corey]

Absolutely. He's got the.

[Heather]

The lower roll. I did get a corporate order.

[Corey]

It was severely last minute and the only reason I said yes was because Eddie was in my room waiting to be used.

[Heather]

Yeah. If you want to learn more about Eddie, go to Eddie Printer users group dot com. Actually think Cookie con is next week and they will have a booth. Want to see that in real time?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

It's. It's honest now. What you, you're not going to. If you haven't seen it, you're not going to be prepared.

[Corey]

And I want to tell you, even when I turn them on now, I'm not ready. I'm like, look at me. Ready for Eddie.

[Heather]

Eddie. Ready for Eddie.

[Corey]

He's fantastic. The way that people use him is mind blowing.

[Heather]

Yeah. People are so creative.

[Corey]

Yeah. People are so creative. And Eddie has just helped them. Pops. Yeah. With what Daisy makes. She makes these flat cake pops, which is like the shape of a cake pug.

[Heather]

Oh, but it's cake pop with a puck.

[Corey]

It's cake. Yeah, but you can. You can't fit a circle under Eddie, but you can fit this flat cake pop and you can print right on.

[Heather]

Eddie with a lot of opportunity.

[Corey]

So neat. So neat. But those are our sponsors. If you want to support this podcast, support them.

[Heather]

Right. Thank you so much. And they, most of them, except for Addie, gives us anything you. Thank You. Thank you.

[Corey]

Thank you.

[Heather]

We have some mail.

[Corey]

We got some.

[Heather]

Campbell Burkshire hosted the Cookie Con happy hour this past year and she had everyone fill out these postcards and she keeps finding them. So read us a few of these bad boys. Read us a few. Thanks for the booze.

[Corey]

That's all it.

[Heather]

So we did. We did pay for the drinks.

[Corey]

We have had a blast. But it still would have been better with a couple of miracles here. Much love from Texas, Donna Shira. Peace, love and sugar cookies. I love her. Thank you for the lovely evening. Heather and Kim did an awesome job. Hope to meet you soon. Sylvia.

[Heather]

Very fun. Kim owns Beans and Brews down in Houston.

[Corey]

You really shouldn't touch people's faces. I already know.

[Heather]

She barely even signed it. This is Bobby. When I met. When Corey and I went to our first con, we were the keynotes because I didn't know what we were doing and I. Everyone was like, stand and take a photo together. So there's this lady there and I just grabbed her face. She was like, what was that Bobby's from? Bobby got married and we've never gotten over that. We will live that one forever and for always. Thank you.

[Corey]

I've gotten so much out of the short time I've been involved.

[Heather]

Love it. Miss you.

[Corey]

Wish you were here. But only my favorite twin. She left that one blank.

[Heather]

I guess I'll show up next time.

[Corey]

There'S a cookie con. Yes. We're totally missing y'all. Thank you so much for all that you do for us. We all really appreciate the number knowledge you're sharing with us. So sweet. Hi twins. Great mixer. Love all the podcast. And a little flower from Stacy. Little hand drawn flower. Hi, twins.

[Heather]

We love you guys.

[Corey]

Sandy, love you from giving some sugar last. Missing you here at Cookie Con. Been a big fan for a while. Heather is my favorite twin. Love Karen. But Corey will always be first in my heart. She is my love.

[Heather]

Thanks guys for sending those. We won't be at Cookie Con next week, but anyone who's going post up some pictures.

[Corey]

Yeah, please post.

[Heather]

I know it is an anti flyer.

[Corey]

Look.

[Heather]

I'm going to Cake Pop Con. We're driving. You only said yes because it was dry to the popcorn.

[Corey]

I need to learn the name not Cake Pop.

[Heather]

Oh yeah, what's popping?

[Corey]

What's poppin? Look, see, it's drivable. Unfortunately, Reno is not drivable.

[Heather]

Reno is not drivable.

[Corey]

No garage is in the road. Give a twin trip.

[Heather]

Yeah. Here's my wildest. Okay. Buying paper, printer. Not even an edible. Just buying printers isn't paper.

[Corey]

It's crazy.

[Heather]

I did the HP thing. Never again. HP also has this feature where you have a subscription and they can break your printer. Never again. Never again.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

So then I'm like, well, let me research Reddit. People said, this brother's printer.

[Corey]

I heard, great brand and it's not bad at all.

[Heather]

I don't know that I would tell you to buy it. I wouldn't tell you not to buy. I would tell you not to buy the HP printer, iPad. I would say, who has an eight people. Right? And you're also making me print stuff. So I don't know why I wanted something that print, scan and copied. Okay. I needed a scan is. Yeah.

[Corey]

A little three in winner.

[Heather]

Yeah. I need the scan one. I think always lose something when you add the scan feature because it's like trying to.

[Corey]

Yeah. Do a lot.

[Heather]

Jack of all trades. So I'm like, okay, I hate. Then you buy the printer and that's the cheap part. What the cheap part isn't is the ink.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

So I'm like, you know, I ran out of ink. So I'm like, I got to go buy this ink in These brothers. Printers work a little differently. They have four cartridges. Cartridges. So can you even buy that at.

[Corey]

Like Walmart or Target? A brother's not even.

[Heather]

I didn't even talk about it. But every time I turn, the printer will be like, hey, you need ink. It sends a thing. So it's like it pitched me the other day and I was like, hey, we have an ink plan.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

You don't. It was like, you don't print a lot. I don't. I print the check in sheets for the cookie class kits and then maybe some like finance paperwork for the guy. Yeah, finance guy. So it was like, for A$99 a month, we'll put you on a plan. You can put. You can print 25 sheets a month. And if you don't print your 25, 10 sheets a month will roll over to the next.

[Corey]

Only 10 sheets. Even if you only printed well, it.

[Heather]

Was kind of like you got to print something. Does it know you? I don't think you printed it. I'm like, I can't print it. That's not valuable enough. So I was like, okay, $1.99. I'm like, so 24 for the year. That's still so much cheaper than the HP cartridges. Buying for like 50. Yeah, it was.

[Corey]

I just bought one.

[Heather]

They're ridiculously expensive. I'm like, 24. I'm not printing a ton of stuff. I'm not. I actually have an allergy to paper mentally. Yeah, I hate paper on my desk. My grandma has made a cookie towel. Yeah, this isn't for cookie tag people. This is for the. The admin office. Right. So I buy it. I'm like how is it going to know what I printed?

[Corey]

How would it know?

[Heather]

The cartridges are smart.

[Corey]

They're tattling.

[Heather]

Uh huh. So it said install. We'll send you these cartridges. Cartridges.

[Corey]

Oh they're smart cartridges.

[Heather]

Tell almond. But I'm like that's great because I'm not printing off. And then there was.

[Corey]

What if you need to print over 25? What if you have a 26 or.

[Heather]

And you hadn't had a rollover yet. Yeah, you get. It's a dollar for every 10 pages after that. Or just upgrade your plan if there.

[Corey]

Was a run out of ink.

[Heather]

Yeah, yeah. But it's smart. It's tattling on itself. It'll. I'll never. It'll always refill itself. So they'll send a new cartridge out. I never talk to them anymore. Yeah. So if the ink runs out. I don't buy new ink. The new cartridge will just.

[Corey]

HP has this but it's not a paper thing. It's just like we'll refill you. But I don't trust you.

[Heather]

I don't know. So I got them installed as soon as I put them in. The brothers website was like hey, we see that you registered these by putting them in. You started your plan. There was a. The two dollar plan was the cheapest one. The next one was five dollars a month which is still cheaper than an HP cartridge. And it was five dollars a month.

[Corey]

How much is five times 12?

[Heather]

60? Yeah, yeah. Sixty dollars was. Yeah.

[Corey]

So that's like one cartridge which I.

[Heather]

Can'T print 80 sheets and it had colorful sheets and it had a 25 paper rollover from month to month. So if I don't print on that.

[Corey]

One might be a beast.

[Heather]

But I'm like not even printing anything. So I'm like the problem with these.

[Corey]

Cookie tags is this colorful. They're colorful things.

[Heather]

Well I'm like if it's. And I'm just dry running this thing if it's doesn't care how much because gave me all four cartridges. Black, white, you know, red, Bl. The. Could you do a full just.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

It did not care about what the printer color was. That's wild. Print subscription. It was. I don't know. I mean and it's called the easy print subscription. Easy. Run out of ink and toner? Not anymore. Subscribe and save it because it discounts it. So I'm on a two month free trial. Always free delivery and zero commitment. You can cancel your plan at any time so you can choose the right plan delivered to your door. And then they said because you committed. So. Oh, yeah, I'm on a cheaper plan. It was without my discount. It was 349amonth for 100 pages. Oh, they have a bunch of different plans. Then they have business plans. I mean, it's still cheaper than buying these cards.

[Corey]

Then I gotta ask, is somebody lying somewhere?

[Heather]

I'll let you know.

[Corey]

Somebody's gone.

[Heather]

Someone comes to my door to beat me up because I didn't pay my ticks in cash. We're gonna refill your car. You haven't paid for your cartridges. What is your twin?

[Corey]

Do I have a 20 terrace? Has anything happened to me? I did see a bulldog at the car pickup line yesterday, and I got out of the car, but when I got out of the car, the little.

[Heather]

Kid took it away. So I look like an idiot trying.

[Corey]

To go petting them.

[Heather]

One time I walked out too. Again, a guy was a moving truck and I wanted to see a dog, and he put it away, and I was like, yeah.

[Corey]

And then you're, like, looking at me.

[Heather]

Can I see y.

[Corey]

So I just pretend like I was looking br. Oh, in and out. Yeah. Let me go back.

[Heather]

Okay, I'll tell you the. In lieu of Cory's twin, I got the cat Munch. Right? He's very Kitten munchkins. He's very tiny. Yeah. Boisterous. Very. And everyone's like, can you bring him over? So I take him to my mom's house on Saturday. He loves other cats.

[Corey]

I'm going to say that witnessing you and father was chaotic to me.

[Heather]

My dad has this big bully cat. His name is Lou. Yeah. And dad loves Lou. So I'm like, hey, Lou's a bully. So we need to put him in a room because he's a bully.

[Corey]

But at the end of the day, it was their house.

[Heather]

It's their house. But they asked me to bring over a kitten. So dad's like. But I don't feel like that's fair to Lou.

[Corey]

I know it comes down all the.

[Heather]

Anger in the world and attacks the kitten.

[Corey]

He. Listen to Heather as a parent, a cat power.

[Heather]

I'm like, hey, could somebody get the bully?

[Corey]

Yeah. She's like, grabs her cat. Dad gets mad at.

[Heather]

No, I actually grabbed Lou and took him upstairs to a giant room where his body is. And he lives in luxury.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

And then I let Munch meander. Right. Of course, dad can't let Lou suffer. Although Lou was sitting with dad while he was reorganizing his hobby. Dad takes Lou down the basement. Well, guess what's in the basement. All the cat potties. They have three cats, so they have two or three potties. Well, guess who can't use a potty now much.

[Corey]

Couldn't you have guided Munch down there and sat with him as he puppied?

[Heather]

I don't. I. He didn't use the restroom the last time, so I didn't think he needed this time. My mistake. Driving home, the cat does not like to be in a car. He's meowing his head off, but he gets real quiet. And I'm like, no way.

[Corey]

No way.

[Heather]

He's finally made peace with cars.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And I hear this sound of, like, scraping on the bottom of his cage. And I said, what is that smell?

[Corey]

Oh, was it liquidy poo poo?

[Heather]

No, it was just fresh.

[Corey]

Was it pee and pim both. You saw the pee?

[Heather]

I had to wash everything. I mean, it was very. In his cage.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I had to wash everything immediately, for sure. So I pulled over. It's so funny. The road is called Pope's Head Road. I renamed it Poop's Head Road because that's what I had to clean up. And I came a spare baggie. I don't know why, but now I did. Having to pick up cat poop like a dog poop. Oh, yeah.

[Corey]

Listen, it's been my dog's what, nine.

[Heather]

Nine years? So Cory's like, how do you like having a kitten?

[Corey]

I know. And then I'm grateful that Rube is 14.

[Heather]

I don't know where Munch is gonna go find him after.

[Corey]

Mr.

[Heather]

Munch?

[Corey]

Mr.

[Heather]

Munch.

[Corey]

Are you gonna bring him to Mothers and Fathers again?

[Heather]

Only if Lou's on police.

[Corey]

They're not going to. You're gonna have to realize that they look at their cats as kittens.

[Heather]

I sent a Snapchat to the sisters, and I said, he's on a travel ban. And somebody said, could you please lift the band?

[Corey]

Yeah, but she doesn't want to babysit the loo.

[Heather]

But I feel like if Summer was there, she might have policed Lou a bit more than dad does. I don't know.

[Corey]

He seems like he runs the risk cuz he pays the bills.

[Heather]

Or I bring a potty. This is ridiculous.

[Corey]

A little potty. That's a mini potty. That'd be crazy to bring a potty.

[Heather]

The one that we got him when we picked him up. Oh, the little to go transport potty.

[Corey]

The transport potty. I don't know. I, I, that was from a kitten recently. But Munch might have cured me just a little bit. I do love me an old cat nap.

[Heather]

Munch meows to the universe to just.

[Corey]

See and Heather, what he knows is you mobilize. He literally just meowed and Heather's like, turn around and like you're literally answering every meal with an action. So he knows, he's, he just knows.

[Heather]

You'Re gonna appear with every meal.

[Corey]

And you've gotten so many toys for him as of late.

[Heather]

Kitten, you know need stimulation.

[Corey]

You're the stimulation. Okay, guys, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. You can catch the flip side in the group till next Tuesday.