Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
👋 Hey - Heather and Corrie here with the Baking it Down Podcast with Sugar Cookie Marketing (a group on Facebook full of sugar cookiers turned business owners).
🍪 We're here to help you rise with your reach, flood with new followers, bake up new ideas, and make that all-important dough (while makin' that dough - see the pun there?)
🤑. What’s it about? We’re a Facebook Group turned Podcast, Membership, Book Club, and Baking 101 that’s dedicated to assisting bakers in effectively marketing online to generate more sales and better manage their businesses.
🧠 With free Facebook Live classes, hundreds of resources, and thousands of like-minded bakers, there’s a lot to learn in "SCM" (aka Sugar Cookie Marketing). ️🎧 As an extension of our Facebook group, this podcast is here to let you learn by listening. 📈 We'll cover group topics, marketing trends, and more (leaving this wide open in case Corrie wants to start singing).
💸 We take the sweet art of selling online to the cottage bakery world with marketing methods that move products (and pastries).👂 So open up those glorious ear canals because we have a podcast! Just when you’ve thought you’ve “heard” it all with those marketing "miracle" twins (that's our last name - not a proclamation), we’ve got something just for you each week!
🥣 As a baker, you don't always have the luxury of two hands needed to scroll in Sugar Cookie Marketing Group or crack open a book in Sugar Cookie Bookies, but what you can do is listen (unless you're my kid asking “what’s for dinner” for the millionth time).
👐 Hands full of flour? No problem! 👍 18 dozen iced cookies due tomorrow? Let’s do this. The Baking it Down Podcast by Sugar Cookie Marketing is a weekly podcast geared toward helping you grow your bakery business - dropping (almost) every Tuesday.
📅 We choose a topic each week that's either something new and emerging in the world of social media or something that we saw in "The Group" that was a hot topic and we bake it down... I mean, "break" it down for you. 🗯️ What you can expect in the podcast is about an hour of chit-chat with the meat and potatoes right at the beginning of the episode.
🥔 That’s when we dive into the marketing topic of the week! 📞 Oh yeah, folks can call / text / email in with their questions too - a fun way to hear from other bakers out there.
Our promises to you:
1️⃣ We always make it clean = no cursing. We understand that you are busy and could be around little ones while also trying to get your weekly dose of business growth so we make sure that each episode would make our grandma proud and keep it clean so you can listen while also living your life.
2️⃣ We always make it fun. There’s a lot of negativity in the world so we try and make the podcast an upbeat and fun learning experience for you. I mean, we try to make the Instagram updates and changes as happy as we can, but come on Instagram! Give it a rest! No more changes!
3️⃣ Other than that, we take a positive approach to marketing We are also *not* professional podcasters. I feel like we need to say this because, hey, sometimes we get giggles! We do our best to extend our marketing knowledge to you all free of charge each week at the cost of listening to our higher-than-normal pitched voices and the occasional giggle spree.
4️⃣ You can find the podcast on all the major platforms and you can typically expect a new episode each Tuesday afternoon (unless life happens). We invite everyone to listen.
Either start from the beginning or work backward! The episodes don’t build off themselves so you won’t be confused hearing one before the other. You just might miss new Lives we mention but you can always catch the replay in the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group on Facebook!
Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
194. Baking it Down - Meta Verified
✔️ Meta Verified - The pros / cons of the blue check.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 194 - Meta Verified, TikTok is about to have a big, public breakup with its avoidant soon-to-be ex, the United States. And whether or not we like this coupling, it comes down to the Supreme Court's decision - who needs reality tv when you've got this?!
As we see content creators scrambling to dust off their Instagram backups, it may be a good time to consider standing out among the masses with Meta Verified.
Meta Verified is that neato 🔵blue check mark that you see next to some pages and profiles (go check out Sugar Cookie Marketing's Page for a real-life example). And it's more than just an icon, actually - which makes it a possible contender for your marketing budget in 2025.
Quick backstory on 🔵blue checks: Back when Twitter was, well still called Twitter, accounts that were verified as professional or famous profiles received a 🔵blue check next to their handles to signify that this was the legitimate profile of the business or creator. It was a manual application process and it was hard to get accepted into. Elon buys the failing Twitter and converts it to X takin' the 🔵blue checks away and offering them as a subscription to anyone who had about twenty bucks.
While verification is still required, the exclusivity is long gone. Meta followed suit a few months later for personal profiles and mid-2024 began offering 🔵blue check subscriptions to business pages.
Meta Verified pages do get some added perks though - so let's take a look at them (we'll focus on the plan I paid for to test this - the Business Plus plan - although all the plans include the 🔵blue check).
But first - let's see the pricing for these Verified tiers:
- ✅ Business Standard - $14.99/mo
- ✅ Business Plus - $44.99/mo
- ✅ Business Premium - $119.99/mo
- ✅ Business Max - $349.99/mo
Yeah - so, like not chump change at all - and this is per profile meaning that yes, Facebook and Instagram are considered two profiles even if the Facebook and Instagram accounts represent the same business and are connected. But the good news - there's a yearly discounted option, a bundle
✅ Meta Verified Business Plus - $44.99
- ✅ Verified Badge
- ✅ Impersonation Protection
- ✅ Meta Verified Support (Priority)
- ✅ Enhanced Facebook Profile - 3 Linked Accounts / 3 Locations
- ✅ 2 Links in Reels
- ✅ Featured Account
You're reading that right - you can actually email or chat with a support rep (for that one profile) if you sign up for Meta Verified. If you upgrade to Premium or Max, you can talk to someone over the phone - a rarity with these social media giants.
But there's more - you also get "enhanced" profiles on Facebook (if you pay for Verified on that platform) or on Instagram. Instagram will give Business Plus subscribers the ability to add pictures to their bio links as well as link 3 additional accounts in the area under the profile bio.
Facebook pages with the 🔵blue check will show up in horizontal scrolls in feeds as "Recommended Meta Verified Businesses." Hey - it's like a free ad included in your not-free subscription. Beggars can't be choosers, right?
Impersonation protection is a neat feature - basically no one can spoof your Business page. Does that mean that past hacked pages have a chance of being reunited with their original owners? Not a clue - but it's worth a shot if you've completely lost access to your Page.
