GROW! Marketing and Public Relations Tips

2015 was a year to remember – in photos.  

Like most brands, Garden Media flocks to Instagram to tell our story and share the behind-the-scenes moments that take place in our office.

We are creative, visual people after all!

Instagram has more than 400 million monthly active users. According to Hootsuite.com, the mobile-first platform “will bring in $595 million in mobile ad revenues worldwide this year, and $2.81 billion by 2017.”

As the year winds town, we take a look back at our favorite insta-moments from 2015.

Continue reading to see Garden Media’s top Instagrams for 2015.

Whether you pin, tweet, like or connect, chances are your business is growing on social media.

Social media is a great way to open up communication between your brand and your consumers. Posting often on platforms like Facebook and Snapchat gets your content in front of an engaged group of listeners.

Your fans want to hear from you, and it’s time to kick up the content. But, you’d be booed off of social media if you constantly posted your products and their price tag. Knowing what to post doesn’t have to be tricky, you just need to sow seeds in three flower pots — seeds that educate, seeds that entertain and seeds that engage.

Learn how to sow the seeds of social media using three pots. 

Everyone knows Instagram is one of the most important, useful and successful social media platforms of our time. With over 300 million active monthly users, more than 90 percent of which are under the age of 35, Instagram is especially useful in reaching millennials. And they aren’t just using it for selfies.

Through the use of hashtags on both Twitter and Instagram, social media activism is becoming a rising trend. Millennials love to be aligned with a cause and they are using hashtags to raise awareness about those causes. Businesses and celebrities are taking note and following their examples.

Continue reading for more information about why businesses should support a cause and show they care.

September is the month of fashion weeks across the world, New York, London, Paris, Milan... the most fashionable people in the world convene in one place. 

Why do we care? Well for one, fashion trends drive garden trends. But instead of a garden trend, today we're talking social media trends.

For the first time ever, a brand, Burberry, partnered with Snapchat to feature its spring and summer 2016 line. 

The Snapchat story documented the entire event, from behind the scenes preparation, to hair and makeup tips and even the models walking the runway. The story also featured celebrity guests attending the show, including models Cara DeLevingne, Kate Moss and Sienna Miller.

This is not the first time Burberry has been the leading fashion brand in technology. Many of the brand’s marketing techniques are aimed at millennials. Why would an expensive, luxury brand try to appeal to younger generations who are often determined to find the best deals?

Continue reading to understand Burberry’s unique marketing strategy.

Standing out on the internet is the only way to get your brand noticed.

For this week’s speaker series, we sat down with Jill Swartzentruber. As a rising junior at the University of Delaware, she’s ready to dive head first into the PR world and cultivate her green thumb in Kennett Square.

Jill is majoring in English with a concentration in Professional Writing and a minor in Community and Organizational Leadership. She is the publisher for her university’s fashion magazine, UDress, and a proud member and contributing writer to UD’s Public Relations Society of America (PRSSA).

Blogging is one of her true passions. She writes for Delaware’s The Odyssey Online and is a style guru for CollegeFashionista.

She is excited to embark on her first public relations journey!    

Continue reading to learn more about Jill and the role she plays at Garden Media.

Oxford English Dictionary debuted a new word in June 2014 – “Hashtag.”

The popular metadata tag allows social media users to combine words and phrases to formulate a search of key words pertaining to anything imaginable.

Hashtags have revolutionized social media since they were introduced on Twitter in 2009. Today, they serve as mini search engines and create opportunities for brands to categorize content, showcase personality, promote events and build buzz around a product.  

Although they began on Twitter, hashtags have since been incorporated into every social media platform available to consumers. They have even become incorporated into vocal speech.

Continue reading to learn how garden brands can incorporate hashtags into their social media branding strategy.