It's back to school time, which provides the perfect time for you to evaluate your gardening business blog and look for areas to improve as well.

From generating leads to increasing your SEO ranking, running a blog benefits your business in many ways. Every blog post is a new indexed page for your website, which is a new opportunity for your business to be found by search engines. All of this content helps brand your garden company as experts in your field.  

For the full scoop, read below for a back-to-basics lessons on content marketing in the garden industry.

Great brands realize that sometimes the best ideas come from outside of the office.

Social media crowdsourcing can be used as a way to find ideas, content and solutions from a large group of people who care about your product. 

The goal of digital crowdsourcing is to obtain information or services from your digitial fans. Many brands are using social media crowdsourcing to expand their product line and engage consumers. 

For example, are you stuck between two flower varieties to bring to market in the next year? Have your garden brand fans vote on which they like more. They'll feel value and immediately become invested in what your brand is working on. 

Read more below to learn how your brand can benefit from crowdsourcing.

You have a year-round strategy in place to increase your presence on social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Pinterest.

And while digital is great, Facebook's influence is shrinking when it comes to audience engagement. You need to be just as thoughtful and persistent when in-person networking, too.

From the Garden Writer's Symposium to Cultivate and IGC, there are lots of trade shows, conferences and networking events to choose from in the garden industry.

Picking the right trade show instantly helps you form the right relationships with other industry leaders, reporters and consumers.  

Below are Garden Media's 4 networking tips for garden industry trade shows, conferences and events.

By now, you know Pinterest is a major player in the world of social media.  

There are 70 million users and 500,000 active business accounts on Pinterest. Plus, Pinterest generates more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+ and Linkedin combined.

The visually-driven content is clearly a winner for the gardening world since our industry is flooded with awe-inspiring colors and plants.

With Pinterest's newest update, users can follow topic categories in addition to individual pinners and brands. Users can follow topics such as gardening, hanging baskets and more. This update expands the potential reach of your content, allowing more users to connect with garden business. 

Add these tips to your Pinterest strategy to increase awareness of your gardening brand.

Shark Week begins in just a few short days on Aug. 10, and the excitement is mounting.

Soon, the internet will be buzzing about sharks - and gardening brands can take a few tips on how to raise brand awareness from the pros.

Shark Week, originally broadcast in 1987, is the longest running cable television programming in history. Featuring the most feared creatures of the sea, the series was developed to raise awareness and educate viewers. Now, Shark Week is broadcast in more than 70 countries and has social media users of all demographics talking.

Learn how to be a great white shark in the garden marketing game with these takeaways from past Shark Weeks.

Four years ago, GoPro launched a YouTube channel promoting its personal, mountable cameras. To market the camera, the channel showcased professional stuntmen and extreme athletes using a GroPro. Now, an estimated 6,000 videos are shot every day with people mentioning GoPro.

As the trend has taken off, GoPro now produces many of its own videos and tripled its amount of views.

Gardening brands can tap into this trend by creating their own brand videos for YouTube using GoPros and by learning what worked from GoPro's marketing strategy.

Read more below for tips on how your garden brand can create videos that resonate with your target audience.

This week, Garden Media joins BlogHer’s 10th anniversary #Selfiebration in San Jose, Ca. That's right, a selfiebration.

The selfie trend has continued to rise over the past year and both big and small brands are adding it to their marketing arsenals.

BlogHer makes the trend its own by utilizing selfies to acknowledge the growth of the internet and bloggers over the past 10 years and to generate internet excitement.

Check out these tips to learn how selfies can help bring exposure to your garden brand.

Although the 4th of July is over, Labor Day is right around the corner - creating the perfect time to highlight your brand's American connections.

A report on brand loyalty from research firm Brand Keys Inc. found the top three U.S. brands considered to be the most patriotic are Jeep, Levi Strauss and Coca-Cola.

What do these three brands have in common? Consumers purchase their products because they have deep emotional ties to the perceived "Americaness".

Learn how to extend your garden brand's reach by communicating your business's American Values to consumers this Labor Day.