In order for your garden company to really be using digital communications to the fullest, you’ve simply got to have a garden industry blog. Your company blog is your chance to have your voice heard! Here, you have no character limit, no restrictions as to what you can talk about. Your company blog is totally in your control—and how sweet it is.

Blogging allows your garden company to establish itself as an expert in the field. At Garden Media Group, we have two areas of expertise: public relations/marketing and gardening. To have our voice heard in each niche industry, we have two blogs, which allows us to double our audience, SEO keywords, and content. Ah, the beauty of the internet.

But, what if your horticulture blog is stellar, but no one’s reading it? The whole purpose of a company blog is to reach your key audience, and if that’s not happening, your garden company has got to make a few changes.

One easy way to up your page views is using Twitter. Below are three, quick tips to tweet your way to more page views on your blog!

Yes! It's true. One of our favorite social media sites can actually boost your SEO for your business--big time. 

Honestly, what could be better? Pinterest, which is such, such a blast to use, can actually have major benefits for your SEO rank.

You’ve just got to know how to do it right. Every site and page your business has such be building your SEO. We’re all in this together!

With these easy-peasy, meaningful tips, you’ll learn how to use your Pinterest to improve SEO.

I recently read an article that made me chuckle.  It started off, "There are so many similarities between SEO and gardening..."

Of course, I had to read on. 

In the article, Bernie Borges describes the stages of gardening and how they relate to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  It reminded me of my post last week about content marketing in which Marcus Sheridan said:

"Success in this business doesn’t happen overnight. Content marketing isn’t a chia-pet—water today, a vine jungle tomorrow."

I usually start off Saturday mornings by catching up on some of my favorite blogs... from design, fashion and of course, those from the garden industry, I get my fill of information for the week! But this weekend, I read a particularly different post about social media etiquette.

Etiquette.  Ahhh... society has gotten so far from the writings in the very first Emily Post Blue book.  And as the rules of social media evolve, how does etiquette evolve with it? 

No, I'm not saying change is bad.  Change is good!  It's just that there are some basic principals of etiquette that should never change, on or offline:

Be kind.  Treat others with respect.  Show your appreciation.

This post will offer tips on how we can continue to follow these basic principals for these social media platforms: Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

Otherwise, we all will have Miss Post rolling in her grave. 

Blogging is a must for all businesses anymore. Social media platforms only allow you to say so much, which is exactly why we link every single one of our social media accounts back to our blog. We have two blogs in fact since our business is two-fold: gardening and public relations/marketing.

Our blogs are a chance for us to really hash out important issues in our industry. We're able to show that we are an expert at what we do; plus we can connect back to our main website. Blogs can also link back to your e-commerce website.

For us, the most important aspect of blogging is connecting. We've connected with new clients, fellow industry leaders, and even print media moguls.

Moral of the story: you and your garden business should be blogging! But, if you need a bit more convincing, read our ode to blogging here.

But I've had several aha moments to shed some light on the subject from several sources. The first was from Kyle Lacey who said a dozen times in one day, "Social media is 90% narcissism."

In the business of marketing, there are countless theories as to how best to promote and brand a business, product, or services. Some say advertising. We of course say, “PR’s the best!” Others say SEO, search engine optimization.

Just a few days ago, we were reflecting on the importance of including videos in press releases, but today, we’re going to take it a step further.

After a video is made, it cannot just be used in press releases! It must be mass-distributed. YouTube is the internet’s second most popular search-engine, right after Google. 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute of every day.

With that much content, SEO optimization for videos should be a critical and thoughtful task.

Search Engine Optimization. AKA SEO. One of the most popular questions in the tech world (and gardening world for that matter) is, Is SEO dead?  In fact, Forbes wrote an entire article on the subject last month. 

“Google is in the process of making the SEO industry obsolete, SEO will be dead in 2 years.”

After reading through the article, I learned a few things.  15% of SEO is internal - which means arranging your website so it has the best chance of being ranked high on Google. The other 85% is driven from written articles, press releases, blogs, comments, and a slew of other content with built-in “backlinks” to your website and put them all over the web.

So it's the 85% that is hard to control- harder to measure and easier to lose track of.  Google wants relevant, real content on the internet that people want to read and tell other people about.

Here's a quick "85% SEO cheatsheet" to help you: