For companies in the garden industry, finding ways to stand out and engage with your community is critical to success. 

One way to achieve this is by taking part in themed months and hyper-specific holidays in the garden niche. These occasions, such as Garden for Wildlife Month or National Weed Your Garden Day, can help your business connect with your customers near and far on a deeper level and also help you increase brand awareness and sales. 

Remember: Don't just jump on the bandwagon; always purposefully and strategically embrace these opportunities to connect with your audience and leave a lasting impact authentically.

-- Read on to explore the benefits of participating in themed months and hyper-specific holidays and the best ways to recognize them. --

Meltwater, an online media monitoring company, recently launched a report that shared current trends in social media for 2023. 

The report offered findings from over 1,700 marketing and communications professionals globally. The short: paid and organic social media are expected to increase in 2023. Garden businesses must stay at the top of their game and adapt while also increasing their skillset. 

In the report, social media platforms were ranked by usage and popularity. Facebook is still holding the top ranking, followed by LinkedIn and Instagram. YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok remain relevant while being slightly less popular than the top three. Short-form video is hot right now on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Read on to learn more about how social media has maintained and even gained importance during the current economic development. 

What if we told you there was a social media platform that has over 430 million active users, billions of visits each month, and is being overlooked by most companies?

Gardening is on the tip of everyone’s tongues as unprecedented millions took to plants during the pandemic. Are you speaking the new gardener’s language?

This report analyzes millions of social media posts and articles written across the course of the pandemic. These gardening posts reveal key patterns in language and sentiment – and represent a significant shift in the way the public talked about plants before and after COVID-19.

Navigating emerging pandemic trends and topics, Mind the Gap helps readers better relate to the gardening public – and gain the trust of the new gardener.

In the modern digital age, new social media platforms pop up every other day. And as quickly as they come, they often fizzle out faster than you can say YikYak, ClubHouse, or Vine. It’s a whirlwind for anyone trying to create a digital marketing strategy!

When TikTok came to the stage, many assumed it, too, wouldn’t last. Yet it continues to be the number one downloaded app, and users average 80 minutes a day scrolling through endless videos. We predict it is here to stay.

Read more to learn how this “clock” app works and how your garden brand can use it. 

Over the past year, millions have sunk their hands into a bag of potting soil and fallen in love with gardening. Whether it was a new indoor plant for the at-home office, or starting vegetable seeds, these new gardeners are here to stay! Getting started can be intimidating and there is no shortage of options of where to find info on gardening.

Read more to find out WHERE these new gardeners are going for tips and tricks.

With gardens and houseplants shifting from white-hot trend in 2019 to full-blown national obsession in 2020, the faces at the front of the new wave are social media influencers with legions of followers and backyards that make us—yes—green with envy.

Why should businesses in the horticulture industry pay attention to garden influencers, who range from tattooed and pierced ‘plant dads’ to proud grandmothers with enviable backyards? Because they have a direct line to the eyes, ears and wallets of millions of consumers. And the numbers tell us that these customers trust and take their buying queues from social influencers.

Smart companies are asking two questions:
• What are garden influencers doing right?
• And how can we work with them?

Read more to learn the 1-2-3’s of influencer marketing to green industry businesses.

We’ve already talked about the controversial Pepsi ad and the factors that contributed to its failure. To do cause marketing the right way, the campaign must be consistent with the brand and relatable to the target audience. Heineken has recently created a great example of a powerful cause marketing ad.

The international beer distributor created a four minute ad with the tagline “Open Your World.” The video shows strangers with opposing views working together and discussing their contrasting beliefs over a beer. The ad has received widespread praise and definitely works to bring people together, instead of tearing them apart.

Let’s examine these two beverage companies with two political ads — why did Heineken’s ad succeed and Pepsi’s ad fall short?

Continue reading to learn more about Heineken’s Worlds Apart experiment.

Instagram was one of the first major photo-based social networks when it launched in 2010. By the end of April 2012, there were already over 100 million active users.

After recognizing its success and the potential for competition, Facebook purchased Instagram in April 2012. They paid a total of $1 billion dollars in cash and stock and used "the power of Facebook" to help the member base grow by an additional 23% in 2013. Today, the two networks are linked, allowing users on Instagram to post photos or videos directly to both accounts simultaneously.

Today, Instagram has surpassed Twitter in user activity, with over 500 million registered profiles. It has evolved into a well-rounded platform, featuring video posts, 24-hour stories, and live streaming.

To learn more about Instagram and its growth, check out the following new research report from WebsiteBuilder.org.

Continue reading to learn more about the success of Instagram.

Jargon: special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.

Those who work in PR are all too familiar with this term. How many times a day can someone hear the word “influencer” before they’re completely bored?  

No one – especially journalists and consumers -  likes buzzwords.  So why does our industry love to use and overuse them so often?

The good news is that there’s always time to unlearn the drab words that drag our copy down.    

Read more to unlearn these overused words.