As we all know, the way we get our information has changed drastically over the last decade.

The world of print newspapers and magazines has struggled while the ever-changing digital world has dominated.

In short, the newspaper is out, and the Twitter feed is in. According to Garden Media's 2014 Trends Report, the internet is becoming our new friend and trusted neighbor for gardening advice.

Read on to discover more about how and where gardeners are getting their gardening advice in 2014-- and how your garden business can take hold of this trend.

While Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and the like all fall under the umbrella of social media, using each platform requires an individualized set of tricks and tips.

A new study recently found the most effective tips and guidelines for posting on different social media outlets.

Implementing these tips will allow your garden business to see a higher number of likes, retweets, views, and most importantly, engagement.

For these secrets to have a larger impact, your social media manager has to closely analyze your analytics. Facebook's new insights will help break down who your audience is and what type of posts have been most effective.

Below, we're dishing on universal tips for creating alluring, yet highly effective posts on all the social media platforms.

At Garden Media Group, we spend a lot of time thinking about trends--especially for the garden.

Lately, the office has been a buzz with social media trends. Facebook Fatigue and the release of Instagram video are drastically changing the landscape of social media.

Social media trends allow you to connect with your green, gardening customers. Plus, it shows your audience that your brand is forward-thinking.

Keep up with the social media trends, and discover five topical changes in social media that will affect your garden business this year.

Social media is, of course, at its core about connecting with green, gardening customers. Here, your company is able to transcend the stigma of being a money-hungry business. 

On social media, your garden company is able to meaningfully connect by showcasing your sense of humor, ability to listen, and individualized responses.

Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram provide a medium for your garden brand to show the face and personality behind your product.

Yet, in order to truly succeed in the realm of social media, you not only have to have a presence, but your digital persona should produce. The fruits of social media are different for each business: increases in likes, profit, website visits, or loyal customers.

Whatever your garden business hopes to achieve on social media, you need to create effective, meaningful calls to action with our tips below!

Your business can’t juggle every social media outlet. If you try, you’ll end up pulling all of your hair out—and see very little pay off.

To truly master the art and daily practice of social media, your garden business has to be mindful about tracking your success. Using social media tools and tracking devices, you can easily learn what social media platforms are the most successful while also discovering what posts are most popular.

Below, we’ve outlined three powerful tools to track and analyze your social media success that are simple, secure, and versatile.

In the realm of social media, we're still learning how to best measure our business sucess. The medium is still new, so the best way to see how we're doing hasn't been fully established yet. But, we are learning!

Each social media platform is different, so you need to measure its success in a different way.

As far as Twitter goes, one of the best indicators of success is how many times your tweets are retweeted.

Retweets matter because they show how often your followers are engaging with your material. If a follower retweets you, it means they love your material enough to share it as their own!

We've got three types of tweets that are you want to avoid because they're almost never retweeted, and a new, hot way to measure your business's best formula for retweets.

Today, images are preferred over text, especially in the realm of social media.

All day, every day we as consumers are inundated by constant text. And, when we log onto our social media accounts, we're bombarded with even more words.

While our eyes and brains have adjusted, most of the time we simply scroll right past that boring old black and white text.

Bring your text to life on Twitter by illustrating and visualizing your text. Watch your social engagement grow off the charts!

Vine is a beautiful, beautiful app. Video creation is finally as easy as it gets. Now, if they could just make it for Android...

Nonetheless, Vine has amazing implications for the world of public relations--and for small businesses. 

Vine was launched by Twitter in late January; since Vine was made by Twitter, the videos are embedded directly into the social media site. 

Vine has the potentional for an unforgettable pitch; below, we'll detail how to use Vine to create an easy, visually-driven public relations pitch.

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!

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.