Garden Center Blogger

Garden Center Blogger is a service of garden blogger and writer Susan Harris - that’s me!  As a long-time supporter of independent garden centers, I’m using my national blogging success and my contacts in the gardening world to create successful blogs and social media programs for them.   (If they don’t already know about the business reasons for doing this, I refer them to the “10 reasons why Garden Centers, Landscapers and Nurseries Should Blog”.)

Here’s how I’m helping garden centers:

Set-up, Management and Promotion

• Working with their web person to design and install a blog as part of their website and populated with great links, categories, and other features that increase traffic, credibility and customer loyalty.  If outside help is needed I refer them to professionals I’ve worked with and recommend.
• Recommending a local blogger to bring on the team to write about in-store events, do staff profiles, and cover the gardening people, groups and events in their customer area.  I look for bloggers who’ve demonstrated success in both blogging and in using other social media.   The local blogger also needs to be easy to work with and a good ambassador for the company, both online and in the real-world community.
• Training the local blogger and blog contributors on staff in team-blogging generally and corporate blogging in particular.   That includes how to find copyright-free  photos,  and how to create content using a fun and engaging blogging style that looks nothing like promotional writing.
• Soliciting prominent gardening and greening experts in the region for guest blog articles, then working with the guests to promote the articles.
• Editing and laying out all blog content for search-engine optimization, usability, and for positive visual impact.
• Making it easy for garden center staff to contribute blog content by taking their emails, adding photos, and turning them into articles that look great and read well.
• Upon launch, directing the promotion of the new blog, both nationally and to gardening and greening groups and writers in their customer region.
• Helping to create Facebook and Twitter accounts, if needed, and make them successful.
• Helping to respond to comments and assess the success of the blog and other social media.

Great Content Twice a Week

• Providing weekly or twice-weekly posts that, together with posts  by the local blogger, make the blogs lively, current, and big drivers of traffic to the website.  So whether or not the staff have something to contribute, the blogs have the frequent updates they needs to really succeed – at least three each week.
• Writing stories that help readers learn to garden and enjoy gardening more, based on my years as a gardening coach.  I teach low-maintenance, eco-friendly gardening with site-appropriate plants, paying attention to stormwater management and wildlife.  My articles include lively reviews of gardening books, products and websites, hot gardens in movies, news from the White House Garden, and lots more.  Articles are always new and timely, never old or repurposed.  Garden centers have exclusive use of my articles within 50 miles of their location(s).

WHY do you need “The Garden Center Blogger”?  Because you and your staff need to spend your time on what you do best: helping customers get the plants they need to grow beautiful and productive gardens and landscapes.

If you work with me I can promise that your garden center blog will:

• Be a local source of high-quality gardening information for customers
• Increase visibility of your business in local media
• Start communications with your customers
• Create a local community of connected gardeners
• Separate you from big-box stores by putting a personal face on your business, and establishing your authority for reliable gardening information

Let Garden Center Blogger help you put your best foot forward and reach your customers where they are most comfortable: online.   Contact Susan for more information and a custom quote.

Photo by Rob Cardillo for Fine Gardening Magazine.