Perhaps the best known name in this growing field is Patch. Owned and funded by AOL with offices in New York, its high-quality, journalistic website/blogs are in 20 states so far (plus D.C.), and when they cover a state, they cover it.  (My small state of Maryland has 52 of them, and California has over 130.)  Patches are established in towns with populations between 15,000 and 100,000 that are “underserved by media and that would benefit by having access to local news and information about government, schools and business”.  They’re run by professional editors, writers and photographers who live in or near the communities they serve, and I was happily surprised to discover how transparent they are.   Here’s their About Page, which includes the bio’s for an impressive staff.  Click here to find all the Patches (so far) in the U.S.

It wasn’t long after the Potomac, MD Patch launched that their editor contacted the one garden center in Potomac to ask if she could republish some of the garden center’s blog posts on the Patch.   It’s part of the business plan for Patches everywhere to solicit (unpaid) blog posts to publish front and center on all the Patch sites under the headline “Local Voices”, and local businesses with blogs are invited to contribute, too.  Behnkes  Nursery was quick to say yes, and you see their green logo twice here on the Potomac Patch – actually, their very first “Local Voice” entries.  One is a teaser to a longer article on the Behnkes website and the other is an introduction to the garden center itself - what it sells, etc. – the editor asked for that one specifically!

It’s clear from Patch’s guidelines for local bloggers that they’re looking for professional writing, including the use of standard journalistic punctuation, etc.   All submissions are subject to editing, and may be rejected outright if they require a lot of editing or outright rewrite.  Like any respected news source, Patch also cares about copyright law, so both the text and photos in blog contributions need to be in compliance.

How many garden center owners and employees have the time, inclination or experience to produce content like this?  Not many (if any), but you know who can produce it?  Local garden writers, especially if they have experience and proven success at blogging.

Content-wise, what is Patch looking for?  According to the Potomac Patch editor, they want really useful stories, like the “What to Do in May” blog story submitted in full to another Patch site (shown here on the left).   See, it’s fine to either publish the whole story on Patch or just post a short teaser that sends readers to your blog to read the whole story.  The editor also suggested blog stories announcing the store’s specials!  Notice this is FREE to the garden center – not paid advertising.

You can even post the same stories to several different Patch sites, as long as they’re local to your customers.   It’s a way to get great reach for your blog stories for almost no extra effort (it takes 5 minutes or so to post the content to each Patch).

More super-local news sites

Patch is just the largest of many local news sites springing up all over the place.  There’s also Village Connector and Main Street Connect and lots more that are unique to each town, rather than national in scope.   No doubt Patch isn’t the only one looking to republish blog posts by local companies.

Lisa Mulvaney; Mike McGrath with Homestead owner Don Riddle; Dr. Frank Gouin; and Gene Sumi

Here’s some examples of what a garden center BLOG can do that a Facebook fan page or Twitter account definitely CANNOT – turn talks by experts into content that can go viral AND stay online forever.

Homestead Gardens in Davidsonville, MD has lots of great talks and they’re usually well attended – meaning that 20-40 people get to hear them.  But as often as possible, their gardenblogger (me) is there to write up the highlights, put them into easy-reading form, check with the speaker for corrections and additions, and get it all online.   There they can be read by who-knows-how-many customers and potential customers, especially when the topics are so hot that links to the stories get passed around via regional gardening listservs and other social media.

• Homestead’s “education coordinator” Gene Sumi is a popular draw, so I attend and chronicle as many of his talks as possible – like this one about the hot, dry summer of 2010.
• When a local Master Gardener or environmental groups send speakers to the store, they appreciate the information being published permanently on the blog, and often include the link to the story in their e-newsletters.  Here’s a story about a watershed expert’s talk.
• Same thing applies to talks by regional gardening gurus on the radio, like Andre Viette and Mike McGrath (particularly on organic lawn care), and local compost expert Frank Gouin. (The latter two are the highest-traffic stories on the blog.)
• Another good candidate for going viral?  Write-ups of talks that garden center experts give AWAY from the store – like this story about Gene Sumi’s talk to a local garden club.

I was approached by Pete Mihalek, editor of Lawn and Garden Retailer Magazine, for answers to his many questions about the Mahoney’s blog, which he’d already told us he loved.  So finally, online and in print, my article, in the February issue. Susan

People are asking how Mahoney’s Garden Centers came to launch their attention-getting blog last summer and the answer is no surprise — they were responding to the same advice you’re all hearing about the value of social marketing. You know that customers are getting their information online, that social marketing is far cheaper than print advertising, and that it’s time to get on board.

Writing for the Web

It’s deceptively easy to start a new blog online — it just takes a few minutes. But for a blog to be successful, the blogger needs to know a shocking number of details about writing for the Web, building traffic and even online etiquette. Because Mahoney’s didn’t have a staff member with experience in all of that — not to mention the time to do it — they looked around, saw the blog articles I was writing for Homestead Gardens, and hired me to get their blog going.

As editor, my duties would include making the blog run on time with articles that inform and attract readers, and making sure they were edited, laid out and illustrated for the web, including the almighty search engines.

So what topics are covered on the blog? Lots of gardening how-to, always timely, science-based and environmentally responsible. Profiles of public gardens in the region and profiles of Mahoney’s employees, especially the ones who interact with customers. News of gardening and greening projects in the region. Book reviews. Corporate blogs succeed based on their useful and entertaining content, not their advertorials.

Indeed, advertising or marketing-type content is an instant turn-off to blog readers (your existing and potential customers), who usually click away from it and never return. Promotion needs to be infrequent and subtle, like profiling plants that you happen to sell. The preferable route would be to show them full-size and in a garden. And when it comes to profiles of employees and stories about in-store events, those are okay, too.

It’s in the Delivery

Blogs need the right tone. The best blogs are noncorporate, conversational and written by an identifiable person. Better yet, several identifiable people, and not just someone in the marketing department.

So Mahoney’s blog is a team effort. Contributors include not just me but a local radio garden guru, and as many employees as possible. (Employee articles can be simply e-mailed to the editor, who does the rest.)

And the regular “guest bloggers” include regionally known garden writers whose stories create buzz and get promoted via their own networking. Book authors typically contribute free blog stories and book giveaways to lucky readers. Local garden-related nonprofits provide free blog stories that help promote their good works, and then help spread the word through their e-newsletters. Avid customers offer their garden photos featuring plants bought at Mahoney’s.

Guest bloggers are great for making the blog go viral — creating word of mouth on steroids. The networking goes on in the blog’s sidebar, too, where you’ll find links to regional public gardens, gardening groups, local garden bloggers, and more. These links provide a service to readers while helping to get Mahoney’s connected with the local online communities their customers are engaged with. When the Boston Globe’s garden writer praised the blog, she mentioned liking this feature in particular — she clearly understands “link love” and why it’s important to use it.

Consistent Promotion

Besides high-quality content, the other requirement for a successful blog is promotion, and not just at launch but continuously — via Facebook and Twitter, on signs in the store, and by linking to new blog stories in e-newsletters. When sales staff know about a new blog story that features plants in their department, they can mention it to customers. Blogs and other social marketing tools work best when they’re integrated with the company, not stand-alone products.

So, what’s the return on this investment? With good promotion, readership builds steadily and turn-out at events soon improves, but forget about exact ROIs. Social marketing is about becoming part of the online community and creating relationships — things that can’t be quantified and don’t happen overnight. That’s hard to hear, I know, but take heart in the fact that social marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing, and more effective at building customer loyalty.

Yes, there’s tons of gardening information online these days, but sorting through the generic tips and junk websites to find trustworthy information is challenging. Web-using gardeners (soon to be ALL gardeners) already trust you and are grateful to find your expert, local help online. Facebook is great but no place for meaty information, inspirational garden stories or great photos of plants in gardens. You could put that great content on your static website, but blogs are updated frequently and designed to make it easy for readers to comment — to communicate with you.

Here’s the link to the Mahoney’s blog, and click the About this Blog story to see some of the contributors.  To republish this article, contact the author – gardenersusan@gmail.com.

A big thank-you to Boston Globe gardening columnist Carol Stocker for her kind words about the Mahoney’s Blog! She begins:

There’s been an explosion of gardening blogs since I started this one for the Boston Globe three years ago, and one of the newest and best local ones is Mahoney’s Blog.

I especially like the comprehensive directory of links its staff has assembled which will instantly connect you to the websites of local horticultural and to other local gardening blogs such as this one. I hope to post such a directory on this blog soon.

I’m so pleased that she likes the blogroll of local gardens, gardening blogs and more – because they’re kinda new on corporate blogs, but essential for turning the blog into a  regional resource about gardening.  Also essential for using the blog as a tool for networking.   Posting links to these relevant groups and bloggers is called “link love” and it’s gold in making connections online.

We explore how business owners and ethical consumers are harnessing the power of online communities and crowd-sourcing to support the local economy.

“Mom and Pop” businesses can’t necessarily beat prices at big box stores or national chains. So some local independent businesses are experimenting with new ways to engage customers and build loyalty. We explore how business owners, ethical consumers and labor activists are harnessing the power of online communities and crowd-sourcing to support the local economy.

You can listen through this link, but or read these notes I took with IGCs in mind.

• Carrotmobs are campaigns that reward local businesses who “do good” in some way.  The reward is directing “mobs” of customers to them through social media.  Think Local  First DC does carrotmobs regularly, and they describe them as “inverse Groupon”.
  Speaking of Groupon, one panelist warns that it may or may not not make sense for businesses to participate in it.  (If I can weigh in, they recently asked me to offer my garden-coaching service at a half-off discount via their emails, and then give them 30 percent of my greatly diminished hourly rate – all of which I considered a really bad deal for me.)
• In response to Walmart’s anticipated store opening here in DC, panelists reminded listeners that it’s small businesses who are the primary job creators in our economy, not the boxes.
• Others cited the importance of the experience of shopping.  Big-box shopping experience “lacks some soul”.  (You could say that again.)
• One caller, the owner of a small independent guitar store, offers in-store classes and has developed a community around the store.  Note the parallels with in-store teaching of gardening!   Another caller likes small businesses for their “advice you can trust and employees who care”.
• CoolTownBeta Communities is using social media to drive business to small companies in downtown neighborhoods coming back.
• Compost Cab, an upstart company in D.C., picks up waste and composts them for nonprofits that grow food, which fills a niche that big waste companies cannot.  Compost Cab also started in this Voice of America  report on composting in cities.

My take-away thought?  That I’d love to see an IGCs tap into the localism movement somehow.  (In addition to the “green” movement and good-growing movement, of course.)

Kudos to my newest guest blogger Susan Harris for her post below explaining exactly why being a corporate blogger can be fun. She hits all the relevant points (how she coaxes posts out of the staff, how she finds guest authors, etc.). I love her observation that “the networking goes on in the sidebar, too” through a carefully selected blogroll. Read on for the dirt on corporate blogging. Sorry, couldn’t resist.   Susan is best known for her blogging at GardenRant and award-winning Sustainable and Urban Gardening.  She writes for corporate blogs Mahoney’s and Homestead.  Take it away, Susan:

Field Report from a Local Corporate Blogger – Where Viral Meets Local

Anybody out there losing their blogging mojo, like me? I’ve been at it five years now and have climbed to the top of the heap in my niche (gardening), but still there’s almost no money in it. So I boldly offered my “blogging services” to a local garden center, and damn if they didn’t hire me.  Then another.  So suddenly I’m a corporate blogger, no matter that the term conjures up savvy 20-somethings in the marketing departments of big national companies.

But blogging for small local businesses is as different from that corporate world as it is blogging for myself, and the shocker to me is that I love doing it, and not just for the moolah. Here’s what I do.

The Writing

The biggest change from personal blogging is that for paying clients, I can’t blog about whatever’s on my mind; now I try to anticipate what customers want to know.  (Lawn care?  Always number one.) I blog about events at the store or nearby, and sometimes profile a staffer – all stuff I had no interest in covering on my own blog, but to help a company I support, it’s totally cool.  There’s also room for sexier stuff aimed at entertaining readers and creating a bit of buzz: profiles of cool people and places, gardens in the movies, and photo spreads to wow the reader(gardening blogs are worthless without photos).

The Coaxing of Posts from Staff

Ever notice how many small-business blogs fail? Me, too, and usually it’s because employees tasked with blogging don’t have the time, interest or expertise to do it, especially to do it well.

Hiring a professional blogger gives the blog a base of regular posts but still, customers want to hear from the staff, especially those experts on the floor.  As blog editor-manager, I need to make it easy as hell for staffers to contribute anything.  So I fix up drafts sent to me as emails with great graphics and SEO-happy titles and make their authors proud. More coaxing is required to get bios and photos from them, but that stuff goes a long way to personalizing the company and engaging the readers.

More Coaxing – for Guest Posts

My favorite part of the job may be soliciting guest posts from gardening experts in the region.  Many will guest-post for free – to promote their new book or their organization, while others looking to make a living (not easy in the gardening world) need to be paid, and we offer $100 per post – a bargain price for a whole lotta impact, and buzz.  Prominent guests also add big-time to the credibility of the company and its website/blog.

The Promoting -  where Local Meets Viral

Now promoting my own blog and the causes I’ve worked on, that’s one thing, but promoting a company?  That makes the former hippie in me squirm a bit, but the key is working for companies I actually want to succeed – in this case independent, family-owned companies. Who wouldn’t I promote?  The Big Boxes that are ruining those small companies, or the agents of Big Chem in the gardening world.  (No need to name names.)

But with the ick factor not a concern, corporate blogs are an awesome tool for networking (especially when turbo-powered by its new best friends Facebook and Twitter). So when I promote local Master Gardeners and community gardens, those folks pass the link along and put us on their website.

The networking goes on in the sidebar, too.  We have long blogrolls of clubs, nonprofits, public gardens to visit, other gardenblogs – all local.  (Take that, boring national gardening blog launched this year by Lowes.)

So How Much Does it Cost?

A professionally written and managed garden-center blog can become THE online resource and hub for gardeners in a given region for as little as $1,000 a month, a fraction of their budget for print ads and Yellow Pages (remember them?).

These are some of our favorite resources for online marketing information and case studies.  Check back for new resources, added as they’re discovered.

Subscribe to blogs and newsletters of these online marketing gurus:

• Problogger provides a wealth of blogging tips by super-savvy Darren Rowse.
• Duct Tape Marketing is great resource for “simple, effective and affordable small business marketing” (and that means mostly online).
• Mashable, the “Social Media Guide”.
• ChrisG on the Business of Blogging and New Media.
• Seth Godin is a top blogging and online marketing guru.
• Chris Brogan is a top expert in “community and social media”.
• FutureNow’s Marketing Optmization Blog.
• Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.
• Copyblogger offers “copyrighting tips for online success”.
• Garden Center Magazine’s blog.
• The women at Chaos to Clarity teach business people about blogging and social networking.  I’ve taken many of their seminars.

Some individual articles:

• 101 Tips from Small Business Bloggers.
• Wired Magazine on The Rise of Retail Blogs.
• Examples of Great Company Blogs.
• 6 Reasons why your Blog is your Most Important Social Media Tool, on Content Marketing Today.

And 3 recommended books about blogging and social media:

• The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil was named one of the Ten Most Insightful Books About Web 2.0 by CIO Insight.
• Blogging to Drive Business by Butow and Bollwitt is packed with the how-to’s of managing and promoting a corporate blog, and their advice is totally on target.
• Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What it’s Becoming, and Why it Matters by Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of Salon.com.

Independent garden centers – listen up! Lowes, that big box down the street, has hired reputable garden writers in eight regions of the U.S. to post weekly about their gardens. That’s right, they’re stepping up their online marketing to do what blogs do so well – create community and customer loyalty – despite their being, you know, a big box. (The Lowes blog is called Garden Grow-Along.)

The point is they’re doing what gardeners would rather see YOU doing. Real gardeners would rather get their gardening info from a local store with knowledgeable staff and plants that, you know, live.

Garden centers are blogging, but…
By now you’re all being told you MUST blog to survive, thrive, and win those new, young customers, and it’s true. (If you haven’t seen the reasons, here’s a list.) Garden center owners and staff simply don’t have the time or the blogging and social networking expertise to blog successfully, which requires several new posts a week, every week, plus ongoing promotion. I’ve surveyed all the garden-center blogs I can find, and generally found:

• Blogs full of advertising copy – an instant turn-off for every single reader. Successful corporate blogs avoid ad copy altogether in favor of offering useful and entertaining content.
• Lots of abandoned-looking blogs. To the average reader, if your most recent update was a month ago, the blog’s dormant and not worth checking in on. Successful blogs are updated at least three times a week, and five to seven times a week is ideal.
• Lots of blogs with seriously out-of-date designs.
• Too many deadly treatises about plants, sometimes with no photos.
• Visually, not enough photos and lots of bad ones, too. Too small, too dark, not displayed well.

The list could go on but the bottom line is that most are failing to win traffic or meet any business objective, like attracting customers.

Hire a blogger
Most of those less-than-successful blogs are written by owners or their regular staffers (buyers, marketing staff), and I’m writing to suggest a better alternative – contracting with a successful garden blogger to blog for you. But where do you find them? Open Register asked me to answer that question for their readers and I have three suggestions:

• Consult blog directories, like the Cold Climate Gardening Garden Blog Directory and Blotanical. Narrow your choices by choosing blogs with good traffic, and ones whose voice fits your company. Get to know your top choices by leaving comments and seeing how they respond. And ask for references from your finalists – your blogger will be telling your company’s story, so you want a reliable partner. If you see Facebook and Twitter badges in the sidebar, that’s a good sign that they know how to promote via social networking, and can do that for you – and do it well.
• The Garden Writers Association has a “Find a Writer” feature, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t indicate which writers have blogs.
• Contact me and I’ll find the best candidates to recommend to you. It’s part of the total package of services my partners and I offer at Garden Center Blogger. They include blog design, set-up, management, editing and promotion, plus social networking, e-newsletters – the works.

What your customers want to see on your blog
I asked readers of the popular blog GardenRant to suggest topics for your new or newly charged-up blogs and they had lots of great ideas. Here’s what they want to see on your blog, in a nutshell:

• Super-useful gardening advice for their region, the more timely the better. Answers to questions your staffers are hearing this week. Stories about what gardeners are doing in their garden this week.
• What’s newly arrived at your store
• How plants look in the garden and after they’re full-grown
• The cool events at the store
• Staff profiles, staff picks in their department
• Contests, product giveaways
• Stories about urban greening and gardening in your city
• What local Master Gardeners near you are up to
• And lots of guest posts by interesting writers and experts

These gardeners are ready and willing to offer YOU, not the big boxes, their customer loyalty, both as readers and as buyers, if you’ll only provide the information they’re so eager for.

GOOD EXAMPLES

The most successful corporate blogs avoid marketing language and simply provide a service to their customers – great content being key.  Examples of the best include: Kodak,  Whole Foods, Fiskars’s craft blog ,  and  American Express.

Garden Centers:

Homestead Gardens – has a lively multi-author blog and identifies all its writers clearly.  There are gobs of photos, and the header is changed seasonally.  Note the sidebar shows dozens of regional links – that’s the online community we want to communicate with.  (I contribute three articles each week to this blog; other contributors include their education coordinator , a food blogger, and guest bloggers.)

Mahoney’s Garden launched their blog in July of 2010.   Its frequent posts (at least three per week) are written by professional writers and in-house experts.  Coming soon – special guest bloggers, one each month, and garden-book author guest posts with book giveaways to readers.

The Golden Gecko is written by the Blogging Nurseryman (owner) himself, and he makes us want to shop there!  It works because he loves blogging.  Note the impressive blogroll.

Redenta’s.   It’s  good-looking and well done.

Flora Grubb’s blog is eye-catching and using mostly photos, shows off the owner’s talents.

A  terrific small-business blog is for the Park City Ski Resort

DO’S

• Write titles that convey what the article is about (avoiding the too-clever titles or the vague “Thoughts in the Garden” titles)
• Use lots and lots of photos, and not those tiny dark ones, either.
• Have an About page that answers readers’ questions about the company and the blog’s authors.
• In the sidebar, show links to garden-related groups and bloggers in your region.

DON’TS

• Be a faceless corporation using impersonal language.
• Use the blog to promote the company and its products (except rarely and never in a hard-sell way).
• Create the blog and expect people to find it.  (Blogs need continuous promotion, especially in their first year.)
• Post treatises with tiny or no photos.  (Best advice on length? 200-500 words.  Long pieces are more useful on the website.)
• Make it hard to comment, and when you do get comments, ignore them.

TOPIC IDEAS FOR GARDEN CENTERS

• Super-useful gardening info, and the more local, the better.  Best plants, what to do when, etc. (One of my top-traffic-getting garden-center blog post is:  What I’m really doing in my garden in each month – here’s one.
• Answers to questions of staff on the floor, the timelier the better.
• Meaty write-ups of your in-store seminars.  (Here’s one that got great traffic.)
• Contests and giveaways.
• Profiles of staff.  Staff gardens.  Staff favorite plants
• What plants have recently arrived in the store (customers beg for this!)  Here’s one, though it would have been better with photos.
• Anything of interest to gardeners in your region: profiles of great public gardens within day-trip range, local gardening events, etc.
• Gardening projects of nonprofits or Master Gardener groups in your area. (This one calling for volunteers for a worthy cause was appreciated, and they promoted it widely.)
• Product profiles that aren’t just marketing language.  (Here’s my interview with the botanist who developed FreezePruf).
• Gardening in the news, regionally or nationally, including book and magazine reviews.

by Susan Harris