Futz with Facebook and toy with Twitter all you want, but you're better off blogging.
As a green industry professional, you don't have unlimited time to spend on social media marketing. The best use of that time, by far, is on blogging.
Blogs are, and always have been, the focal point of most successful social media campaigns for lawn and landscape firms, garden centers, nurseries and related companies.
Why? Because a blog can establish your expertise, enhance your online presence, and get you clients. Lots of clients. More than 43 percent of companies now use a blog in their marketing. Is yours one of them?
It should be, because a blog can…
- Boost your visibility and credibility, and establish your expertise.
- Provide you with a low cost way to promote your landscaping and/or other services to a targeted audience.
- Attract prospective buyers. About 60 percent of businesses who blog acquire more customers, according to a recent HubSpot survey.
- Enhance your Internet search engine rankings and boost your online traffic.
- Establish you as a resource for the trade media and other green industry "influencers."
- Drive traffic to your website. Studies show that websites with blogs get 55 percent more visitors than those without them.
- Keep you in front of more prospects, longer. Compare the shelf life of a tweet (a few minutes at most) to that of a blog: months, maybe years.
- Enhance your writing, video and research skills.
Don't worry if you're not a polished writer; few green industry professionals are. More important than how you write your blog is what you write. And there's plenty to write about.
You can post blogs on topics of great interest to homeowners and other prospects — topics ranging from organic weed control to outdoor kitchens, from drought-resistant plants to pollination. Your insights on subjects such as urban landscaping, pests and diseases, composting and soil management can attract considerable attention.
The good news about a blog is that it's much easier and more economical to launch than a website. That's because there are numerous free blogging platforms and templates from which you can choose. Once you launch your blog, you can easily track its success. Online tools can help you measure and access visitor activity.
How many new orders, and how much additional traffic into your garden center or nursery can result from blogging? That will depend on such factors as the quality of your blog, its interaction and engagement with your reader base, the frequency of your posts, and their performance in search results.
In any case, your blog may well become one of your most potent promotional tools. It's an effective way to get heard in an increasingly noisy marketplace, and it differentiates your company from the many competitors who don't share their industry expertise in this way.
Use Facebook and Twitter and other social media to direct followers to your blog and website. Use your blog to build your business.
