I have a confession to make. Last night, while admiring how well all my little seedlings were growing in my veggie patch, I wondered how I could share a story in this blog to brag about my happy place; my garden. But seriously, what does gardening have to do with writing blogs for small rural businesses?
Then a light bulb moment came over me! The things needed to grow a veggie patch are remarkably similar to what you require to grow a blog.
The starting point
Starting a veggie garden from scratch usually begins by selecting a patch of bare dirt. In the world of blogging, a website represents the bare dirt that you grow your blog from.
Cultivation
Before you plant your seeds, you must cultivate and prepare the ground. To prepare the ground for your blog, you need to spend some time deciding who you are targeting to write blogs for.
Selecting the seeds
Next, you must research the seeds that will grow best in your garden. The seeds of your blog are the topics you post about. Choosing topics that your audience wants to learn about from you will grow best on your blog.
Add water
Without water, your seeds will not grow. While we can wait for rain, to help our seeds grow, we must give them water. Sharing and allowing for our blogs to be shared on social media platforms is the water we can apply to our blogs to help grow the audience. Waiting for the rain to water our plants, is the same as waiting for our target audience to find our blogs organically.
Apply fertilizer
By applying fertilizer, we are assisting our seeds to grow faster. Feedback and comments are the fertilizer for your blog. Receiving feedback not only offers insight on what your audience wants to gain from your blog but also what they do not want to read about. Being open to feedback allows you to optimise your posts to suit your target audience, and this gives your blog the boost of energy that it needs to make it grow faster.
TLC
Any gardener will tell you that offering TLC (Tender Loving Care) to plants is one of the most important things a gardener must do. A blog is no different. To keep your blog growing, you must continually tend to it, through posting regularly, listening to your audience and maintaining the content.
So, there you have it, growing a blog is just like growing a veggie patch. All you need is dirt (website), the time to cultivate the dirt (target audience), seeds (blog topics), water (social media platforms), fertilizer (feedback and comments) and the dedication to make it grow. Veggie gardens and blogs alike, are both very simple to start, and ever so rewarding once you see the fruits (or in this case veggies) of your labour.