I had a great conversation today with one of my favorite blogging clients, Dr. Steve Curtis and we were talking about how posting to blogs and commenting on other blogs (authentically) is actually sowing the seeds for a beautiful and blooming online garden in the future.
I like that analogy very much as I’m trying to start a fall potager’s garden in my backyard. And in potager gardening one pays attention to the paths you provide to walk in the garden, as well as the greenery and vegetables you grow.
I think this is very much like blogging. You are mindful of the paths you want to take to other blogs that will build up and sustain your own “blog garden” and you know to be careful and respectful of their work and the seeds they have planted so that all can be sustained together in both gardens.
Unlike gardens it’s harder to know when a seed you’ve sowed will bloom online, but if you never sow any seeds then how can one even hope for a bloom.
If you sit in the middle of your blog garden, no paths in or out, no good content (soil) to sustain the blog and its growing seedlings then your garden will never truly expand.
If however, you’re willing to work the soil of your blog, water it freely with true and authentic springs of edu-focused and community building posts then surely you will see a garden that grows and expands and attracts new visitors to the garden.
You will see a perennial blog garden instead of a dying one. See these definitions of perennial:
adjective 1. lasting for an indefinitely long time; enduring: her perennial beauty.
2. (of plants) having a life cycle lasting more than two years.
3. lasting or continuing throughout the entire year, as a stream.
4. perpetual; everlasting; continuing; recurrent.
You don’t need a PR person or an online PR person to help you sustain your garden, you just need to start sowing the seeds one spot at a time and watch it grow.
“In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.” ~Abram L. Urban
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I’m not totally sure how effective a PR person for bloggers is anyway.
I’ve actually started my own blog recently for a school project and I found that this sort of advice is really the best. The garden analogy was golden.
Ahhh, a garden. Great metaphor… I’m very new to blogging. With working the soil and sowing as themes, I will tend my garden with great care and expectancy. Thanks for the inspiration!
Thanks for such a great comment and for reading!
Nettie
Thanks Tattered Scribe!
I started a community blog over a year ago and wrote almost weekly. I lost interest because I didn’t think anyone was reading, but when I quit I got emails from all over the world! Crazy. I try to blog ever week now.
Plant a Seed
That is a great story. Congratulations!