CONSUMER TRENDS
HELLO
my name is
Ah, the power of the press! But in an
age where consumer print publications
are cutting back on the pages they
Your New
give to gardening, it may be time to
foster relationships elsewhere. Start
with local garden bloggers, who could
Best Friend
hold the key to reaching your tech-
savvy younger consumers…and more!
By Mr. Brown Thumb
’m not a professional gardener nor am an Internet connection, which allows the writer to I explained to the employee on duty that I was
I
I a professional garden writer. I’m a garden interact with readers. a garden blogger and asked him to tell me
blogger. In an age when the consumer print industry is about what was on sale so I could write about it.
At the last Chicago Flower & Garden devoting less and less space, if any, to gardening, His response, while courteous, shocked me. He
Show I mentioned I was a garden blogger and professional garden writers are fi nding them- declined to talk to me about the sale before he
to a vendor, who then asked me what a garden selves without regular work, garden blogs are asked the owner, who was on the phone in an
blogger was. Her daughter was sitting in their fi lling a void. The garden blog is becoming the gar- offi ce somewhere, for permission to talk to me
booth looked up and said, “Duh, Mom. He blogs dening column of what was once your local paper. about the sale. You fi gure that one out.
about gardening,” as if it pained her to have to The majority of garden blogs are maintained by On the other end of the spectrum: I get a lot of
explain something so simple. The daughter average gardeners who write about things like unsolicited press releases and mass e-mails from
rolled her eyes, lowered her head and went back what’s in bloom in the garden, garden pests and garden centers and various folks in the industry
to surfi ng the Internet on the laptop before her. even plant sales at garden centers like yours. because of my gardening blogs. Most of these
Blog, for those who aren’t familiar, is the short- go unread or marked as spam without a second
ened form of “weblog” (see “The Write Stuff” Communicating with Bloggers thought. An independent garden blogger doesn’t
in the February 2009 issue of Lawn & Garden Recently, I was visiting a number of local have deadlines to meet or pressure to create con-
Retailer). At its very core, a garden blog is simply garden centers to compile information on plant tent from the fl ood of e-mails and press releases.
a garden journal that’s accessible to anyone with sales to write for a blog I maintain. At one stop, The garden blog is updated when the writer
Would your employees know what to do if a garden blogger came
in to interview someone from your store about a current sale or
products you offer?
34 Lawn & Garden Retailer January 2010
www.lgrmag.com
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