What I’ve Learned About Garden Blogging This Year #4
There are two kinds of garden bloggers. Those who do it for the heck of it – with no expectation of readers and income and those who do it as part of their garden-writer life and have some expectation of income and readership. You get to pick; I obviously write as a full time garden writer. If you write for yourself, then please ignore the rest of this post, it doesn’t apply to you at all.
There are three kinds of garden blogs. The authority blog – where a recognized garden expert writes about their plants and garden. The community blog where a group of gardeners congregate to share stories. And an entertainment blog where people read to get a laugh, an interesting thought or a car wreck, but aren’t particularly looking for one of the previous two blogs.
The interesting thing is that in order to excel at blogging you have to excel at one of these three areas. You have to pick one and make it your own. But – and it’s a big but – you can’t ignore the other two and have to foster them in some smaller scale of things. I know some great plantsmen that can’t write an entertaining blog to save their souls – but they know plants. And some of the most entertaining bloggers wouldn’t be allowed in my garden with a shovel in their hands. The worst of course are those who don’t know plants, are boring writers and can’t foster community, but who think they can do all of these things equally.
Want readers? Pick one. Excel at it. I confess I wander back and forth on this – mostly doing authority pieces with a bit of entertainment and far, less community-building. As a mostly-solitary writer, I’m not the person to sympathize with you when your flowers wilt but I mostly know how to fix that kind of thing.
Want to be wildly successful? Pick a car-crash style of writing and give us a window into your soul (and be a great gardener to boot). I’m not genetically suited for a car-crash style of writing so that takes care of that…
Hi Doug, that is very interesting series of posts
I started to blog from the need of my heart
Just wanted to share my experience and passion about green gardening with young gardeners that have no place to learn organic gardening in my country – chemical lobby is very strong here
Decision about blogging has changed my life – I see it as a journey. I am also planning post about it.
Greetings from Poland,
Ewa
Ewa In The Gardens last blog post..Flowers galore!
I am not aware that I place so many smileys until I saw my comment with yellow dots…
Ewa In The Gardens last blog post..Flowers galore!
@Ewa In The Garden -
I think sharing a passion is where some of the best and most realistic blogs come from – a good starting point. One interesting thing (imho) is what happens when that person comes to realize that other people are actually reading them – and what happens to that passion and honesty in the face of increasing readership.
Well, I think you have someof the dynamic mentioned in these posts. Once we have conversations and realize that people are reading we start to look for what interests the reader. Sometimes it is an awkward transition, sometimes not. I know it greatly impacted my type of writing. Maybe I am reactively too bland, now- I got really lambasted online for my former years of strong opinion making.
But then, I view gardening with a tolerance and embrace that I don’t extend in politics or ethics -so much. Like anything involving popularity there is a dab of serendipity and a je ne sais quoi in the mix.
But in blogging… I think it is just plain old hard work:)
ilonas last blog post..Seed Starting on the Cheap
@ilona -
Yes it can indeed be an awkward moment the first time you realize that people read you – and that what you write can determine their interest level. And that (more importantly) you’re changing what you write because of how you see their responses. I think it happens in all artistic occupations – you get stuck in a rut writing, painting, singing, performing for an established audience or how your old audience reacts – rather than pushing the bounds or continuing with the fresh “stuff” that brought them to you in the first place. It’s an occupational hazard and one we all have to deal with. Learn or die – grow or grow stale. It’s damned hard to break out of the shell on an ongoing basis – leaving the comfort level behind. I personally love that comfort level – of finding new things but never really going waaaay out on the limb. Ah well, that’s enough heavy thinking for today – there’s a beer in the frig somewhere.