What Have Blogging And Gardening Got In Common?

Here in the UK, we’re just passing the longest day of the year already, and it seems like only a few weeks since the winter passed and spring arrived.

One of the best parts of the warmer weather is that you can get out in the garden and see to all of the jobs that you wouldn’t do in winter, like planting up pots and baskets, clearing the flowerbeds and mowing the lawn.

I was out in the garden the other day having a tidy up, and it struck me just how similar gardening and blogging actually are.

Run with me on this one – I will manage to persuade you that these two seemingly incompatible activities are actually much more close in characteristics than an initial glance may suggest!

A little investment goes a long way

When we undertake a good stint of gardening, one of the best things about the task is that we get immediate, visible results from just a little investment of our time. We can look out of the window and see a vast space which needs clearing out, building up, and populating with plants and shrubs before it can be everything we want from an outdoors space.

Blogging is exactly the same – when we start out, the prospect of developing a site and filling it with content can seem daunting, but, like with gardening, a few good hours of work can reap massive visible dividends in a short space of time.

They both need regular maintenance

Anyone who gardens regularly knows that it is a never-ending task. Even with the best infrastructure in place, we still need to head outside for a few hours a week to tidy up. Plants need to be pruned back, sweeping needs doing, and we need to pull up weeds and keep things clear.

Our blogs are the same – unless we pop in for a small amount of time each week we’ll end up with an overgrown space which quickly becomes unmanageable. By clearing spam, responding to comments quickly and making sure we have the best software and good content, our blogs will continue to serve us well long in to the future.

You can outsource

There are two aspects to gardening – the heavy landscaping tasks, and the smaller more manageable activities such as pruning and cutting back. Gardening and blogging both share a similar benefit – if we are faced with something too complex or technical which is difficult to achieve, we can call on an expert to do it on our behalf.

With blogs, we can maintain them to a great standard with articles, but when it comes to the more technical aspects such as graphic design, site builds or upgrades, it makes sense to outsource to people who can do things a little quicker and more effectively than we can ourselves.

From little acorns, big oak trees grow…

Planting a seed, a small shrub or a bulb may seem like a very insignificant thing, but a few months or years later our garden will be a mature, well-populated and majestic place.

Our blog is the same – plant the seeds for great customer service, online brand reinforcement and product sales now, and your blog will flourish and grow over time.

Neglect them, and they wither up and die

Sadly, people often neglect their gardens even if they put time and energy in to them at the beginning. Blogs and gardens both need a lot of ongoing love and support to flourish and thrive. Both pastimes are sometimes labour intensive, but without this regular maintenance and attention, we’ll lose both our beautiful garden, and our fabulous blog.

Did I convince you?

Please share your views in the comments below.