Today’s Garden Ideas

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***DISCLAIMER*** TO ALL BLOGGERS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE - The Article below pertains to the marketing of blogs and how to get more traffic via commenting on blogs. The rankings that follow have NOTHING, ZILCH, ZIPPO to do with your content, writing style, hairdos, or zucchini disposal methods. I read all of your blogs religiously and love them all equally. The rankings shown below are SOLELY based on your blogging platform and partially on what categories of gardening you write about. PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME HATE MAIL BOXES OF ZUCCHINI, FRESHLY HATCHED BUNNIES, AND/OR BUNNY ATTRACTANT

While perusing the web in my 30 seconds of spare time, (I’m on hold with the bank, but my time is important to them. I am continuing to hold while they continue to value my time…), I came across this blog article by Dee over at netbusinessblog.com. Seems he doesn’t know much about gardening and wanted to learn more so he came up with this little exercise:

Let’s try an exercise.

• Pretend you have a gardening blog.
• Find 5 blogs within the gardening niche. Try to find blogs worth commenting on.
• Rank the blogs. Which blog is the best to comment on? Which is the worst?
• Publish a quality blog post about your experience. Write about how you found the 5 blogs and also give reasons for your rankings.
• Leave a comment with a link to your blog post.

Always up for a challenge while I’m on hold, I decided to give it a whirl. Since I already read a bazillion gardening blogs, choosing five wasn’t hard. Putting them in order definitely was. Here are my five though:

Garden Desk
My Grandpa’s Garden
The Inadvertent Gardener
Gardening and Yardening
Veggie Gardening Tips

OK, so I knocked out steps 1 (pretend I have a gardening blog and 2 (find 5 gardening blogs worth commenting on). CHECK! Next, I need to rank the blogs from best to worst in terms of commenting. hmmm. I will say strictly from a “I am commenting because I genuinely like your work AND I hope to offer something of value to your readers, too” standpoint - I have to rank folks using platforms other than Blogger higher. This has nothing to do with the quality of their blog, their photos, or even their gardening skill — its just that Blogger does not allow comments to flow easily (popups), does not allow trackback (so if someone writes about you, you may not know it), and if you are a fellow blogger, does not allow the commenter to discreetly place their URL in the submission form (though it can be tracked down via your profile). Sorry for the Blogger rant, I’m still on hold….

Now that I have my soapbox put back in the closet, let’s get everyone ranked based on my criteria:

1. Veggie Gardening Tips
2. My Grandpa’s Garden
3. The Inadvertent Gardener
4. Garden Desk
5. Gardening and Yardening

So why did I rank this way? Kenny at Veggie Gardening Tips is #1 because his blog is so focused. He writes about one thing only and his title says it all. Veggie Gardening. He personally responds to all of his comments and he emails all of his new commenters welcoming them to his site. It adds a very personal touch and I know I appreciated it when I received a welcome from him. Finally, Kenny has a plugin I really like which is “subscribe to comments.” It allows me to check a box and be notifed via email if any blog post I comment on is updated. This allows me to stay in the conversation even after I forget that I commented. (Which is common, I mean, really, do you remember how many blogs you read and comment on daily?)

Michelle over at My Grandpa’s Garden takes number 2 mainly because I’m obsessed with her progress with Big Pumpkin. I’m waiting for this thing to take over her back yard, get a coat of schlack and have 7 dwarves and Snow White move in.

I could have just as easily made Genie #2 with her blog, The Inadvertent Gardener. Truthfully, she and Michelle write on great blogging platforms, it’s easy to find prior comments, make comments and stay with the flow of things.

From a networking perspective, that’s what it’s all about. Make you comments section easy to find, when someone does comment your blog, try and leave a comment back to let them know you care. If they are a new commenter, drop them an email. You never know when these little friendships can lead to something more.

Moving on, we have Marc at the Garden Desk. Like everyone else on our list, Marc follows good blogging habits. His #4 on our list only because he uses the dreaded Blogger. (Yeah, I probably need therapy for my Blogger issues…) Marc replies to comments anytime someone leaves one. He responds to his email quickly if you have questions regarding his blog. Like everyone on the list, his content is great and frequent.

Wrapping up my list of 5 blogs is Gardening and Yardening. They are in last place for a couple reasons. Mainly because they use Blogger. Also because I’ve just added them to my blog reader so I haven’t established that “relationship” I feel with the other four. I think part of that is because they post articles, much like my blog. It’s hard to feel a relationship with a how-to blog when you don’t have the trials and tribulations of the various projects. (Like attacking bunnies, march of the zucchinis, or killer lawnmowers..). This blog will become more personal in time, I promise.

OK, so how did I find everyone? I found the first blog through google and blogcatalog and everyone else was on someone’s blogroll. It just went from there.

Well that wraps up the Dee’s commenting challenge. 3 phone calls later, (I no longer remember why I called the bank), I’m still on hold, but I know all about their home equity line of credit and how much they value my time…

Happy Gardening!

Emma