Thinking about blogging but don’t know how to get started? Don’t worry, I have lots of blog post ideas and resources for farmers and gardeners to point you in the right direction!
Why do blog posts matter?
Before we start diving into where you get find blog post ideas, I want to briefly talk about WHY you should be blogging. I know it’s another thing to add to your marketing plate, but I promise it’s important! Here are a few reasons why blogging can help your farm or gardening business:
- Helps you target more keywords to rank for more searches on Google
- Reaches potential customers in the informational search phase before they’re ready to purchase
- Gives you an opportunity to show off your expertise and/or products
- Keeps people on your site longer and more engaged (which can help your SEO!)
But with all of those benefits, I actually don’t recommend blogging as a marketing strategy for some businesses. If you’re a farmer primarily trying to get your food into local stores, it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to focus on blogging. But if you’re a farmer or gardening consultant who sells or works directly with consumers, blogging can be a helpful strategy for reaching more customers.
How do you even write a blog post?
There isn’t really a “wrong” way to write a blog post, and sometimes you just need to get started and write some “just ok” posts before you get the hang of things (getting started is always the hardest step!). But if you want some practical tips, here are some best practices I recommend, including some content optimization tips:
- Start with publishing one blog post each month, and you can add on more later if you want (you can also batch a lot of blog posts and schedule them out during your busy seasons if you don’t have time to write blog posts then)
- Publish content at least a month or two before your audience needs it and searches for it (so don’t publish a blog post about different types of tomatoes during peak tomato season. People plan ahead and start searching for things early, and you want to give Google enough time to start ranking your blog posts before people start searching those topics, too)
- Write at least 750 words (longer is even better for ranking better and giving your audience enough information)
- Break up the text in the blog post with headings to separate topics and a few photos to help make the post visually appealing (and show off your work and products!)
- Write your title tags and meta descriptions to help your posts rank higher on Google and drive more traffic to your site when people see your blog post on Google
You can also just use this blog post as a guide on how to format and structure your posts 😉
3 easy places to get blog post ideas
Alright, let’s get into how to come up with blog post topics for your business!
Ask your audience
The first place I recommend finding blog post topics is from your audience! The whole point of blogging is to connect with your audience and expand your reach to get more people like your audience onto your site. So keep your audience (and your audience’s location, if applicable) in mind when you’re writing blog posts.
What questions have they asked you about your products or about your opinion on how to do something? This entire blog post topic actually came from one of Instagram followers when I posted on my Stories asking what SEO questions people had for me! So see what your audience wants to know (or even questions you’re already getting asked frequently) and create content for them.
Do keyword research
If you want your blog posts to be able to rank well on Google (which I should hope you want for most of your posts), you need to do keyword research to see what you can rank for, and it’s a great place to get some topic ideas.
You can get started just searching phrases on Google to see what autopopulates for what other people have searched for, but if you want to really get into SEO, I recommend using a keyword research tool. You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner or the free plan on Ubersuggest, and there are paid tools like Keysearch (my personal favorite), Moz, or Semrush.
These keyword research tools have tons of data to show you how many people are searching a particular keyword each month, how competitive that keyword is (so you’re not targeting keywords that you won’t be able to rank for), seasonal trends when the searches are the highest, and it will show you related keywords so you can find even more topics to write about!
If you want help with keyword research, contact me and I would be happy to help you with a keyword research strategy!
Repurpose your content
If you’ve been marketing your business in other places, you probably already have some content to work with! Are there ways you can expand an Instagram post into a blog post? Or even combine a few related Facebook posts or emails into a blog post? You don’t need to start from scratch if you already have content you can reuse! I reuse as much content from my Instagram account and these blog posts as I can to make my life easier.
If you have a podcast or YouTube channel, you’ll likely have tons of blog posts you can create from that. One really easy way is to get the transcript from a podcast episode or YouTube video and use an AI tool to take the transcript and turn that content into a blog post (make sure you still clean it up and make sure everything is on brand for your business). Then you can embed the YouTube video or podcast episode into the blog post to encourage people to watch or listen and follow you!
Blog post ideas for farmers and gardeners
Still struggling to come up with ideas? These are some searches I’ve made on Google to help get you going! And I publish my searches seasonally on Instagram if you want to follow my account and get ideas regularly.
For gardeners and garden centers:
- Witch hazel trees for sale
- When to plant pepper transplants
- Native pollinator plants for Pennsylvania
- How to plant dahlia seeds
- Gifts to make with dried lavender
- What bug is eating my basil?
- Herbal cold remedies
- When are radishes ready to harvest?
For farmers:
- When to sign up for a CSA
- Farm with blueberry picking
- Where to pick lavender in PA
- Benefits of pasture raised eggs
- How to thicken homemade strawberry preserves
- [My favorite farm] spring produce
- Christmas tree farm near me
- Local product gift boxes
- Winter events for kids
- Best type of pine for Christmas wreaths
- Farmer’s markets near me
If you need help with keyword research or blog post optimization to ensure your content has the best opportunity rank on Google, contact me and see how I can help! And if you need other SEO help on your site, check out my services and see how I can help your site rank higher.
