What Your Spring Garden Can Teach You About Public Relations
Spring is my favorite time of year. The sun is shining, the air is warm, the flowers are blooming, and the vegetables are growing. If you’re like me and you enjoy gardening, then you’ll appreciate the public relations process. You till the garden, sow the seeds, water it regularly, watch it grow, and prepare for harvest. It sounds like an unusual analogy, but when you think about it, it does make sense.
Tilling the garden
This is really the planning and prep stage of a PR campaign. You map out your strategy and lay the groundwork for launch. This involves figuring out the messaging, generating media lists, drafting various pitch angles, setting timelines, gathering product images, and other items that set the campaign up for success.
Sowing the seeds
This is the start of the media outreach process. This is when the publicist carefully distributes tailored pitches to different editors and writers. The pitch message is the seed – “this is why this person/product/service/brand should be included in a piece with your publication.”
Watering it regularly
Much like a garden, if you plant the seeds but then don’t water it, then it might not grow. The PR process requires regular follow up with journalists and writers who have expressed interest in the initial pitch, drafting new pitches and angles to capture the attention of media outlets that didn’t respond to the initial pitch, and an overall general communication and check-in with editors who may be a good fit for the story we’re trying to sell them on
Watching it grow
Isn’t this the best part? I love seeing my hard work pay off. For public relations, the “blooms” come in the form of media placements, articles, and stories. Anyone who has grown vegetables knows that the results can vary: some are bigger than others and some are more perfectly shaped. Not every media placement is going to be a top-tier home run, but they will all create their own unique impact.
Harvest Time
Now that you’ve secured these beautiful media placements, you have to figure out what to do with them. If you leave your vegetables in the garden, they’ll eventually rot. If you leave your roses on the vine, they’ll never become prize winners. How you leverage your PR features matters. The harvesting stage of a public relations campaign is taking all of the placements secured during the course of the campaign and using them in other ways: bragging about them in social media copy, on your website, in sales collateral, and other ways.
My purpose of this analogy is to hopefully help visualize why PR takes time. You can’t plant a seed into the ground and expect to harvest a beautiful plant the next morning. It takes weeks and months of preparation and work.
Speaking of garden season, we work with some incredible brands with products that can be beneficial to gardeners. Check out these products to make your garden season really blossom.
Daisy Rain Garden Systems help you create wonderful container gardens with peace of mind. The patented Daisy Rain Garden Systems Sprinkler Pots allow you to water numerous plants with the turn of a hose. The Sprinkler Pots are easy to use, simply connect to any garden hose or irrigation system, and are reliable keeping your plants watered. Learn more about the Daisy Rain Garden Collection on https://daisyraingarden.com/.
Start a vertical garden in minutes! SkyPots’ pot hanger kits make it easy for plant lovers to enjoy beautiful hanging pot gardens without all the hassle and headache of DIY methods! Perfect for garden spaces of all sizes, including indoors and outdoors. A great starter kit to choose from on their site is the SkyPots Two Pack available at https://skypots.com/.
Think outside the railing with Plant Traps, a tool-free railing plant shelf that extends your outer balcony or deck ledge into a shelf suitable for planters. These no-fuss Plant Traps quickly and easily display container gardens on the exterior base of balconies and decks of homes, condos, townhomes, and apartments–anywhere that has a deck or a railing. https://www.planttraps.com.
Protect trees, saplings, seedlings and more with Plant Knight’s versatile and easy-to-use plant and tree guards.
The Plant Knight provides complete protection for your plants, while still allowing air, sunlight and water to get through. You can even attach multiple Plant Knights together for larger trees. Just place, stake and clip your Plant Knights for super-fast installation. Find more informationat www.plantknight.com.
GardInnovations Seed-In Soil Digger and Soil Spacer for Planting Seeds is an all-in-one tool that allows gardeners to simultaneously create seventeen evenly spaced holes in the soil for planting seeds and seedlings. You can use each hole for closely spaced crops (radishes, beets, carrots, etc), or space out every second or third hole for plants that require greater spacing (like broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, etc). More information: www.mygardinnovations.com/seedin.
Also, available from GardInnovations is the Pep-Up Pepper Support.Its patented design is perfect for peppers and other plants, including those that require support to climb. www.mygardinnovations.com.
Nothing can ruin a summer day quicker than mosquitoes. Keep those pesky creatures out of your summer outdoor plans with Mozzie Style. Their blankets and jackets are made of a fine mesh fabric that makes it nearly impossible for insects to fly or crawl through the tiny holes. Mozzie Style is insecticide free and offers protection from mosquitoes, ticks, black flies and more. The gear is made from materials that are easy to clean. They’re also lightweight and come in a travel pouch so you can throw them in your bag and take them on any adventure. Check it out at www.mozziestyle.com.
Spring and summer weather can be hot and sticky! Not with the sleek W-Fan blade-less neck fan! It is ergo-designed to wear during the warm/hot and humid seasons. Lightweight and quiet the fan will keep you cool while doing any outdoor activity. Become a fan of the W-FAN! Available at Spiceoflifeusa.com.
Lastly, don’t forget to protect your skin from the sun while gardening! Never a better time for SPOTMYUV, a wearable sticker featuring Dermatrue technology that alerts the wearer to re-apply sunscreen. See more at www.spotmyuv.com.