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Gardening and Social Media

I didn’t start gardening until I moved to Austin.

That’s me I waited until I left the rich black dirt and found the wet brown clay and hot dry sun to figure out growing things could be soul building. By the time I got to Massachusetts I was a regular flower farmer. I spent a hours, days, seasons living in a dormant three-acre spread. In the fifth year I was rewarded to a winding, spectacular show of color.

What Are You Doing to Keep Your Garden Growing?

As a beginning gardener, I learned that just plopping pretty plants into the ground got pretty darn expensive — not to mention time-intensive — It didn’t make lasting beauty. The scratches and the itching sometimes lasted longer. Plants that don’t have the right nutrients or climate are hard to keep thriving.

Soon I was learning what made solid ground for things to grow. Gardening takes strategy and strategy is knowing what you know and knowing what you can and can’t control.

Gardening and social media have a lot in common.
What are you doing to keep your community growing?

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Change your thinking with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn listening.

Enter the Chief Executive Social Gardener

Recently a friend asked me how we might get big brands to think more like entrepreneurs. I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe we should get the C-suite executives to start a gardening community.

Gardeners follow time-tested strategies and tactics. Gardeners

have a goal — whether it’s a garden or community we’re building, we know what we’re setting as the mission.
know their field — we need to understand the qualities of the playing ground, the terrain, and the creatures who live there.
understand the systems and cycles, rhythms and patterns — we see our own habits, the natural paths of outside factors, the effects of climate, the weather, and unexpected events
consider the units (plants or people) that match those circumstances, how they work and compete, and which of those we can manage most easily
determine what we know, what we want to know, and watch out for what we need to learn

Gardeners talk to each other about what works and what doesn’t. What you know about anything is what applies to making plants happy and thriving. If you’re good at that, you’re gold.

Gardeners also:

watch and listen. We are constantly testing the information we think we know. We talk. We listen. We read everything. Not a gardener with any experience thinks that he or she can outwit the variables that nature can bring together.
remove weeds, trolls, and competitive threats, while finding opportunities. When gardens fail, great gardeners look for learning and new solutions, when they thrive we look for the same things.
amend what’s failing and care for what works — so that threats can’t take hold. Gardeners know that little problems grow, in the same way as beautiful fields do.
know that life cycles peak and know what works to extend them. We’ve been watching our gardens. We get to know when they need boosting and when they don’t.
realize what we don’t control and we’re careful about when and how changes and new ideas are introduced.

Every enterprise should have a Chief Executive Gardener to be a true partner in getting the Chief Bean Counter more beans to count.

Could you be a Chief Executive Social Gardener?
What seeds are you planting now?

More about social media gardening tomorrow …

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Grow your community with Liz!!