Yes, You Should Have A Landscape Design Blog
Most designers will find blogging more effective than social media
Even if you think you can’t write, there is good reason to try your hand at blogging. I know from experience that, while it may be time consuming, blogging is usually going to be worth the effort. (More on that “usually” later.) Why?
Blog posts (call them articles or resources if you prefer) show off your expertise as a designer. They establish you as an expert, and a helpful one at that. You can meet with a potential client for the first time and, because of your blog and portfolio, they already trust you.
Blog posts help you attract the kind of clients and projects that fit you best. If you love to design small spaces, and write about designing small spaces, many of the people who contact you will have…. small spaces.
Blog posts give Google what it wants- fresh content from an authoritative source. You will get more search engine visibility, more clicks, and eventually more clients. “Eventually” because many people will initially find your articles early in their journey. They may still be trying to DIY their landscape. But when the time comes to hand it over to an expert, they will already know who to call.
Blog posts attract links. My landscape design website has over 1K links, and most of them I didn’t “create”, I simply earned them with a valuable resource. Links lead to better rankings, which lead to… you know the rest.
These are just the benefits that pretty directly lead to new clients and more revenue. I have found that blogging has also made me a better designer. Through writing posts I have figured out exactly how I feel about native plants, what a low maintenance garden really is, how to design modern gardens that aren’t boring and derivative. For me, blogging would be worth it even if it didn’t bring me a ton of clients.
So yeah, blogging is usually worth it. But maybe it isn’t for you? If you are really good at social media and have a client base that skews younger, it might not pay off. Or perhaps you have a network of contractors, realtors, and others who keep you as busy as you can handle. In that case, as long as you are comfortable that you can maintain that network, just keep doing what you are doing.
And if you are thinking that maybe you will use ChatGPT to write your posts, don’t bother. No one wants to hire a designer who sounds like that.
Can you outsource a blog? Yes, but it won’t be cheap ($500+, per post, to do it well) and it won’t be your voice- so some of the benefits may not accrue.
Thinking you might start a landscape design blog? Wondering what to write about? My next post will have a ton of suggestions, based on what has worked for me.