Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
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It is comething that I am certainly looking more into. Just think a few years back who would of thought that we would be getting Email requests from clients for work etc. Surely this is the next step forward after a web site?
I believe that the social networks would be a brilliant opportunity to provide additional content be it in words, pictures and video etc. to help support and develop an understanding of our services for our target markets.
I think half the battle would be to develop a clear overview strategy such as determing the particular target audience and understanding where and how these are currently interacting. Backed with a clear content so that it would hopefully always engage them!
You can find me on Linked In. I thought about Twitter and wrote down one sentence every few minutes for about an hour once - I discovered I'd be a very boring Twit.
Rgds,
Cat
If you all search on your names - Donny Bryan, BGS Landscapes, TVG Landscaping you will find that you all come close to the top of search results in Google.
The secret is to harness this 'juice' for your own ends and write location-wise and content rich posts with correct titles to draw in potential clients in your area. The site optimisation is being taken care of so that each member can concentrate on reaching their geographical goals and reach out to clients in their product niche.
Stuart Marler is probably the most web-aware when it comes to promoting his business name. Search for a landscaper or landscaping in Worthing and TVG comes high in results.
Stuart has also registered his business on Google Maps - you can also consider using a Google Map to demonstrate your geography in your news and press items. Why not add a marker to your map after every job you complete so that potential clients get a feel for the areas that you cover.
What I would suggest now is (and I know I don't live in the real world and have the time ;-0)) you sit down for ten or twenty minutes and write a concise blog post about an area of work you specialise in.
For example, Graeme would like to install more artificial lawns in the Berkshire area so I would be looking at a good title - Artificial lawn installations around Berkshire - it's a good title start but there is nothing to say that a second post, with a separate title cannot be written at a later date - The pro's and con's of installing a synthetic lawn (for example) and write the body of the blog post to call upon geographical areas, product descriptions and materials within your writing and it will be featured in search results.
It has been mentioned before by Stuart that he cannot afford the time to sit down and write blog posts. I would disagree with this and consider that any time spent is expended as a marketing cost. On a day that may be wet (especially in the winter) it is worth writing about your specialism.
Make use of the guest blogging feature of the main Landscape Juice Blog and send me a topical (not advertorial) post about a job you have just done, the challenges you had to overcome and the materials or soil profile you had to deal with.
There is never ever a one solution that will take you straight to number one spot but Landscape Juice is very strong and you should all be making use of it.
Please feel free to PM me or continue the discussion here - I am here to help you and LJN is about you - not me.
All the best
Phil
Nothing wrong with the odd American.... the more odd the better, I think! I agree, though, that LinkedIn has a preponderence of Americans, but I think this is because the phenomenon of social networking seemed to take off over there quicker than over here.... over the past few years, though, the UK membership has grown and is continuing to grow.
I pop in from time to time and adjust photos and tweak titles and move things about a bit but Andy does all the writing.
Search results are strong for small gardens and front gardens. Something like this would suit you all I am sure.
If you don’t find the right type of person on SMN forget it and concentrate on your website. Blogs are OK but your ROI via your website will/can massively out weight a blog. If your funding is limited then getting a website to rank in competitive fields for “money terms” is also a waste of space. So take a different approach and long for the “long tail” phrases to rank for.
Lastly beware of taking the sheep approach just because everyone else is, there are a few wolves out there and they love sheep.
It was very well used by our members who loved it. See their comments here http://www.shootgardening.co.uk/sitePage.php?pageid=71&name=cus...
You can set up a profile page in Shoot, like Jason Lock's here: http://www.shootgardening.co.uk/siteMemberProfile.php?profileid=125 which links to his business profile http://www.shootgardening.co.uk/siteProvider.php?providerid=125 and his forum pages.
We are always getting people's questions about gardening, and each forum post you reply to will link to your listing. A basic business listing is £30 (http://www.shootgardening.co.uk/serviceRegister.php?business=true) and we will be doing a special offer with the APL in August if you are a member of that organisation too.
Hope this gives you some more ideas of using a more gardening targetted media.
All the best, Nicola
p.s. you can then also generate extra revenue from clients as explained in my first post about the care maintenance schedules in Shoot.
Cat Fereday said:
Donny Bryan said:
I'm still experimenting with Twitter. I seem to have followers from UK, USA and other countries. Putting a local place name into tweets seems to generate more local followers and ultimately I expect it will pay dividends as I have already met some interesting landscapers. Luckily for me if I decide to blog it will probably be Mrs B who will do it for me!
niall gibb said:
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