I remember – only too well – the reaction when I launched my blog six years ago. I was a bit bored, fancied a challenge and on a whim decided I’d try writing a blog. I spent long hours reading other gardening blogs; learning how to use Blogger (my first blogging platform); picking a look; a style; a name; taking photos; and eventually, nervously published my first post. And the reaction? Icy silence. Which was fair enough – it wasn’t very good. But what if that first post had been achingly brilliant? All that hard work and no-one even saw it, let alone read it.
I now know, of course, how tough it is to be noticed on the world-wide, inter-web net even if your first post is a revelatory marvel (unlike mine). And the number of gardening blogs has ballooned since I started on 4th February 2011, making it more difficult still: a burgeoning clamour of voices; each striving to be heard above the din; each offering up their unique writing style, muddy-fingered insight and all craving your attention. Unsurprising then, that when a newbie adds their revelatory marvellousness to the cacophony … no-one notices.
Whilst weeding in my new garden the other day, I had an idea. Would it be helpful to highlight new gardening blogs here on The Anxious Gardener? My readership isn’t as big as some, but I imagine any extra visitors would be a boost to authors gloomily studying their viewing stats during those early, lonely, pin-drop days.
As far as I know there is no list of new blogs, no directory of fresh talent and I need help snuffling them out – which is where you come in. Have you started a gardening blog in the last twelve months or so? Or have you discovered a great new blog? If so and you think it warrants a plug, please leave a comment and blog-link in the ‘Any thoughts‘ box below or, if you prefer, drop me a line using my Contact page.
This idea might just die a quiet, lonesome death but let’s give it a roll anyway. (Queue drifts of leaves swirling silently across an empty car park, beneath a sheet-steel sky – Ed).
I hope my idea isn’t patronising. I just thought that free publicity for an author who has recently taken the plunge and deserves to be heard by a wider audience would benefit both them and readers too.
Over to you, and in the meantime I’ll do some snuffling of my own.
