Three lessons that turn patient gardeners into great content strategists

It’s Chelsea Flower Show week here in the UK … and a sunny one, at that! It’s the time when the whole country turns to thoughts of horticulture. For me, each year, it also has me thinking about the lessons that a lifetime of gardening has taught me about the broader world. Time has shown me that gardening and the business world aren’t that different. Both are filled with endless challenge, the possibilities of rich reward and total disaster, and a very long list of pests. Both reward patience, research, and perseverance.

When it comes to talking corporate content strategy, particularly in the B2B space, I offer you three horticulturally-inspired lessons.

ONE: PLANT THE THINGS SUITED TO THRIVE IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT

If you’re starting a new garden from scratch, the advice is always to wait for a year. Watch the way the sun falls on the ground through the seasons. Test the soil. See what’s coming up naturally. Few gardeners can resist the temptation, however, of sticking plants in right away. And most have wasted their money on beautiful specimens that looked great initially, but wasted away because they were in the wrong place.

When it comes to content strategy, I don’t expect anyone to wait a year in observation before you get started, but a thorough understanding of the market into which you are “planting” your material is essential. Who’s your audience and what do they need? That’s the equivalent of sunlight and soil considerations. Plant the wrong content in the wrong place, and your work will wither on the vine. What’s the competition doing? Those are the weeds that can crowd out your offering so nobody even notices it. You’re looking for something that will not only flourish in its environment, but will stand out from everything around it. In gardening, the showiest thing in a flower bed is called the anchor plant. That’s what you want your content to be.

TWO: PRUNE JUDICIOUSLY

Many plants … specifically vines and fruit trees … thrive on pruning. For some, doing it the right way is actually essential to getting blooms out of them. The people who prune vineyards are respected experts who train for years to know what to cut and what to leave to encourage the best fruit that makes the best wine.

One of the greatest skills in content is knowing what to take away.

In an exceptionally crowded marketplace, the game isn’t about quantity, but quality. You’ll make a bigger impact by putting more of your effort into a few things. The key to great content strategy is determining what those things are, and then being brutal about keeping other things out. That pruning then extends to the great art of editing. Turn that flabby video into three minutes that sparkle. Cut the waffle out of that white paper so it reads like a news report. Work with your executives to get to the point quickly. Let the audience ask for more rather than boring them with everything at once. Your internal stakeholders may not be happy about the trim, but your audience will thank you. And they, after all, are the ones who make up the bottom line.

THREE: BE OPEN TO INTERESTING COMBINATIONS

You’d think that after 111 years the Chelsea Flower Show would have shown gardeners everything there is to see and know. Yet every year there are new plant introductions, new combinations and new planting styles. It’s the NEW that always grabs the headlines, of course.

It’s the same with content strategy. Your building blocks of content are consistent: executive commentary, research, white papers, videos, etc. Chelsea designers start at their drawing board every year with the same families of plants, types of water features, lighting, design principles, etc. It’s the way they put things together that shifts the game. You can do the same by asking surprising questions, taking unusual angles and bringing in unexpected sources. When it comes to the tactics of production, think about how you can inject the new to reinvent the old. Who would have thought, for example, that TikTok videos ever would have had a relevance for the corporate world? And yet the Holy Grail of B2B video is now fun, short, snackable content. Don’t be afraid to try new things and be inspired by unrelated areas. Your garden may even do the inspiring.