Never trust an ‘Influencer”

The primary reason for having a vegetable garden is to produce food, to be truthful it’s the only reason to grow your own fruit and vegetables.

There is certainly an element of online gardeners desperately trying to build their followers for ego stroking or financial gain that have a garden, or fake a garden, for show rather than the resultant produce. 

 

In my previous profession as a marketeer I learned that social media was a channel to market which marketeers had within the range of all possibilities, TV, Radio, Direct Mail, Billboards, newspapers …….ect. Like all channels to market Social Media has it’s benefits but also many pitfalls for inexperienced players. A marketeer must look at each channel and understand who is the audience that can be reached and is that the audience that ultimately that can be converted to purchase your product and/or service. When looking at a magazine advertisement, as a marketeer the magazine will give us the number of ‘paid’ subscribers they have, the demographics of those readers, how long they spend reading the magazine and lots more interesting information.

 

How many so called ‘influencers’ are just, tits and ass? Or just a cleavage bent over a cabbage they purchased at the local farmer’s market? 

 

When following Social Media Gardener’s here are some handy tips

 

·      Read their profile, see where their property is located, what temperature zone they are located in. Look at previous posts, the dated of the post and the produce featured and see if it matches that climate zone. It cracks me up seeing out of season produce you just know must have come from a gas chamber out the back of a supermarket. 

 

·      Look carefully at the background of each photo or video. In a ‘Influencer’s’ attempt to captivate their audience they most often forget their post gives us a view into the rest of their lives. Makes me laugh to see goats and chickens wandering in an overgrown vegetable garden, people talking about compost and their garden beds have none, cobblers pegs and other noxious weeds visible and big trees like a mulberry growing over a vegetable garden creating food and no doubt, flying fox droppings, over what is supposed to be a lush tropical vegetable garden. 

 

·      Open their account, see who follows them, see who likes their posts, see who their friends are. No offence intended, but you can bet your bottom dollar, a good cleavage and short tattered shorts will have predominately men who don’t even garden as their followers.  

 

 If their hands are not dirty, if they are wearing makeup, if their shirt is off, if they are always smiling, if their produce is out of season, if there are no insect holes in the leaves, if their face is not suntanned, if there is never a post/story/tweet with a disaster in it – they are NOT a gardener.