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As the summer heat fades, it's the perfect time to start fall planting prep for a beautiful spring awakening! 🌷 Fall Bulbs for Spring Blooms Now is the time to start planning those spring-flowering bulbs. In northern climates, you can start planting them from the end of September into November. For southern climates, wait until at least mid-November when it’s cooler.  Think tulips, daffodils, hyacinths... imagine those vibrant colors popping up as the snow melts! ❄️➡️🌸 Zones for North America: Most spring-flowering bulbs do well in zones 3-8. Be sure to check specific bulb requirements for your zone. Zones for Europe: Generally, zones 4-9 are suitable for most spring-flowering bulbs. Again, always confirm with the specific bulb. Potted Beauties: Don't forget about your pots and containers! Fall is a great time to plant cool-season annuals like pansies, violas, ornamental peppers, cabbage, and kale. Or, plant a large Mum and let it overflow! They'll add a touch of color throughout the fall and even into winter in milder climates, and best you can add little and big pumpkins, faux corn stalks, and gourds to create a colorful garden. Tips for Fall Planting Prep Success: ✅ Ensure well-draining soil 💧 ✅ Plant bulbs at the correct depth (usually 2-3 times the bulb's height - 6-9 inches deep). For a full display, plant 5-8 per space a few inches apart. ✅ Water thoroughly after planting ✅ Consider fertilizing with a bulb-specific fertilizer at planting time to give them a boost. ✅ Water bulbs occasionally during dry fall periods to help them establish roots. Let's get those gardens ready for a stunning spring show! Happy planting! 🧑‍🌾🌻 P.S. Stay tuned for next week when I post some fall garden decor ideas! Like, comment, share, and hit that 🛎 for when I post. Join my Gardening Tips & Tricks, Job Seeker, Support and Successes, and Social Media Scams & Support groups and my newsletter Musings & Mysteries, where I post chapters of my murder series, Bombs & Begonias: A Patrice Summers Mystery. (the first one, Asters & Arsenic, is available on Amazon.) I also write and post true crime. Check out my blog @   jewelswrites.com  to learn about me and my content. If you or someone you know is looking for a marketing account manager or onboarding/ communications manager, or even a partner marketing manager, please let me know.

In the 43rd installment and part three of flipping your grass into a beautiful water-wise garden, I discuss the perfect plants to grow. for either a personal garden lawn or community garden. Prepping Your Area But first, before planting your garden, design it. Do you want tall plants intermingled with smaller plants, all tall plants, all small ones, or a cascading effect of tall, smaller, and small? Install the water system. Even though you will grow drought-tolerant plants, you still need to establish them first, which takes regular watering. Drip systems work well for this because they allow you to meter the watering, thus ensuring the correct amount of water at the right time. Next, are you putting in rock, gravel, or dirt? Any substrate has advantages and disadvantages. Now, onto the good stuff. Here are tried and true plants to grow in your garden. The Right Plants for Flipping Your Grass 🌵 Cactus plants (of which there are many) take very little water and repel many pests due to their sharp stickers. 🏵 Yarrow is a great addition to any drought-resistance garden. Multiple bushy flowers are on each sturdy stem in beautiful colors, including red, purple, peach, yellow, and white, with different shades of those colors. 🌻 Sunflowers can make a rock garden shine and make a bold statement. Small and mammoth sunflowers can be used as a backdrop or centerpieces. 🌿 Aloe doesn't need much water, and it's medicinal. Have a sunburn or mosquito bite? Aloe vera helps to calm the itch and pain. 🌼 Rockrose has a perfume aroma and displays large, papery flowers. It is fast-growing, loves the sun, and doesn't need much water to thrive. 🏵 Brittlebrush is a bush teeming with yellow daises that need minimal watering and offer a bright addition to a water-wise garden. 🌸 Crape Myrtle puts on quite a show in summer with gorgeous, showy blossoms that linger into fall. The beautiful, dark bark contrasts with bright pinks, purples, reds, and snow-white flowers. 🌼 Bougainvillea provides an instant tropical feel to your garden. It features vibrant, often vining blooms that peak in summer and bloom from early spring to late fall in milder climates. 🏵 Marigolds, with their strong, aromatic scent and mustard blooms, do quite well in a water-wise garden. The bonus is that they keep away nasty pests, so your plants stay healthy without being food to unwanted insects. This is a small sample of plants that do well in deserts or without much water. Do you have a water-wise garden? Post your pics below! Happy Gardening!! Hi, I'm Julia Nielsen, your guru gardener of 30 years. I have grown over 500 species of plants and add to my collection yearly. I'm on LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/julianielsen  so please check out my posts - like, comment, share, and hit the 🔔  for notifications. Enjoy gardening & murder mysteries; consider joining my newsletter, Musings & Mysteries. Visit my website, Jewels Writes and IG @hotmamagard

In Part One, I went into steps to kill grass in preparation for removing it for a garden.  In Part Two of the 42nd installment of Gardening Tips & Tricks, I will offer steps to cutting or digging out lawns to make way for a rock garden. Flipping Your Lawn: Step One There are several ways to remove grass: tilling, cutting, or digging.  Tilling - Sharp blades break up the soil, including roots, using a high-powered rotating motion. Depending on the time needed, you can rent a tiller to cut up the grass, making it faster and easier on your back. Cutting - A sod cutter is the next best thing if you don't have a tiller. Once you have cut the grass, you can shovel it out. Digging - If you have a small area to be removed, simply get a sharp shovel and dig out the grass. Note that it will take longer but save money. Early fall is the best time to remove a lawn, as it needs to be dry, or late Spring.  Use a sod cutter and a sliding device, such as a sled, thick plastic sheet, garbage can lid, or a contractor's bag, to save money and ensure a smooth, faster, and easier process. If you have a folding garden cart, this is the best, as it lays flat on the ground, allowing you to tip the layers of grass onto it - the cart then transforms into a wheelbarrow for easy disposal.  When you cut up a lawn, you will be removing the soil underneath as well, which makes it easier to dispose of the grass. To use for the garden, shake out the grass on the tarp to catch the dirt, and you can reuse it. This will be about 3-6 inches. TIP: If you have a Home Owner's Association, you may need permission to remove your lawn and flip it into a garden. Also, contact your city so they can mark utility lines with spray paint. Here is the step-by-step guide to removing the grass. 🏡 Slice the grass into vertical sections. When using a sod cutter, slice small sections of grass to make removing it easier. If you plan to transplant the grass to another area, cut slices of about 18 X 18 sections, as they transplant best. 🏡 Tilt the grass on its side. After you have cut the sections, place the blade in the cut. Tilt the tool away from you to give you more leverage to force the sod up.  TIP: Use a trowel as a knife to scrape off excess soil at the bottom of the sod. 🏡 Tip the grass onto the carrying device . When using a sled, tilt the device to the side to match the angle of the grass layer. TIP: To avoid breaking up the grass and reduce mess, slowly tilt down the device flat again. Slide the grass onto the platform.  That's it. Part three will discuss the best rock or dirt garden plants. Happy Gardening!! Hi, I'm Julia Nielsen, your guru gardener of 30 years. I have grown over 500 species of plants and add to my collection yearly. I'm on LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/julianielsen so please check out my posts - like, comment, share, and hit the 🔔 for notifications. Enjoy gardening & murder mysteries, consider joining my newsletter, Musings & Mysteries. Visit my website, Jewels Writes and IG @hotmamagardener

Welcome to my blog. If you are a recruiter or hiring manager directed here from one of my job applications, please stay and read further. I've been posting for about 12 years—chapters of novels, true crime stories, and gardening tips. Please check out my resume, about me, and samples of my writing. I'm looking for a marketing account manager or partner marketing manager, hybrid (Lehi, UT and surroundidng cities) or remote. I'm available anytime for an interview and can start a new position immediately. My skills include strategic marketing for SaaS, franchise, home services, and healthcare industries, which includes email, SMS, social media, and Google Ads. My hard skills include Microsoft Office, Google Suite, Apple products, SEMrush, WordPress, Zoho, Asana, and GoHighLevel. I am also certified in Hubspot, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and Google Adwords. My soft skills include organization, leadership, excellent communication, quick study, mentoring, and emotional intelligence. If you need a marketing expert, I'd love to chat! Please email me @ julia@jewelswrites.com Best, Julia Nielsen

Got a small garden but big dreams of floral abundance? Don't despair! Plenty of stunning annuals thrive in narrow spaces, adding pops of color and interest without overwhelming the area. Here are some of my favorite picks, all chosen for their compact growth habits and adaptability: Suncredible Saturn Sunflower: 🌻 This dwarf sunflower variety won't steal the show with towering height, but it will charm you with its abundant, 4-inch blooms. Expect it to reach about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide. It prefers full sun 🌞 and moderate watering 💧. Paint the Town Magenta Pinks Dianthus: 🌸 These vibrant dianthus boast eye-catching magenta blooms with blue foliage, making them a colorful addition to any narrow garden bed. They reach a height of 6-8 inches and spread about 1 foot wide. They prefer full sun 🌞 and well-draining soil but are drought-tolerant once established 💧. Profusion Zinnias: 🌼 These low-maintenance zinnias offer a profusion of colorful blooms in various shades. They typically reach 1-2 feet tall and 1 foot wide. They love full sun 🌞 and regular watering 💧. Sweet Alyssum: 🌸 This charming groundcover produces delicate, fragrant flowers in white, pink, and purple shades. It reaches only 4-6 inches tall and spreads about 1 foot wide. It prefers full sun 🌞 to partial shade and moderate watering. 💧 Remember, choosing the right plants is only half the battle. Consider vertical gardening with trellises or hanging baskets to maximize your space and create a truly lush and inviting garden oasis. 🪴 What are your favorite annuals for small spaces? Share your tips and experiences in the comments below! 👇 *******************************************************************

In the last fifteen years or so, digital content marketing has risen up in the ranks of marketing and promoting a company and its product or service, via the blog. What started out as Mommy bloggers posting their latest tips on juggling three young children and their Etsy business, or their love of food or DIY projects, has now become one of the top tools for marketing a business. The Importance of Blogging Now I see blogs for nearly every company’s website I visit, and for good reason. Content marketing pulls in traffic, and gets readers engaged in a product or service that then allows them to gain knowledge, resulting in an informed decision on what to purchase or continue learning more about for expertise on a given topic. Done right, digital content marketing can increase a website’s traffic substantially - if you have the right SEO keywords, placed in the right area, coupled with a dynamite meta description. Long gone are the days of simply stuffing as many keywords into a blog or article, so Google or other search engines will pick those up and rank them. It’s now a matter of the K.I.S.S. Principal. After all, who wants to read a blog that has so many redundant words that make reading it confusing and turns them off from continuing further? Not your customers. When using digital content marketing, here are some simple rules to live, er, write by: Keep it short and sweet, unless it’s technical writing and your clients or customers are already experts in the area. A blog post of about 250-300 words can be all you need for a product description or information on a topic that is then sourced accordingly. Ensure you have not just credible sources, but ones that are easy for readers to peruse, not just a wall of text that may attract a scientist or philosopher, but make your customers run the other way. Use anecdotes to appeal to your target audience. A short anecdote or story at the beginning of an article can pull in a reader, helping them feel relatable to the topic at hand.  Get to the meat of the topic fairly quickly, ensuring to post benefits or advantages of your product or service over the competition. Why are you different? What makes you unique and better than the other guys? Keep visitors engaged by including infographics, short videos, images, memes, whatever gets the reader to stay on your site. Always, always invite a call-to-action at the end of the article with contact information. This is your invitation for readers to check out your business, a kind of opening the door to your home and allowing a visitor in, type of feel; doing this allows them to see what’s behind closed doors and if they want a part of it. Last, but certainly not least, a promotion, special, coupon, or sale campaign can further increase traffic and customers - especially if you’re a new business that needs customers and clients. Write what people are looking for, in their language, and in a relational tone. Online digital marketing is, after all, the top way to build your customer base and clientele; and the more you utilize its power, the bigger your presence gets, and the higher your ROI becomes.  Contact Me So, now you know the simple rules of digital content marketing, ensure you hire the right person who knows content marketing best practices and can lead a dynamic team to implement these...and I know just the person....😏

When you think of a digital marketing strategy, I'm sure gardening doesn't pop into your head. But, maybe it should. I have been an avid marketer for 30 years, about the same as being a gardener. I've wondered why I love these two things so much and I think I've hit on something. It came to me when I was interviewing for a job. If you're a marketer, learn why cultivating these two gardens breeds success in both your professional and personal life. Your Digital Marketing Strategy Garden When starting your marketing garden, there are key details you need to be aware of to ensure a successful and thriving growth environment. What story do you want to tell? Who, what, where, when, and why (the 5 elements of journalism) also make a big difference in marketing. Who are you marketing to, what are you marketing, where (geography), when (holidays, special events, daily, etc.), and why are you marketing this service, product, etc. Granted, you want your company to succeed and make money, but think about WHY.  Layout & Design - Just like a garden, you have to know the layout of the space and how you want to design it; the same goes for digital marketing. Are you laying out a website, social media account, email campaign, book, blog, etc? And next, how will you design it? What images and content will you put in it? Will there be weekly blogs and service pages with full descriptions and links? How about your front page, landing pages, contact us, or bios pages? This is a vital key to getting your company out there and being marked as an authoritative source. What keywords are you using? You might ask what this has to do with gardening but think about it. With gardening, the "keyword" is the actual plants you put into the garden, just like keywords are used for marketing. You can put in a ton of keywords to see how well they rank on search engines, or, you can pick specific ones that match your gardening space, layout, and design (products, services, company theme, etc.) Using keywords in the proper place allows visitors to see your marketing garden first and foremost. When it's colorful, spaced just right, and looks inviting, people will want to regularly visit your garden. Fourth and the most important of all is your ROI and that comes down to cultivating all three above, so your garden breeds success and increases your bottom line. In gardening, cultivating the plants means fertilizing, weeding, watering, and trimming when needed. You need to do the same with your company to potential clients or customers.  Appealing to an audience's interests is key in effective communication across marketing, education, or personal interactions. Understanding what captures their attention is essential for meaningful engagement. This requires researching their preferences, passions, and motivations through demographic analysis, surveys, or direct conversations. Once you understand their interests, tailor your message to align with these elements using relevant anecdotes, statistics, or examples. Employ language and imagery that evoke emotions tied to their interests to strengthen the connection and enhance receptivity. Maintaining dialogue and showing genuine enthusiasm for their interests fosters a deeper connection. By valuing their preferences and engaging on topics important to them, you build trust and encourage meaningful interactions. In summary, appealing to interests involves a strategic approach to understanding and connecting with your audience, inspiring engagement and fostering positive relationships. In order to effectively nurture them , it is essential to create an environment that fosters growth, understanding, and support. This involves actively listening to their needs, providing guidance, and encouraging their aspirations. By offering emotional and practical assistance, we can help them develop the skills and confidence necessary to navigate through life's challenges. Solve their dilemma. Addressing their dilemmas requires a careful and thoughtful approach. It is important to identify the core issues they are facing and explore potential solutions together. Engaging in open dialogue, brainstorming options, and weighing the pros and cons can empower them to make informed decisions. Ultimately, our goal should be to equip them with the tools to resolve their conflicts and emerge stronger and more resilient. Keep them coming back. To ensure that customers remain engaged and consistently return for more, it is essential to implement strategies that foster loyalty and satisfaction. This can be achieved through a variety of methods, including offering exceptional customer service, creating a welcoming environment, and providing high-quality products or services that meet their needs and expectations. Additionally, personalized communication, such as tailored recommendations and follow-up messages, can make customers feel valued and understood. Engaging them through loyalty programs, exclusive offers, or special events can also incentivize repeat visits. By continuously enhancing the customer experience and building strong relationships, businesses can create a sense of community and belonging that encourages customers to keep coming back time and time again. Seeds of Marketing Gardening Sucess Once the garden has been planned, created, implemented, cultivated, and nurtured, the reward is a beautiful space that can grow and include many diverse plants of different colors, shapes, textures, and interests - the same as digital marketing. When a plan has been brainstormed, created, carried out, and tracked, you can see the rewards of success. You can see what went wrong and what went right, and learn and grow from the experience. Better, you can change out when needed and create more space to add more exotic and beautiful plants (or products/services) and weed out the competition for long-term marketing success.

LinkedIn, a dynamic platform with over 850 million members, stands as the epicenter for professionals seeking daily inspiration, industry trends, and career advancement opportunities. Did you know that a staggering 40% of users visit LinkedIn daily to stay ahead in their careers and share impactful content? Harnessing the potential of LinkedIn for AI-driven marketing discussions not only broadens your reach but also brings forth a myriad of benefits. ✨  Engagement Amplification with Bullet Points:  Elevate your content by making it reader-friendly. Implementing bullet points not only enhances readability but also ensures that your insights are easily absorbed by your audience. Increased engagement is just a bullet away! 📈  Visual Storytelling for Maximum Impact:  Visuals speak louder than words! For small to medium enterprises with up to 50,000 followers, incorporating images into your posts can significantly boost engagement per impression. Paint a compelling visual narrative that captivates your audience. 🤖  AI Post Generators: Crafting with Efficiency:  Overcoming writer's block? AI tools like Jasper, Taplio, or Anyword are your creative companions. Beyond inspiration, these tools help structure your ideas, optimize content for SEO, and elevate your engagement levels. Let AI streamline your content creation process, saving you time and effort. 💡  Benefits of AI-Assisted Content Creation on LinkedIn: Enhanced Productivity:  AI post generators hasten each step of the writing process, allowing you to focus on strategic aspects of your content. Improved Engagement:  AI tools refine and rephrase your writing, ensuring it resonates with your audience and boosts overall engagement. Performance Metrics:  Gain insights into your content's performance. Understand what works and refine your strategy for optimal results. 🔍  Social Listening for Real-Time Insights:  Tailor your content to current trends using social listening tools. LinkedIn's competitor analytics feature provides additional insights, guiding you toward topics that align with your audience's interests. In conclusion, leveraging AI on LinkedIn is not just a strategy; it's a journey toward unparalleled marketing success. Enhance your engagement, streamline your content creation, and stay at the forefront of your industry with the seamless integration of AI in your LinkedIn marketing endeavors. Let's continue this transformative AI conversation on LinkedIn! 🚀🔗