How Agritecture built a stable content engine

What happened? Agritecture, a platform run by a group of urban agriculture consultants, has proven to be an influential voice in the urban farming niche. Through a self-developed content strategy, Agritecture has grown from a blog to a multi-faceted company. Why it matters The end goal of every blogger is to transform their blog into an authoritative platform, regardless of the niche; however, this can only be attained if the blogger succeeds in building an active community. The most effective way to build an active community is to create a feasible content strategy. Gordon Smith, founder of Agritecture, highlights all you need to build a self-driving content strategy in an interview with WARC. Digging deeper To the Agritecture team, reaching out to their audience is not enough to build a community; getting constant feedback completes the puzzle. Unlike most bloggers, the team goes through the blog comments, feedbacks and opinions. Then, redefines their future content based on the audience predilections. According to Gordon, ‘The key thing I learned about social media is that it's not about getting your message out there. That's only half the story…Social media is about getting feedback. It's about finding out what people are interested in. Which posts do well? What follow-up questions do people have?’ Such a self-driving content strategy ensures that the community gets what it needs and that’s key to blog growth. Blog readers develop more interest in a blog when they are given a sort of control on what gets posted on a regular basis. Giving the audience control over what they read doesn’t reduce the quality of the stories published or alter the message disseminated from time to time. Do not mistake blog personalization for populism. The former increases blog engagement via feedback research while the latter alters information to suit a particular audience. In addition to creating personalized content based on feedback, Agritecture publishes content in various languages, extending their fanbase to non-English speaking countries. They’ve refined their content strategy over time but kept their founding values, which are consistency and honesty. Gordon ascribed Agritecture’s success to content personalization, consistency and honesty; however, ‘the flip side of the same coin is that urban farming is now a hot topic, meaning that a movement that Agritecture led has gained significant traction.’ (WARC 2019) Bottom line Instead of posting five times a week and going offline for four weeks, why not publish a story per week. Try to substitute sugar coated contents with authentic stories. Also, let your audience feedback guide your way into the nirvana of all bloggers. Stay plugged!