how do I get the hugelkultur article into the brains of 50 million people

Leo Horthy wrote:Hi Paul,

I agree with others here that the article itself needs work. At the moment your article comes up #1 when I search on hugelkultur on Google. However, unless I knew what hugelkultur was there is no way I would search for it. You need need to come up with some other frequently searched for terms in the space that and drop those into the title (both h1 tag and page).

I'm about two months ahead of you on this one. Take a look at the page.

Also, you need to emphasize how important you think this article is, convince your readers of this and ask them to share it with everyone they know. Do this early on in the article so that if they only read part of the article they get the message.

I kinda do a little of that at the bottom.

Can you give me an example of wording and where to put it?

paul wheaton wrote:Hugelkultur and the HOA:

1) well, for every home blocked by and HOA, there are probably a dozen that are not. I think the focus should be to those that don't block.

2) I've made podcasts on this topic. Basically, you can dig down and bury wood. Further, there is the "sneaky hugelkultur" where you start small and add a little every year.

According to this (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_single_family_homes_are_there_in_the_United_States), there were 91 million single detached and mobile homes. This site (http://www.hoamanagement.com/blog/numbers-community-association-management-statistics-0) says 25 million of them are under HOA. That equates to about 1 in 4. But yes, you could reach more with reaching the non-HOA people.

A lot of good ideas...

Paul you have been doing a tremendous job of educating us, who are willing to listen and know you are right, in the details.
You bring us the best information from the best experts you can!
Nature is our best teacher...
Polyculture needs to replace Monoculture before we destroy all of the prime and non-prime agricultural land and pollute the earth with GM seeds...
That is a huge paradigm shift...
It is especially hard to get done when Monsanto, DuPont, Cargill, ADM, and a very few others... bring us the nightly news, control our regulatory agencies, buy our politicians, fund resource grants, build buildings at our Land Grant State Universities, taint the science coming from our universities, ...

I think the key is to get more to implement the practices.
We need "concrete profitable success stories" - more profit less investment - more food per acre.
To be "mainstream" and "believable", these need to come from family operations, not communal, alternative life style situations.
In the Midwest, (where I come from) we need several "family farm" success stories using high level Holtzer polyculture / permaculture practices.
Articles will then be written, media coverage, and critical mass will shift the paradigm in people's minds...

Me and my wife are trying change the paradigm and make the shift on our 145 acre farm/ timber ground, along the Mississippi River bluffs, so our future generation can benefit...

Richard Buckminster Fuller quote that a lot of us like:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Richard Buckminster Fuller - I have learned much from Bucky - see below link
http://hines.blogspot.com/2011/12/buckminster-fuller-everything-i-know.html

==========

Things are changing, just not fast as we like.

See Jason's predictions:
http://hines.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-years-resolutions-rechar.html

I happen to agree with Jason's excellent predictions...

Looking forward to individuals becoming radically self-reliant rather than dangerously dependent...

Just sharing my thoughts on our mutual goals...
Regards to all,
Monte Hines
Hines Farm Blog

meetup: I've heard of it, but never really used it. My current daily-ish email goes to about 3100 people. Maybe the thing to do is to start a new thread here in the tinkering forum and see if meetup people can talk to meetup people and stuff can happen ??

there are thousands of groups. You can't do it alone, but if each of your readers post to a few, this would be a huge impact. People in the group are already interested in the topic.

Victory gardens .... tried to google and got unlikely matches. Link?

here is one to PBS - that would be even cooler, get them to do a show. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/victorygarden/grow/index.html
http://www.victorygardenssandiego.com/
this is the San diego site. I posted to their far book and send it on to the people I know there.

MG website: I can't get listed on my local master gardener website. Perhaps you have some suggestions? Maybe there are other resources that would be more open to me?

sorry, no idea. I thought you are a Master Gardener. Their FB site is set that only they can post...

community colleges: Would this be something that I would do one community college at a time, or is there a network of sorts?

I'll check with the teachers I know.

get the instructors interested: is there an easy way to reach them in one big gob? A newsletter perhaps? A mailing list?

Don't know, but again, you have an army of many already on your site. ask all forum readers to reach out to those organizations.....

Oh, and an idea for another title: what to do with your christmas tree that will not fit in your trash/recycle container.

Andy Commons wrote:
a. write a short ebook, with nice illustrations, etc... title it something like "Low water gardening" and post it on amazon for $0.99.
Then promote the $*!& of out it.

Isn't that pretty much what I am doing now with something that is free?

b. create a 1/2 serious video, with lots of fun graphics and if possible rhyming phrases. Then get these guys to auto-tune it. Be sure to have an easy to remember link (like just richsoil.com) in the video too.
http://www.youtube.com/user/schmoyoho
(be sure to check out the Nascar Prayer with 3.8 million views.)

That was .... different.

Millions of views is what we are looking for. And I do know a little about making youtube videos. But I'm not sure I have it in me to make anything close to that.

C. (ok, that's three thoughts).
See if you can get this guy to interview you on his podcast.
http://www.gardenfork.tv/category/gardenfork-radio

I think that is an excellent idea. With one tiny hitch: I think it is about 10,000 times better if somebody that is familiar with that show suggests having me as a guest.

Rick Freeman wrote:Perhaps team up with Frank Aragona, AgroInnovations (also a podcast): https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Agroinnovations-Podcast/146589258742129

He's a permaculture practitioner and activist and a great guy, and he's actively looking for podcast material right now.

A lot of people mentioned that one when persuading me to start mine. I'm happy to be on his show - but I think it would be up to a regular listener of his show to suggest me to him.

paul wheaton wrote:
meetup: I've heard of it, but never really used it. My current daily-ish email goes to about 3100 people. Maybe the thing to do is to start a new thread here in the tinkering forum and see if meetup people can talk to meetup people and stuff can happen ??

Well, I belong to Portland Permaculture (http://www.meetup.com/portlandpermaculture/), which has over a thousand members and uses Meetup, so I posted this:

Over at permies.com, Paul is feeling obsessed about hugelkultur and has asked for help.

In the discussion, someone mentioned using meetup to get the word out... so here I am, doing this. What the hey, there's over a thousand of us here, right?

My suggestion, if you want to help with "Paul's devious plots on world domination", is to post his link in your other networks, singing praises for this wondrous, water-saving, labor saving, new-old way of growing some food... (perhaps with some links to "rising food prices" articles). And repeat...

IMO, it's the "And repeat..." that'll make the difference..

HTH...

If you really want to get people to start using hugelkultur you need serious advertising. The kind of advertising that you cannot afford. So you convince companies that work with wood that they can save a ton or make a ton of money by promoting it. Forest Service? Lumber Mills? Plumb Creek? When they are on board and trying to push people to come take their wood or buy their dead wood people will really start searching the web and will find permies! Hope thats crazy enough for you.

paul wheaton wrote:

Andy Commons wrote:
a. write a short ebook, with nice illustrations, etc... title it something like "Low water gardening" and post it on amazon for $0.99.
Then promote the $*!& of out it.

Isn't that pretty much what I am doing now with something that is free?

Yes, but some folks want to BUY stuff... With your permission, I'd take a stab at doing a conversion of what you have to e-book format.... ?

meetup: okay, so what is the next step? Or, better yet, what is the plan. It sounds like you know something about meetup, so how do we go about this?

here is one to PBS - that would be even cooler, get them to do a show. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/victorygarden/grow/index.html
http://www.victorygardenssandiego.com/
this is the San diego site. I posted to their far book and send it on to the people I know there.

Maybe I'm a bit thick: I'm trying to wrap my head around this. it sounds like I call PBS and say "do a show about huglekultur". And they will want to know where to bring the cameras, right? Where do I send them?

sorry, no idea. I thought you are a Master Gardener

I am.

And the place the certified me does not list information from or about other master gardeners. they list information that they created or were sent by the state ag school. And they are pretty keen on non-organic stuff, so it's a bit of a push to get stuff like hugelkultur mentioned.

Don't know, but again, you have an army of many already on your site. ask all forum readers to reach out to those organizations.....

Most of those people like to just receive information. Only a dozen or so will get involved (like you). So we make the best of the materials we have!

Don't know, but again, you have an army of many already on your site. ask all forum readers to reach out to those organizations.....

I suppose I could make another article which then links to the main hugelkultur article.

Jackson Barnett wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:
meetup: I've heard of it, but never really used it. My current daily-ish email goes to about 3100 people. Maybe the thing to do is to start a new thread here in the tinkering forum and see if meetup people can talk to meetup people and stuff can happen ??

Well, I belong to Portland Permaculture (http://www.meetup.com/portlandpermaculture/), which has over a thousand members and uses Meetup, so I posted this:

Over at permies.com, Paul is feeling obsessed about hugelkultur and has asked for help.

In the discussion, someone mentioned using meetup to get the word out... so here I am, doing this. What the hey, there's over a thousand of us here, right?

My suggestion, if you want to help with "Paul's devious plots on world domination", is to post his link in your other networks, singing praises for this wondrous, water-saving, labor saving, new-old way of growing some food... (perhaps with some links to "rising food prices" articles). And repeat...

IMO, it's the "And repeat..." that'll make the difference..

thanks Jackson!

I tried doing a bit of "repeat" on facebook. So far the people doing the repeating are not asking others to repeat, so I guess it won't go very far. Maybe I needed to start it off a different way.

I said "I think that re-sharing this article will save the world" Maybe I should have added "Please repeat the re-share message!"

Josiah Wallingford wrote:If you really want to get people to start using hugelkultur you need serious advertising. The kind of advertising that you cannot afford. So you convince companies that work with wood that they can save a ton or make a ton of money by promoting it. Forest Service? Lumber Mills? Plumb Creek? When they are on board and trying to push people to come take their wood or buy their dead wood people will really start searching the web and will find permies! Hope thats crazy enough for you.

Keep the crazy coming.

I think this one is kinda like the mention earlier: figure out what the arborists are reading and advertise to them. Or at least figure out what it would take. Maybe I could write an article for their mag or something.

Jackson Barnett wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:

Andy Commons wrote:
a. write a short ebook, with nice illustrations, etc... title it something like "Low water gardening" and post it on amazon for $0.99.
Then promote the $*!& of out it.

Isn't that pretty much what I am doing now with something that is free?

Yes, but some folks want to BUY stuff... With your permission, I'd take a stab at doing a conversion of what you have to e-book format.... ?

You have my permission. If my name is listed first, you can keep all the money.

Steph Michelle wrote:Or write something for Mother Earth News?

I submitted the article to Mother Earth News about a month ago, I believe, and got the automatic response that they have lots of article requests and can only take a few, but it is up for consideration.

On my facebook fan page I tried a slightly different tactic. The comment I put on the link was "In a feeble attempt save the world by having this reach 50 million people, I hereby ask for you to re-share and ask your friends to re-share"

Paul, Check out this blog I just posted. I don't get many visitors but maybe it will help a little. It should be in my 'signature' on this page but just in case! www.bettyamontgomery.blogspot.com should get you there.

Paul,

Your post on using wood as a foundation for gardening looks very interesting. The first season's problem is the same as we see when raw biochr is placed in the soil. It is much better to pre-load it with nutrients, microbes, minerals and water BEFORE it is used as a soil amendment.

Question: Why not add in some red worms, biochar and mycelium? These might just "super charge" the pile. It would also be interesting to try a comparison: 1 mound with trees and 1 mound with lots of biochar and compost. The mound with the oxidation resistant biochar should retain its valuable carbon much longer. See, for example, the staying power of carbon in centuries old Terra Pretta in Amazonia.

Lastly, do you know of the work of Jen Pain in France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Pain There are already several of his designs implemented in VT.

As for my earlier note: My suggestion was to identify groups with related and complimentary interests and to then reach out to them. It should be possible to develop collaborative relationships to further spread ALL of the ideas. People need shelter, food, water, and, often heat. Hugelkultur only appears to address food. How could it find partners who are interested in Shelter? Energy? Water? As you know, I believe that the co-products of pyrolysis, biochar and thermal energy, do, in fact, support the need for heat, suppor food via gardening, and can help keep water clean as well as clean up already contaminated water. They can also provide the supplemental heat required by Energy+ houses that have no furnaces, thus also supporting innovative housing as well.

Regards,

Jock

Thanks betty!

Your stuff does show up in your sig - although you probably want to massage it to be an active link.

For your blog, you are welcome to use one pic from my article as long as you make a link back to the article that says "raised garden beds".

thanks!

paul wheaton wrote:meetup: okay, so what is the next step? Or, better yet, what is the plan. It sounds like you know something about meetup, so how do we go about this?

Meetup is locality-based, so members of one are in the same area, so they can actually ... meet up, face to face. Not so great for WIDE-spread broadcast. BUT, surely more of us than only I are members of one...

Here's the plan: Every few days, you send out an email out to all of us (or a select cadre) with a passionate plea for us to facebook, tweet, meetup-ize (?) and otherwise post to all our assorted networks a link to the hugelkultur article, along with a short, exciting blurb. like: "Never water your garden and eat great fresh home-grown food! LINK" or something... Vary the message, but always include the link, EASY ways to share it and instructions to ask other to share it when they post ("Please share!").

When I finish "Share, Retweet, Repeat", I expect I'll have better ideas...

HTH,

Jock,

Check the permaculture forum for the massive huglelkultur thead. And you might want to also find the hugelkultur vs. biochar thread.

Check the alternative energy forum for the threads on jean pain's stuff, and the video I made on 500 hot showers from one small compost pile.

My suggestion was to identify groups with related and complimentary interests and to then reach out to them. It should be possible to develop collaborative relationships to further spread ALL of the ideas.

That sounds awsome.

Do you already have relationships with a lot of these groups?

Paul,

I am working on developing a set of reinforcing relationships as my family looks at trying to put all of this into action on 40,000 sq. ft. 4 miles from down town Boston. Carbon negative Energy+ houses, permaculture -- on a small scale, perhaps use some ideas from Transition towns and from Co-housing as well. Our potential builder is eager to help as he also wants to expand what it is we mean when we talk about housing, community, food, energy independence, and climate disruption in an urban setting.

I wil also try to find those other threads you mention. I am not really interested in to getting into theoretical arguments about how many angels fit on the head of a pin. I much more oriented to putting ideas into practice. I am a show me, don't tell me type who trusts but verifies. 2012 will be an interesting year of new developments and various transitions.

Cheers,

Jock

About the links; raised garden beds. Hmmm, how about something to attract the notice of people who are familiar with raised beds?
Uber raised beds, extreme raised beds, raised beds with attitude, my beds are WAY taller than your beds? Really not sure how you'd word it.

paul wheaton wrote:

Leo Horthy wrote:Also, you need to emphasize how important you think this article is, convince your readers of this and ask them to share it with everyone they know. Do this early on in the article so that if they only read part of the article they get the message.

I kinda do a little of that at the bottom.

Can you give me an example of wording and where to put it?

Paul, here is my stab at the wording, I would start the article with the following:

I want to share with you all a concept that I consider revolutionary. This technique is so simple and yet so effective that I think anyone who is considering gardening with raised beds should do it this way. This is an example of the win-win-win you often get when you model your gardening activities on nature. As I see it hugelkultur has the following benefits:

long term soil fertility

reuse of yard waste

saves water

self tilling

saves effort (no need to water or till)

...

Please read on if saving money, water and effort is of interest to you. If you like the article please email the link to your friends and/or share it on Facebook. This is important stuff - lets get it out there.

Paul, the answer to your question is SEO work (AKA Search Engine Optimization). You are a techy guy, I see. Do you know how this works? There are lots of inside tricks of the trade. A lot of it has to do with links, key words and google ranking parameters. You have lots of video and Google loves video so that helps. I could put you in touch with an SEO expert for free advice if that's what you want to do.

hmmmmmmmmmm this might not work, but say and area has a huge ice storm, hurricane or tornado, maybe send a contact to the area chamber of commerce or corp of engineers or national guard that is helping with clean up? What a way to use all that debris..piling it into long ditches and covering it up with the soil from the ditches and then planting things on top, like new baby trees?

Well, someone else probably has already done this, but I just sent the hugelkultur article to Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon. That should reach a few thousand.

gani et se wrote:About the links; raised garden beds. Hmmm, how about something to attract the notice of people who are familiar with raised beds?
Uber raised beds, extreme raised beds, raised beds with attitude, my beds are WAY taller than your beds? Really not sure how you'd word it.

So the current title is "raised garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation" - my point being that you no longer have to irrigate. That isn't saucy enough?

Leo,

I took a stab. tell me what you think:

http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

Maura Will wrote:
Paul, the answer to your question is SEO work (AKA Search Engine Optimization). You are a techy guy, I see. Do you know how this works? There are lots of inside tricks of the trade. A lot of it has to do with links, key words and google ranking parameters. You have lots of video and Google loves video so that helps. I could put you in touch with an SEO expert for free advice if that's what you want to do.

I know a little about SEO. If you know of an SEO expert, then, yes, I would really like some free advice!

Here is my contribution:
I tweeted, FBed, Stumbled and Pinned it.

I have a homeschooling curriculum business with several thousand homeschool families as customers. I could try and think up some way to distribute the info to this group. They tend to be homesteader-type folks who do things as a family, and building a hugelkultur bed would be a great family project, and a lesson that counts for schooling! That would be a way to get the younger generation involved too.

Brenda Groth wrote:hmmmmmmmmmm this might not work, but say and area has a huge ice storm, hurricane or tornado, maybe send a contact to the area chamber of commerce or corp of engineers or national guard that is helping with clean up? What a way to use all that debris..piling it into long ditches and covering it up with the soil from the ditches and then planting things on top, like new baby trees?

I added that to the article.

Oh, and I like the idea of reaching those people. How might one finding people that deal with trees downed from a storm and make them aware of hugelkultur?

Deborah Barnwell wrote:Well, someone else probably has already done this, but I just sent the hugelkultur article to Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon. That should reach a few thousand.

Excellent!

It looks like the article is on an extra 100 fb pages today. SU seems unchanged - weird. reddit unchanged. 4 more tweets. g+ unchanged.

paul wheaton wrote:

gani et se wrote:About the links; raised garden beds. Hmmm, how about something to attract the notice of people who are familiar with raised beds?
Uber raised beds, extreme raised beds, raised beds with attitude, my beds are WAY taller than your beds? Really not sure how you'd word it.

So the current title is "raised garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation" - my point being that you no longer have to irrigate. That isn't saucy enough?

Saucy? Nyet. Sexy? Nein.

It is quasi-descriptive, but it does little to tell someone (who has absolutely no idea what that weird word means) whats in it for them. "Raised Garden Beds" sounds like work to build, "hugelkulture" sounds like foreign jargon, and "irrigate" makes it sound like it for a factory-scale farm.

you may be 110% correct that it will change the world, but people today don't want to be sold and they don't want to be told, and they certainly don't want to invest time in something that does not apply to them. Until they see REAL benefits in a concise inSpirational frame, they'll continue looking for something else.

If you are looking to interest people, it isn't all that hard to build a landing page to pre-screen people who might actually want to learn more. It's FAR better to have fewer interested people visit and learn (and poke around other similar articles) than it is to have a large quantity of numbers "hit" the page, only to leave 8 seconds later.

I'm still kinda waiting to hear WHY you are soooooo impassioned about making 50,000,000 people learn about this.

Julie Helms wrote:Here is my contribution:
I tweeted, FBed, Stumbled and Pinned it.

Hot dog!

Pinned?

I have a homeschooling curriculum business with several thousand homeschool families as customers. I could try and think up some way to distribute the info to this group. They tend to be homesteader-type folks who do things as a family, and building a hugelkultur bed would be a great family project, and a lesson that counts for schooling! That would be a way to get the younger generation involved too.

Excellent!

If there is any way I can help, please let me know!

BTW ..... hugelkulture is a far cry from Farvenugen, and that word took over $20,000,000 to create interest in a relative handfull of VW-ish people.
consider Westernizing the word if you want to attract more people to it's possibilities.

Neil Evansan wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:

gani et se wrote:About the links; raised garden beds. Hmmm, how about something to attract the notice of people who are familiar with raised beds?
Uber raised beds, extreme raised beds, raised beds with attitude, my beds are WAY taller than your beds? Really not sure how you'd word it.

So the current title is "raised garden beds: hugelkultur instead of irrigation" - my point being that you no longer have to irrigate. That isn't saucy enough?

Saucy? Nyet. Sexy? Nein.

It is quasi-descriptive, but it does little to tell someone (who has absolutely no idea what that weird word means) whats in it for them. "Raised Garden Beds" sounds like work to build, "hugelkulture" sounds like foreign jargon, and "irrigate" makes it sound like it for a factory-scale farm.

Well, the title needs "raised garden beds" and "hugelkultur". So what might be a good zinger given those parameters?

you may be 110% correct that it will change the world, but people today don't want to be sold and they don't want to be told, and they certainly don't want to invest time in something that does not apply to them. Until they see REAL benefits in a concise inSpirational frame, they'll continue looking for something else.

If you are looking to interest people, it isn't all that hard to build a landing page to pre-screen people who might actually want to learn more. It's FAR better to have fewer interested people visit and learn (and poke around other similar articles) than it is to have a large quantity of numbers "hit" the page, only to leave 8 seconds later.

I made a modification to the page - better? Or were you suggesting something else?

I'm still kinda waiting to hear WHY you are soooooo impassioned about making 50,000,000 people learn about this.

Because it will change the world.

Gardening will be so much more successful with less effort, I thing more people will do it.

Less irrigation means water and energy savings.

Less fertilizer means less consumption.

Less packing off trees/branches/twigs or using smelly noisy chippers.

paul wheaton wrote:

Pinned?

Pinterest.com

You pin pictures you like onto different personal boards (like putting pictures in a photo album) that you share with those who follow you. So the article has to have a picture in order for it to be shared there. Then someone just clicks on the pic to be taken to the article. Then if they like it they can pin it on their own board for their followers...

paul wheaton wrote:meetup: okay, so what is the next step? Or, better yet, what is the plan. It sounds like you know something about meetup, so how do we go about this?

here is an example. I put in meet up with keyword permaculture in new York, radius 100 mi. this is what came up:
http://permaculture.meetup.com/cities/us/ny/new_york/?sort=default&radius=100

about 22 groups, some more directly into permaculture than others. Some allow anybody to post, so post the article on the discussion board. Better, send an email to the creator of the group and tell them how important that article is (save the world, pretty important) and ask them to send an email with a link to all the group members. And also to ask the group members to share. Some people might be in several groups with the same tag, i.e. I belong to SD permaculture, SD food not lawns, SD beekeepers - you get the picture. so, I might receive the same email several times. I think that would be a good thing, it feels more important that way.

See what happens if you ask directly for volunteers in your daily email. You might be surprised how many are already part of meet up and/or are willing to spend the 15 minutes it might take to send the emails or post the article.

I just posted the Hugelkultur article on facebook. I posted it at Keith Johnson's page Permaculture Activists (over 1800 members) and on my wall (almost 600 people on my friends list). I know that's not 50 million but lots of people read my posts on facebook so hopefully it will spread.

Paul,

Go here http://pinterest.com/source/richsoil.com/
and you can see all the people who have been pinning your articles and which ones were most popular.