Behind the Scenes of Flower Talk with Lily (Part 2)

Today we feature Part 2 of an article about Flower Talk with Lily, published in the July issue of Floral Management magazine, the publication of the Society of American Florists.

This part features an actionable list of best practices for writing a floral related blog.

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Best Practices in Blogging
As a florist, blogging is a great opportunity to serve your customers. Here are some pro tips to get you started.

Be a problem-solver. A great place to start content-wise is answering questions. Start making a list of every question you have been asked over the years. These questions can be simple— for instance, “How do I remove pollen from my clothes?” — or more complicated, such as “How are there tulips
available in November when they are a spring flower?”

Provide “just in time” information. We live in an age of “self-serve” information. People ask Google questions at all times of night and day, and a blog is an ideal way to be there to answer their
questions, especially if you can predict the kinds of questions your customers might be asking at a particular time of year. Envision a bride wide awake in the middle of the night wondering if peonies are available for her wedding. She will take to the Internet, and perhaps it will be you who explains how the season moves from early spring northward up North America, peaking in Alaska in August.

Choose the best provider. You can host the blog on your regular website or use a free platform such as Google Blogger (blogger.com). The key is distribution. Companies such as FeedBlitz (feedblitz.com) offer a service for $99 a year, which will look at a certain page on your website, find any new content, and email it out to your list of customers.

Get social. We get about 500-2,000 reads per post; more than half of these reads come from sharing on Facebook and other social media platforms. Over the years, some posts have spiked, getting
more than 20,000 views. In the lifetime of the blog, we have about 700,000 page views!

Focus on visuals. Make sure your photos are sized correctly for the web. I use the free app Canva (canva.com) to create perfectly sized and adjusted images for the web. It’s super easy to navigate.

Repurpose content. Once you have a great post, make sure you use it in different ways! Print out some copies of your blog and have it available in your shop,perfect for folks waiting in line or to send
home with a customer. Submit the post to your local newspaper or news source—the Huffington Post has published several of ours! (See those examples at safnow.org/moreoline.)

Be you. Don’t be shy about expressing yourself. Some of my posts with the most reads are ethereal and whimsical pieces about flowers, not technical themes. These often get more reads than the more scientific posts.These kinds of posts can provide an ideal creative outlet plus they show your personality — that’s important to any small business trying to stay on customers’ radar.

Writing this blog truly has been a labor of love and the unexpected thing that happened is the sense of accomplishment it has provided. Marketing in the digital age goes by so fast, advertising campaigns come and go, a popular Instagram post is still just a blip on the radar, but this body of work will be available to flower lovers forever, thanks to the power of the Internet.

The Flower Talk with Lily blog has given thousands of readers information, knowledge and hopefully a smile, but it has been a two-way street, echoing my favorite Chinese proverb about flowers,
“A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers.”