The Floral Hustle

Hello, flower friend. This is Jen and you are listening to the Floral Hustle podcast. Today I wanna talk about something that I feel is such a use of mental energy of so many florists and I think that's because so many florists don't know what they're supposed to focus on. And that is with social media. Social media, like literally.

Consumes, uh, so much time, so much mental energy that it's, it's exhausting, frankly, for so many Flos. And I want to talk about today what social media really should be used for, because in my opinion, we're, we're using it wrong. We're looking at, I want followers. So many people, followers, followers, followers, but followers are not supporting your business.

What's supporting your business is driving connections with customers, uh, or fans. Or people in general that need your services and you convert them to customers, which then converts to revenue for your business. To me, we need to focus on how we can convert those people on social media to fall in love with you and your business, and then hopefully become a customer and.

you're making money, and that is really what I feel the intent of social media is. Of course, we all want the vanity that I have all of these followers and all of these wonderful things and on and on, but that is not paying your bills. It, it's so funny cuz I often have, um, people reach out to me and they want to grow their social media following and I like, I have super amazing strategies that, um, I share with my coaching clients and that I wanna share with you today that will really help you.

Create a plan because the other part of social media is it's fucking overwhelming. Do, do you feel like I can never keep up, like I don't know what to say. Literally I have nothing to post other than like a pretty picture. And then you have all these people telling you all these strategies. To post and to do these things and to do reels, and to do TikTok and to do, um, YouTube, and you should just be doing all the things.

So I wanna talk about how we can connect with our core purpose of being on social media, which is driving customers, driving connections so you can drive revenue. And to me the best way to do that. Is educate. Educate. You want to be the person that is and, and this is just speaking not only to potential couples and clients reaching out to you, you want to help educate other wedding professionals because they are looking for content to share.

They are looking for content. Position themself as somebody that's in the note that's paying attention. And if you are one of those people that you have provided value, so much value that they want to share it to their audience, that is a win. And I know so many people were just focused on like, I, I just need numbers to do that.

I need the notoriety. And it was interesting cuz I was listening to a podcast recently and the number one career people talk about coming out of college right now is being an influencer, which just makes me sad, , because the. . It's making them feel good to think about that. Uh, being a big deal makes people feel good, but I want you to be a big deal.

To people that are going to take out their credit card, are going to take out their wallet or are going to help promote you to people that are inevitably going to do that. And in all honesty, I, I do get clients from Instagram. I do get clients like that are telling me in my source of where you came from, that they came from Instagram.

Um, I've also had them say that I saw you tagged in a venue post. So, I mean, those things are great, but that is not the big driving factor in my business that has made it profitable. Building relationships with other vendors is a large component of what has made my business successful. So this whole education part is really, I want to help educate other vendors about me helping them.

Educate their fan base, their clients about topics that I pick, and really just create this environment of learning because when people are learning from you, you are, you are speaking value, you are becoming relatable, you're becoming a teacher, which people love. , especially when they've never done something like this before.

Even though I have had repeat rights, and that's another story. Y you are being that person that is putting themself out there and, and not asking for anything. You're just helping. So to educate them. , you want to make sure that you are picking content that's relevant. And I have a formula that I think is really easy, like picking a topic that you want to speak about because so much of content, uh, execution feels overwhelming to people.

You need to make it as simple as possible. So what I would suggest is picking a topic for that week. and batching, which means that you're making a bunch of content during one like session and then scheduling that content so that you're not thinking about it for the rest of the week. So from an education standpoint, let's just say that you want to, I'm in Minnesota, so this week I'm actually going to talk about, and I've, I've done one video already on it.

Minnesota weddings and the cold and some ideas around what a winter bride could do. So that could be, I'm talking, I actually, um, had some frozen flowers that I left in the car for a little bit after I came back cuz I was just like, kind of just needed ch to chill after my wedding this weekend. So I have these frozen flowers and I use that to educate them.

Look what happens to your flowers when they're out in the. Then I said, here's some ideas to avoid this, and I gave them tips. I did this in a 62nd video, and then I took one point that I talked about and I made a 32nd video. Then today I had another idea to talk about options in your bouquets. That could be used that are less sensitive to cold evergreens, pine cones, different berries, twigs.

So I did another 30 seconds, which is a good time for Instagram reel specifically. that I talked about, that then I'm going to take, and every day I'm going to use one of those posts and post it to Instagram reels, and when I post it with my caption and everything, I'm then going to copy. because I've added all my text and everything so that it jumps out.

I wanna make sure that I'm using some type of text in my, my screensaver, or if you wanna make a pretty Canva image, I just don't think that that's really something that I wanna invest my time in. So I just screenshot with the text of the subject. So when somebody's scrolling in reels or in TikTok, that main head.

That says winter brides, um, you know, or frozen flowers not so great on your wedding day or something like that. So I'm screenshotting that and really like capitalizing. So that's, if this is relevant, they're going to see this. Then I could also do a carousel post. I could do a single post with, uh, let's just say, um, some, uh, collage of different, um, evergreens that they could use in their winter wedding.

I could do a carousel of those evergreens, twigs, and pine cones. So you take one idea. and just make it bigger, dissect it into small parts that you can share frequently. So guess what? Then you got content, you got constant content going out and then that content is being shared. I literally, last week's post I, um, shared that was another theme, talking about why you should choose your floris.

and it wasn't price. So I literally went through and I made my 62nd longer video. I made actually a three and a half minute video that I just posted as a regular post, and then I made a 32nd reel and then shared that as well. I know it's not a huge number, but my 32nd post had 880 views and I literally had Floris sharing it to their Instagram stories.

I mean, that was huge. Then I took that, those videos and you can, um, I use an app called Repost, which literally will take and copy from Instagram and then you can post that because it saves it in your photos, copies your caption, and then I think it's $20 a year for the app. Then you can post that in TikTok.

So literally you're just repurposing and if then if you have YouTube, you could post that to YouTube shorts. A great way to keep repurposing and so you're not doing extra work with little effort. Maybe you spent an hour and then you have a scheduling tool like Plani or like Tailwind that you literally, after you're done with this content, All of that into your scheduling tool, and 📍 then you don't have to worry about it because it's just, it's on autopilot.

📍 cuz I think like that's what social media, um, really, like one of my unfavorite things is if you don't have it scheduled, you have posting anxiety that you should be posting, you should be doing all these things. You should be. No, like, just schedule it. And if you are going to dedicate time to being in the app for one, I would send, uh, set in your, uh, app, um, like settings you can actually set in there.

To turn that shit off after 15 minutes or whatever time you deem, so you are not going down this rabbit hole and sucking the time out of you so that you don't have the mental energy to, to really work on anything else because you just spent an hour on social media and where did my hour just go? Then if you want to go in, do something purposeful.

Go in actually interact. With posts of other wedding professionals, of potentially people that look like they're getting married y that is way more impactful than you looking in and literally just scrolling for 30 minutes an hour. I know that that takes time and energy, mental bandwidth, and I would not be the emojis queen.

When you are doing this, actually do purposeful. Thoughtful interactions that are adding value to that post, that tell that person what you liked about it, um, what really jumped out. If they take an am amazing photo, like I think your, uh, photo is just amazing. I just love the color combination that you picked for this or this popped out at, uh, at you, whatever it is.

Really just like tell them so they can feel you being genuine. So education to me is a great strategy because you are providing so much value. Not only are people going to share that value, but if somebody stumbles upon your page, um, organically, they're going to see you. They're going to see how relatable, how.

Freaking lovable you are. And how much love and passion that you have for being a florist. Like I, I feel like I, I ooze like how much I love being a florist and how excited I am about, uh, helping people educate people. And that shows I've had people say, God, you like just look like you love what you do so much.

and I absolutely do, and you can have that enthusiasm. When you have a little bit of that pressure off and you're talking about a really narrow topic, it's so much easier to deliver that because you're not taking so much mental energy trying to deliver all of these things in your social media. . So then some other things that, uh, I really feel there's four topics to really cover on your social media feed.

One, educate, which I just talked about, but the next is promote. If somebody is coming to your page and they don't know what you sell within two seconds of looking at your page. , you need to really figure out how am I going to have it? So, because we have social media, so we can inevitably sell something to someone.

So if we're not showing and promoting what we sell and what service we offer, like they're gonna come to your page and they're gonna bounce. So how can you deliver exactly what you sell? Just like that. So it's just, it's so obvious and they know how to connect. . Then I think you really wanna show how relatable you are.

You want to be like that expert that I'm talking about with educating, but how I was also talking about like you just want somebody like to know you as a person. Like what? , you are fundamentally as a florist, like the excitement, the passion, uh, I have personally in my feed, I have my children, I have my animals.

I have um, I have two dogs, a Frenchie and a Boston, and I have a cute little bunny named Cinnabun. Those are in my feed. Those are like pillars is me being a human. Me really like loving all facets of my life and showing that. For one, nobody wants to deal with somebody that like, literally looks like you're gonna have to peel 'em off the ground with a spatula because they look so unenthusiastic about their life.

And then the last is inspire. Inspire to me is like taking all of those beautiful images that you've curated and sharing those, um, even part of that could be into your education because you're posting something beautiful, you. Specifically about a venue to inspire that person about that venue. You're tagging that venue in the post and using their hashtag.

because people are going in and searching their venues. Hashtag when they're planning, they're searching their venues, um, tagged location when they are planning. So then you're getting yourself out there as long as you like that, that venue and that whole, um, experience of working with that venue. If you don't, and you do not want to attract that, do not post it because what you post, you attract.

Then the last thing I wanna talk about is, and I, we did talk a little bit about it with, um, really just somebody looking at your page and knowing what you do, but I see so many Instagram profiles and just profiles in general. I have no idea where the hell you are located. If I am a consumer and I want to do business with you, but I don't know if you are in Brisbane, Australia.

you are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, or if you are in El Paso, Texas, there is a serious problem because I don't know if I can do business with you, and most people are not going to put any effort into trying to figure that out. If you are national, like let's just say you're selling dried flowers on Etsy or something like that, I would put Wear Your Base, but Selling With a Globe Sign.

On Etsy, so then it's clearly defined. But if you are trying to do weddings in your hometown and beyond in that area, you need to have where you are located in your profile. You need to have what you do in your profile. And another thing that I feel is critically important is who you are. . I hate when I see, uh, a coach or another business that has their photo of themself throughout their feed, videos of them, and I don't know who, what their name is because it is nowhere on their profile.

Putting that out there for one, you're building that trust, you're building that connection, and then. You are, uh, making it easier because they know your name to connect, not whoever the hell you are. I am interested in your wedding services and there's no information basically about who you are or what you're, even that you're a wedding florist.

I, I absolutely. When I look at someone's profile and they have all these stunning photos, , but then they're plastering in these images that they made in Canva about, you know, like some Valentine's things right now is really going around and it doesn't fit in their feed. And they're really, they're, I know they're trying to promote that they're doing Valentine's, but they are not saying anything about taking every day or special, special occasion orders.

Somebody's gonna go, they had Tourettes with this one post. There's one post in their whole like LA 24 images that are one scroll. And they're not mentioning that they do this, but I'm, I'm confused. Do they do every day? Because just because you're putting Valentine's flowers out there and maybe they're not looking for Valentine's, but they stumbled on your feed and they need to order birthday flowers or they need to order, get wallflowers or something like that.

If you're not putting that out, Repeatedly and very clearly in your profile, people are not going to dig to try to figure that out. And then the last thing I wanna talk about is a thing called Link Tree. Link tree. You've probably seen it million times. You get one link in Instagram, and a lot of times when you click on that, , it will actually say Link Tree in the name.

You can see it with the, the, um, business's name. It goes to this beautiful landing page. If you actually go to Instagram and go and hit my, um, my, my link in my bio and you will see what Link Tre is. You can actually, when you're paying, like put your brand colors in it. I have an image in there and then I'm having multiple links for people to connect with me cuz I might.

In my bio, hit the link and it's gonna be there. So this is an opportunity for you to share different facets of your business with that one link and make it easy for people to connect because people will not dig. and it, it's a very small investment on a monthly basis. I think it was like $5 a month, super cheap.

But you can go in and, let's just say you're having a workshop that can be a button to connect, to buy a workshop, um, ticket. Then let's just say you are booking weddings. Click here to look at our availability. Click here to, um, send us your inquiry. , then you can have another one. If you sell daily arrangements or everyday arrangements, click here.

If you'd like to order flowers, um, special occasion flowers, all those could be in one link cuz it's going to a landing page. And you can actually source in your analytics on your website as long as you have a, a website that has tracking, you can source. Where that, um, click is coming from, it will say link three.

So then, you know it came from Instagram, so it helps like funnel that tracking a little bit as well. I hope you enjoy today. I hope this gives you some ideas on how to, for one, make your social media easy. I'm all about easy, so having a content strategy, especially around education to help educate your brides the content.

Literally dump out of you. Every time you think of something, you're like, oh, this would be somebody asks you a question, somebody comments on something on Instagram. Um, during your console, somebody mentions something. This would be a great topic to talk about. I have an Evernote in my phone. I plug it in there and I make sure if I can't do that really quick, all I do is just go and text it to myself.

So you can just have a continuous bank of content ideas to share and educate your audience. Show what you. Position yourself as an expert, build trust, and inspire your followers all while keeping sane with this really digestible strategy. Have a great day. Thank you so much for listening and all the support.

I've just been so overjoyed with all of the support the podcast is getting so far, and so I appreciate you friend.