The Floral Hustle

  📍 Hello Laren, this is Jen and you are listening to the Floral Hustle Podcast. On this week's episode, we are going to talk about strategically growing your social media following. And I think, and I know from a lot of the, um, clients that I've coached, uh, that vanity metrics of how many followers and how many likes that you get.

Drive people's ego, they drive people's, uh, vanity and their feeling of success based on these arbitrary numbers that frankly don't matter. And I know that's probably unpopular opinion, but literally the amount of followers you have is not indicative to the success of your business, the quality. Of followers that you have and who that person is, cuz you can go buy followers.

You want a ton of followers, go buy 'em. You can buy them. They're like bots, literally. That could make your numbers look all big and pretty, but that's not helpful. What's helpful is having an audience of people that literally are for one, looking for your services or my biggest. Marketing strategy is to follow businesses that are all dealing with clients that need your services, and then making sure that you interact with them to build relationships.

Then the other thing is really targeting your local market and targeting, you know, clients. That are in your local market, so couples that are in your market that you have done weddings at their venue. So using a venue or geo to help attract that audience. So I wanna start out with the first thing is on social media to grow your following.

The biggest thing that I. Put as an intention behind my social media is that I'm, I am there to help educate anybody following me on best practices for wedding flowers, best whatever for wedding flowers. Uh, some topics that I've covered, just to give you example. Uh, top wedding trends for 2023 wedding season.

Three ways to save money on your wedding Flowers. Uh, amazing Blue Flower options for your wedding. Uh, why are two florist quotes different from each other and how that should matter to you? Do you want the cheapest flowers or the best value? These are all topics that I've talked about on my Instagram. I take a.

I pick a topic and I talk about it in three different ways. A long form video, a 62nd reel, and a 32nd reel. And then I am taking that and posting that strategically through the week. I could also create carousel graphics. I actually, I'm bringing on a social media person to help with everything cuz it's kind of a lot and I know when wedding season starts, it's going to really feel like a lot.

So you could find if you were not good at this. You could find someone to help schedule all of it. All you gotta do is take 10 minutes of your pretty face on camera to make these videos, and then you could pay a va, a virtual assistant, or you would get a personal assistant. That maybe could also help pull bases, clean bases, pull candles, do all those things like that.

Super organized person that also loves to play in Canva. You wanna find that person. If this is not one of your strengths or if you have too much on your plate, then I'm going in with the intention that I wanna grow my business. I'm going in with the intention of really wanting so much value that people want to follow.

That aren't, you know, literally just clients, potential clients. I want wedding vendors to follow me. And so my first part strategy is if you are just starting your Instagram or if you've had it for a while and you haven't done shit with it, go in and find photographers, venues. Uh, other florist. I know that one probably seems crazy, but I'll explain why.

And DJs, um, wedding planners, go find them and follow them. Don't do anything, just follow them. When they go back and follow you, send them a DM to thank. Tell them, um, thank you so much for following me. I love everything on your, you know, pick out one thing on their page that they know when they read that, that you actually took time and energy to look at their page.

I love the wedding that you did at xve. It was stunning. I especially love the velvet, um, you know, place cards or whatever. Then you are showing that you've paid attention. And then I say something like, if you ever have somebody looking for flowers, uh, for their wedding, I have some availability for this year and I'd love to connect.

And if you have an a LA Card flowers program, you can also say, and. I also have a really super easy way for, um, you know, one of your clients to get flowers is my a la card flowers. It's like all my prices are online. They're gonna be like, whoa. Like, that's interesting. So you, for one, have taken action to do something most people don't.

You've sent them a personalized message. That is telling them that you can add value, you have availability, you're friendly, and then they're gonna start following your page and they're gonna see your bright and shining face three times a week, hopefully. And I know you're probably like, that just feels like a lot.

10 minutes. 10 minutes. You can have all that content created. 10 minutes. I have people all the time go like, you show up, like nobody I've ever seen. And I love your videos. I love how much, um, you know, content that you put out. I love how much, uh, your energy just is so great. Like I've had a million different things.

But the key thing is, is that I start posting that and people start sharing that content. Everybody is looking for content that adds value. To their page, to their audience. So if they can take content from somewhere and share it, they'd seem like an expert. They're positioning themself as I'm an expert.

So you could do that same positioning. And how you do that is also. Repeating what you want to happen. Go and share their posts on your stories. Go and comment on their posts. So do not ever go in and just post and ghost. Go in and take 10 minutes of strategic interactions that you basically are going and saying, okay.

Uh, they post a picture, it's a photographer. They post some beautiful pictures of a wedding they did at one of your favorite. I absolutely love this venue. You captured this wedding so beautifully. I love the blank, whatever. So literally I'm taking 10 seconds to reply, but I took five seconds before that to through their page, and then I respond if it's a planner, like I'm going and.

You like, especially if they say the uh, design and planning, cuz then you know that they curated it and then you know that they deal with higher budgets. Just a tip. So then go in and literally, you know, say this wedding looks like it was just delivered so beautifully. I love the blank. Where did you find that?

Like, then you're asking a question. So if it's somebody you wanna engage with, people love when they see comments because that means people are interacting with your post, which is going to help you show up to the Instagram gods, the Facebook Gods, the TikTok gods, like it's going to help boost the relevance of that post when people are interacting, and most, I would say, successful, or people who are established understand.

And appreciate your 📍 time and energy and effort in interacting with their posts. Then those interactions start full circle coming back because when you start doing them, they're going to start reciprocating. So there's this sense of reciprocity that's going on that has people come back to do that same behavior.

For you, so interacting with your posts, but I literally have screenshots. I, I screenshot them because I, I know that this is, is such an amazing strategy that I'm going to be launching a course that like in detail, talks about this and actually gives you all the tools to execute it and. With that.

Literally, I've just screenshotted, I've had Flores, I've had planners, I've had photographers, I've had venues, I've had DJs all share my videos. And some of them are like green goddess speaking, truth about budgets, um, more great advice from green Goddess floral, you know, just like tons of great shares that like, literally they might not increase my views on my real, like, amazing.

But there's definitely like, here's a person that's sharing me in front of their audience saying that I am relevant. That is a win, win, win, win. So if you are strategically going and finding people in your market and interacting with them when they follow you back, I never reach out to people unless they followed me back because I don't wanna be intrusive.

I don't wanna be creepy and weird. You've probably had the DM. Hey, like my page and, no, no, no. It's like, you know what? Like I want to see that they have interest in me as a business owner, or if they, if they're not even really interacting or on their social media, do you need them to follow you? Because if they're never going to add value, then you don't.

Then you're going to continue, like every day, spend 10 minutes strateg. Going in and interacting with people. When you do post your real, your long form video, I always go in and I share those to my stories because then I'm creating story content. Then I, if somebody does share it, I go in, I share that, and I say Thank you.

So I'm full circling any share, so that for one, I'm also showing. Hey, client who is following me, other industry professionals know that I have validity and that I'm adding value. And like that what I'm saying is good, and I'm just reiterating that social proof that I am delivering value and I am adding, you know, value in so many ways.

But I also think having. A geo strategy, so a location strategy, because Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, like they're not super geod. Naturally. I'm friends with people all over the United States, on Facebook, on Instagram. I want to be reaching people in my market that are potentially getting married at some of my favorite venue.

So I am creating a geo strategy of if I have done a wedding there I am making sure I'm using that venue's, hashtags. You can go in to that venue and look at their post and you can see what hashtags they're using. So if it is Machine Shop Minneapolis, which is this amazing venue here that I would love to do more weddings.

I'm going in and I am whenever I've, I've done a bunch of weddings there, but I wanna do more cause it's so stunning. I am making sure when I'm posting those pictures, as long as they're what I still want to attract, that I am putting. Hashtag Machine shop, hashtag machine shop wedding hashtag machine Shop Minneapolis hashtag um, machine shop Minneapolis.

Wedding machine shop. If I'm doing an installation there, they have this amazing trussing that's a, uh, like literally a power trussing that lowers and raises with this little like crazy switch on the wall. It's amazing. Machine shop install. Machine shop, uh, like there was another venue here that was, um, called Aria that I actually got married at.

And I, I was in love with their wheel. They had this big cog wheel that was six feet wide, and I actually, I got married in front of it and decorated it amazingly, and I wanted to do it again because I loved it so much. So I went in and I created like a hashtag for the wheel. So Mach, um, aria. Uh, wheel installation aria hanging installations because they have like all these points to rig stuff for hanging installations.

So I was going in and I was creating hashtags that I wanted to show up for, but if you wanna show up for venues like this even more, Even though it's, I people consider it a social media, it's really like a search engine. You should probably be on Pinterest and you should probably figure out a Pinterest strategy that when somebody is searching machine shop wedding in Google, that you're indexing on Pinterest with images from your wedding.

Photographers do an amazing job of this because they'll put a blog of a whole wedding. And then carry that through with all these images that are tagged and they're alt tagged so that every image is indexed and then they're taking that in that picture and they're putting it on Pinterest with it, linking to their blog posts.

So that is definitely another strategy. Um, outside, I think of the core of social media because it, even though it's considered a social platform, it is a search engine platform, but it can be handled. By scheduling in most social media scheduling tools like Plani and Tailwind and literally isn't that difficult.

So if you ever, if you think I should do an episode on Pinterest, I would love to do that. And so you can send me a DM if that is of interest, cuz I would love to hear if, if people are even interested in learning about Pinterest strategies, cuz I think it is a little bit next level and it is a little bit more work because you're having to.

A place for it to go, which is usually a blog post. So those are some strategic ways I would get in front of wedding vendors. I would make sure that I'm posting geo geotag to locations. That I am inspired and even if you, I, I wanna mention this last comment and then I will say goodbye today. Even if you've never done a wedding, you can create content for a vetting, uh, a venue that you want to do a wedding at.

So let's say I had not done a wedding at Machine Shop here in Minneapolis, and I want. I could create a post and tag machine shop Minneapolis with something that was like, um, want an installation, uh, at machine shop. This is what, and maybe you have a carousel post and you have three slides of three different types of installations you could do, and the pricing, you could, uh, three ceremony setups that, uh, just.

A dream at Machine Shop Minneapolis. You could mock up images in Canva and literally use those mockups in your photos and then tag the venue. When people are getting married, they're going to that hashtag, they're going to go look at the tagged photos under machine shop's page, so you can show up there even if you haven't done a wedding.

I hope this episode was helpful. I, I literally think that there is a science to growing your social media with the right clients, with the right amount of effort that you don't feel burned out. And I hope that this little kind of talk was helpful in that relation because I do feel that, um, so many people are just so concerned with how many followers they have and so many the likes that they're getting, and it's just, it doesn't matter.

If you have the right audience, that's what really matters, the right audience to help grow your following. And once you start really getting on a content creation calendar and a plan like the followers are just gonna, they're gonna follow your followers, will follow your content plan if it is delivering value.

I hope you have an amazing day flower friend. Thank you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please go to your podcast player of choice and do a review, especially Apple, uh, like 75% of you are listening on Apple, which is fascinating to me, by the way, because I see so many Flos not have Apple phones.

But if you are on Apple Podcast, I would love for you to go do a review and I it. I'm doing this for free. I actually pay money for a podcast editor. So like getting that feedback from you guys that you're excited about this, that the content is helpful is just, it, it fuels my fire to keep doing this and it just, it makes my day, whenever somebody leaves a comment on my Instagram like, Or sends me a DM that is just positive.

It, it, it makes my day. So I love creating content for you guys and I love feedback. If you can ever take a few minutes and just send me a message or comment or do a podcast 📍 review, I would so appreciate you. So have a great day, flower friend.