Social media marketing gets a lot of buzz, but don’t neglect marketing in your local community!

The local community is your main source of revenue due to its closeness and your ease of access to this audience. Local customers are your first customers, and the immediate intimacy of personal contact gives you instant credibility, trust, and familiarity, making it easier to engage with them. With a low barrier for marketing, converting customers into brand advocates for you will be easy under the right circumstances.

Fortunately, there are very few hoops to jump through, and many ways to engage with your community.

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Positive Floral Elements

There’s great power in associating your brand with positive elements. These positive elements can be anywhere in your community, so always be on the lookout with current happenings and public opinions of several things in the locality. Association is the easiest method to generate interest for your shop, but you also have to be smart about it. There are some sure ways to associate your brand with good examples, like events and shared passions among the community members.

Local Floral Events

Liven up the community by organizing and hosting local events. Possible events that you can run are workshops for flower arrangements and an open house that features rare or seasonal flowers. You can also collaborate with other businesses for local events and try to invite as many people as possible. 

Your space size doesn’t matter; being creative with the events can go big or small. You want the exposure from these events to showcase your business so capitalize on this high time. Aside from the close relationships you can foster, this also opens up opportunities to people who might have been new to your place and can become potential customers.

You don’t always have to take the initiative to organize local events, but be on the lookout for them. If there’s an event somewhere close, bring your brand there. Even a small stall can go a long way of promoting and engaging with the people. In the case of florists, you can even donate bouquets of flowers and help with the decoration of local events. A sash bearing your shop’s name should do the trick, but going beyond won’t be much harm.

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Floral Teams

Aside from events, you can also sponsor teams in the community. A great example would be sponsoring local sports teams that the community itself supports. Let your brand show on their shirts, or donate some materials like water bottles branded with your shop. It’s a win-win situation: you get to help out people who are passionate about something and let them take their chances to bigger and greater places, and you get advertising not just to your community, but also to the bigger and greater places that the teams will go.

Loyalty Program

In these days of subscriptions and memberships, people appreciate being an honored and special part of something. By implementing a loyalty program and offering memberships, you incentivize long-term customers and keep them to your shop, as well as entice new ones to stay with your shop. People under these programs can also become your strongest patrons and advocates once you do your campaigns right.

As a bonus, adding a referral system in your loyalty program can encourage new customers to try out your services and products by incentivizing their first purchases to be discounted, for example.

Under these programs, you can also have giveaways and special promos, helping to generate buzz and interest around your shop.

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Floral Talk

Word of mouth can travel fast, so gather up positive comments among your customers. Ask them what they prefer with your services, highlighting what they liked most. As long as you remind them and thank them for it, the impression lasts.

If you maintain a blog (which we recommend you do), then collate these testimonials and post them there. Since these are all comments from real customers, they are more reliable reviews and posting media that supports their comments (e.g. posting pictures of their bouquets when they liked the arrangement) can generate interest toward your shop.

Know your Customers

The end goal of all these might be to primarily generate interest around your brand, but there is one more thing that you can do while engaging the community: getting to know them. Getting to understand the community and their needs and wants can be crucial to the planning of your products and services. You might want to know when they are most likely to buy flowers and capitalize on that. You can even keep track of best-selling bouquets and flowers. Ultimately, trying to actively know your audience as you engage with them can give very good insights about them.

Engagement with the local community is incredibly easy because they’re just there. There is no need for heavy logistics and trying to make a great first impression. You only need to make the effort to approach the people, and once people get familiar with you, they’ll start to gravitate toward your shop. Eventually, your efforts will be repaid, and sales will boost greatly, simply because you treat your very first customers well, and this can ripple toward the rest of your customer base.

Florists, what is something you do to stay engaged with your community? Please share your comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Everyone has the same 24-hour day, but some people can achieve so much in this span of time!

The key to this mystery is time management, and everyone from students to business owners like us florists can benefit greatly from managing our time wisely.

Time management allows you to increase productivity by streamlining your processes into manageable bits. Aside from that, it makes work less stressful because everything you do is managed in a way that’s most efficient for you and your team. Ultimately, time management improves all aspects of a flower shop and it will show in your books.

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Daily Planner for Florists

One of the simplest ways to time management is to get a daily planner, whether it be physical or digital. For individuals and self-management, physical planners give you a tangible reminder about the planner so that you will not forget about having it in the first place. However, electronic planners have the advantage of being able to manage not just your time, but also your team members’. Many checklists and team collaboration tools are available on the Internet, but the larger concern is not which platform you should use, but how your team uses it.

SMART Florists

No matter which tool you choose, make sure that the tasks you delegate to your members and to follow the SMART approach.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. 

Tasks need to be specific and straight to the point so that everyone else will know what it means and what to do when it is delegated to them. A good example is that instead of saying “Arrange inventory,” it’s better to say “Move the old stocks to the back storage.” Being specific also helps in clarifying possible ambiguities.

Measurable tasks make them easier to manage because it clearly shows progress in the task. If they are put off or cannot be finished within the initial timeframe, it is easy to pick it up the next time because you know specifically where to start with it. Instead of saying “Finish orders,” saying “Finish 10 orders” makes it easier to know how many orders you need to finish and how many you need to do if ever you can’t finish it right away.

Attainable tasks mean that they can be attained easily with the given timeframe reasonably. This might need your knowledge of the team’s strengths and you can delegate tasks to people who can do the tasks better than others and before the deadline. This is largely dependent on your team but a quick tip is to delegate smaller tasks or break down big tasks into smaller bits. Instead of saying “Finish a bouquet,” saying “Propose a design,” then “Design the bouquet,” then “Arrange the flowers,” can be so much better because the bigger tasks can be delegated to multiple people at once.

Relevant and timely tasks refer to the urgency of the tasks. During high time of flower orders, it might be more relevant and timely to prioritize orders, while during the low time it’s better to prioritize shop expansions. Being able to properly recognize the urgency of the tasks to be delegated is a great help in this regard.

The SMART approach is a really good way of managing your tasks, and ultimately, your time. However, there are still many other ways to improve your productivity.

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Florist Time

With the tasks you have, try to measure how much time it takes you to do specific tasks. Identify possible slowdowns or roadblocks in these tasks, then try to improve that regard. For example, if you find yourself taking way too long in finishing a single order, try to find what makes you take too long in an order. Is it the lack of inventory, or the time it takes to move around the shop to get the items? If so, try to order ahead for the former reason, or try to rearrange the shop for the latter reason. Always aim for a measurable improvement in tasks.

Florist Priorities

Prioritization is also crucial in time management. This might be the most important part of it, even. Try to mark urgent, non-urgent and repeat tasks differently, then prioritize them in that order. Urgent tasks can be those which are highly time-constrained, such as express orders. Non-urgent tasks can be those tasks that need not be done right away and are those that you do not do on a regular basis. Repeat tasks are those tasks that you do on a regular basis, although some repetitive tasks can be delegated to urgent tasks, depending on the situation.

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The Pareto principle. Being able to identify the “vital few,” or the 20% that produces 80% of your outcome, from the “useful many” and prioritizing them properly is key to successful time management. To stay on top of all your responsibilities, you should also always try to check all your to-dos and remind your team to check their to-dos. With this single reminder, all your other reminders will fall into place.

With proper time management, not only will your productivity around your shop increase, but you will also have time for yourself, to relax and chill after having a successful day at work, since you have everything at work tidied up.

Florists, what are some ways you prioritize things at work or tools you use for time management? Share your comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Florists interact with charitable donations in many ways!

Donating allows you to help other people in need and give back to your community. Businesses have more incentive to donate, too—charitable giving is good PR, and if your donations qualify, you can get tax deductions.

As much good as donating can be, you want to be careful about doing so. Here are some dos and don’ts of donating so that you can be sustainable and helpful to the community.

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Donating Based on Finances 

The first rule is a simple one: only donate within the limits of your business. Most businesses donate a small percentage of their gross yearly income, around 6%. You can follow that number, or adjust it accordingly. You can also just have a donation fund among your finances, specifically used for donations to charities.

If your finances are unstable or you are having trouble with making a profit, then don’t donate beyond what you can. If you want to save up, you can do volunteerism on charities rather than simply giving money. The disadvantage of this is that most of the time, you cannot use time donated for tax deductions, however, materials and mileage used towards volunteering can qualify, so keep track of these.

Floral Business Values

Donate to charities that align with your business’s values. Try to focus on local groups, because as florists, our brand and revenue benefit more from the vicinity. Getting more hands-on and involved with in your area helps in getting known and getting your name out.

Although you can also opt to donate to national charities, it might be hard to get your brand recognized, and staying near has more benefits on your community in the first place.

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Donating Smartly

Donating smartly means making sure that the charity you’re donating to is a legitimate 501(c)(3) registered with the Internal Revenue Service so that your donations will qualify for a tax deduction. There are some online services that you can use to validate a charity for this purpose.

Meanwhile, other services will help evaluate the impact of your donation—even some well-known charities may allocate funds less effectively than other charities, meaning a local donation for instance will have less weight in your community.

If you are volunteering, try to make some promotional events about them to get the word out, inspire some outside volunteers and earn some good PR.

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Tracking Donations

Keep track of your donations! This is by far the most important part of donating for a business. You need to know how your donations are considered according to the tax rules. You might need to file a tax return where you itemize all your deductions.

You’ll also need a proof of your donation so that you can file for a tax deduction. Material donations usually take on fair market value. Being diligent in keeping track of your forms will get you a long way with them.

Donating has always been a direct form of a humanitarian action, a way of helping out people and causes in need of aid. Not only is it good for PR and tax deductions, it also boosts employee morale, because it makes them feel that they are doing something good for the community as part of your shop. However, one of the biggest pluses of donating is that it shows that you care about the community, and you are trying to make it a better place to stay on, for everyone.

Florists, do you have any advice on donations? Please share your comments below! 

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

As a business owner, there may come a time to embark on a new adventure!

You might have also found that your business is ripe for sale!

The general technical term of selling and buying a business is “mergers and acquisitions,” commonly shortened to M&A, and this process can take a fairly long time to process, anywhere from 6 months to several years. However, in order to actually sell your business, you should prime your business so that potential buyers will surely buy it and you can sell it to its maximum value.

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Keeping Records

One of the most important ways to prepare your business for sale is to keep your books and accounting records clean, transparent, and organized.

When buyers seek to buy your business, financial records are one of the first things they will ask to see. Businesses that follow generally accepted accounting practices are also valued higher than those that don’t. It also gives the image of a well-managed business, so you should try to ask help from your dedicated accountants, or hire an accounting firm to do the job for you. Buyers will look for the past five years of your records, so preparing these is crucial.

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Prepare Your Floral Business

To fully prepare your business for a new owner, it should also have management that’s not heavily dependent on the owner. Your employees should not be reliant on you to function efficiently. You need to put up an effective organizational chart that clearly shows the chain of command.

You also need to establish a clear set of goals and objectives (often in the form of a vision) which guide the processes and operations in the business. By making your manpower self-sufficient, you can assure the buyer that the business will not go down by the time it is sold to them.

Establishing a good image for your business’s brand also helps increase the valuation of your business. A good way to create that image is to boost your online presence, such as in social media and search engines, optimizing it to be more easily found. You should try to make your website and social media ratings to be positive.

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Lastly, think over about when you want to sell your business. Selling a business is often regarded as a smart business move for entrepreneurs, but you also need to be smart about when. You are a veteran in the industry, you know the trends and therefore you know when your business can be most valuable. Take advantage of this time and prep your business for selling.

Florists, have you sold or purchased your flower shop recently? What are some good key advice for those who are wanting to sell or purchase a flower shop? Please share your comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Why should florists keep their software up to date?

You might think it odd for florists to spend time finding the right software tools. After all, most of your job revolves around having a good eye for design and a floral touch. However, when you get into the business, you’ll quickly realize that having convenient software tools is essential.

There are software applications available that let you create customer accounts where you can store related information like saved addresses and preferences as well as their order history. You may also have a website to allow customers to order online. Perhaps the most important reason for this focus on software is because of credit cards, in order to have the right software to handle payments from different cards.

Florist Point of Sale Software

Some of the software applications that you might need are POS software. A POS, or point-of-sale system, for a flower shop, needs to have a database that lets you store customer accounts and do the things mentioned above.

A good florist POS system should also allow you to process cards from different merchants or your own. 

There are also the management systems which can include a POS system, among other things. Some advanced management systems let you store and even create event proposals with ease, some even providing you with a professional template to start with.

This also lets you generate reports in either a weekly or monthly basis. One other great feature of these management systems is that they can track your sales, with integration with your POS system, which is perfect for your accounting books. There are many other kinds of software applications that can be helpful to a flower shop, like Floranext Advanced Point of Sale. 

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Keeping Software Updated

Many companies don’t bother updating their programs, and some even refuse to update, thinking it’s just a waste of time and disk space. Little do many people know that working with outdated software brings greater risks to your workflow, and can bring more inconvenience rather than help. Many are skeptical of updates, but here are a few reasons that you should not be!

Updates, especially those that improve the program into a new version, usually bring a new array of features for the software. These new features can be useful to add to your workflow, especially the quality-of-life feature improvements, and some are just fancy features that you can freely turn off or opt-out if you don’t feel like using it.

New features can also let you stay on top of the latest trends in the industry. When there are new standards rising like the digital wallet, updating can let you cater to new trends with no problem.

Minor updates, on the other hand, tend to fix bugs that have been reported. This is one of the biggest reasons for you to update your software to the latest version. If you are one of the users who are experiencing these bugs, then it is imperative for you to indeed update, no excuses.

With software programs that are cloud-based, like Floranext, your software is automatically updated when bugs are fixed or new features are developed. 

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Along with fixing bugs, the latest version of the software overall improves the reliability of the program. In time- and performance-critical fields like businesses, reliability is champ, and developers understand this.

That’s why they encourage you to update to the latest version because they have tested it to be more reliable than the one before. You would not want your POS system to break down while you’re handling payments, right? 

Again having cloud-based software like Floranext Point Of Sale System, your system is automatically upgraded to the latest update. 

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Create Beautiful and Profesional Proposals with BloomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software

BloomsBy supports floral designers every step of their floral event planning. You can create professional wedding/event proposals, increase profits, create floral contracts, stem counts, and collect payments all with BloomsBy’s floral wedding management software available on PC/Mac and iPad app. 

Try BloomsBy Today!

Features of BloomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software

Make Your Job Easier

With BloomsBy Proposals, floral designers can create beautiful and professional proposals in a matter of seconds. No more lost and cluttered information, keep track of your clients requests in one location.

Easy to Use

With the new BloomsBy Proposal user interface, BloomsBy proposals are easy to create, organize and manage. Floral designers are able to build a floral arrangement from the bottom up with flowers and supplies.

Customize Each Proposal Email

Add your business’ personal touch by adding a personalized message to each proposal with a customizable email template. Each client is different and adding that personal touch matters.

Inspiration Page 

Add your customer’s inspirational photos to the proposal as a guide for creating the flowers for their special event. 

Take Payments

Track, schedule, and take customer credit cards for deposits and payments.

Increase Your Profits

Add markup, labor and then easily check to make sure you are pricing your flowers correctly. Making sure your weddings and events are fairly priced yet profitable.

Flower Catalog

With the BloomsBy Proposals flower catalog, it gives you the opportunity to record your pricing for your flowers and use these to help build your beautiful and professional proposals.

Building Components

Build components like bridal bouquets, boutonnieres and more by adding the specified number of flowers for every arrangement.

Shopping Lists

Flowers and supplies composed to build your proposals can help generate a shopping list to order flowers and supplies.

Cloud-Based Software

Use BloomsBy proposals on your own computers, choose the best platform for you. Available on PC/MAC and iPad App.

Why try BloomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software?

BloomsBy understands that florist wedding and events are a core part of a floral business and creating beautiful proposals can be challenging.

We’ve all been there before: notes, images, spreadsheets, word documents and countless emails sent back and forth between your clients can be a nightmare. So why not use one program to make professional proposals and keep everything organized?

Get rid of the multiple programs and keep everything organized with BlooomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software. 

Start giving your wedding and event proposals more impact with BlooomsBy Wedding Floral Management Software today and focus on what’s really important, your floral business!

Try BloomsBy Today!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

A flower shop is a business—you need to make sure that it is profitable and sustainable.

Luckily, there are many metrics to objectively measure your business’s performance. Aside from helping make sure that your business is doing well, these metrics are also going to be measured when you’re trying to get a bank loan, for example.

Having an idea about how your business is doing, supported by hard numbers on the table, can help you plan ahead and make adjustments to your current shop’s workflow. You can also readily adjust your pricing formula, and even see what needs to be improved in your shop, from your equipment to your workforce, just by taking a look at these metrics. That’s how powerful these metrics can be!

Let’s dive deep into these metrics and how you can use them to be fully aware of your business’s current standing.

Floral Shop Operating Expenses

Kicking off with operating expenses or overhead, these are those costs that are not products, like electricity and marketing. Expenses that you incur that are related to your working and shop space, be it rent or utilities, count as this metric.

As a good rule of thumb, operating expenses shouldn’t go past 10% of your total sales revenue.

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Flower Shop Payroll

Payroll and salary expenses are also one important thing to be kept track by florists. Many shops require other floral designers and employees. Because of that, we can spend a great deal on payroll because we rely on manpower to create our main products.

Labor costs can also easily go up high because of custom orders, thus these custom orders should be priced higher than most of your services to compensate for that. Having it take at most 30% of your total sales revenue should be a good margin to maintain.

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Cost Of Goods

Then, there are COGS. The cost of goods sold includes all expenses for the production of your services that are used in the product, e.g. the flowers, vases, etc. Basically the opposite of overhead, many people can underestimate this metric because they forget to include the small or seemingly insignificant costs like the tax on the flowers and the cost of shipping.

To make sure that you are profitable, keep it below 30% of the total sale price.

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Flower Shop Revenues

Of course, you need to know how much you have earned as profit after all your expenditures. This might be the simplest one so far, as long as you got all the numbers down. The formula is simple, just take all your earnings and subtract your expenditures.

There’s also no specific threshold for this metric; you get to pick how high your net profit, as it is called, is. Your goals for the shop will most likely decide that number for you.

That was a lot of math under a lot of explanations, but it is necessary for your shop to flourish and reach its goals. You probably didn’t sign up for all this when you started up your flower shop, but keeping track of these metrics will matter a lot.

Florists, do you use these metrics at your business? Have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions, please share below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

Are you looking to purchase a flower shop?

Whether you are looking forward to getting started in the floral industry or you’re looking to expand, buying a flower shop carries with it a lot of advantages over starting from scratch.

Buying a flower shop saves you the struggle of a new business: building costs, hiring capable staff, acquiring equipment, and building your reputation. All it takes is ensuring that the shop you’re buying is worth your investment. Here are a few things you need to look into when buying a flower shop!

General Floral Business

In the end, a flower shop is a business, so you need to look into the profitability of the shop before delving into the specifics.

There’s a lot of business jargon that might get thrown at you, but basically, you need to look into the assets and liabilities that you get with the quoted price, from the equipment to the accounts receivable.

Sometimes, some shops might be valued higher because of goodwill or intangible assets of the business (eg. reputation and branding). You should absolutely ask to see their work, so you can see if it’s worth the asking price.

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Floral Shop Documents

If you are serious about buying that shop, you will also need to go through the managerial, financial and legal documents of the business. Examining these documents can give you a rough idea of how well the business has been doing for the past year or so, and it can help you understand its valuation. Cash flow statements, customer lists, and existing contracts are some of these documents. Asking for help from an attorney or M&A professional can be invaluable.

Flower Shop Equipment

Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the shop and see if it is indeed the flower shop that you’ve been looking to work on.

A flower shop and its flowers thrive on great and reliable equipment, thus you should check up on its facilities. Check if they are still in good working condition and if they will be for the foreseeable future. Coolers, most especially, play a big part in the flower shop business, so you shouldn’t cut corners and make sure the one provided in the shop is a definite asset and not a liability to be replaced.

Some equipment and supplies might not have aged well, so you should take a look at those which might need to be replaced. It might be a frustrating buy if you can’t have the shop up and running right when you purchase it because of these hindrances. You can negotiate with the owner to even get them fixed it up for the purchase.

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Floral Business Relationships

Knowing the shop’s current flower providers, and how economic the relationship has been between them is very important. You can also see if you can find better options and deals around. You also need to check if the shop is in a wire service and if they are still paying for the hardware of the service. You can opt-out of the service if you wish, too, once you acquire it.

Flower Shop Employees

Finally, you need to see the workforce of the shop. Management might change, but the employees don’t have to. Some might leave together with the original owner, while the owner themselves might stick around to help you learn the ropes around running a flower shop.

Of course, with new management, you might also change up a few policies around human resources, so taking a look at the current state can help you decide that. Hiring and firing people can also be a part of that process, so long as you can present a reasonable explanation. The important part is to have a team that can survive the shift in ownership and stay efficient and profitable nevertheless.

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Flower shops are usually the fruits of someone’s labor and passion for the most beautiful members of nature. It might have been the hardest decision for them to put up a price tag on it for whatever reason they might have. As a flower shop’s future owner, the best that you can do is make sure that their life’s work continues on, now with the renewed vigor of a fresh proprietor.

Florists, what were some items you think are important when purchasing a new or current business that you can share with our readers, please share your comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.

There are important tools to help automate your florist social media accounts!

Simply put, social media automation software is used to automate or semi-automate the management of (usually) multiple social media accounts, from posting content to replying to comments and messages. They alleviate the painstaking process of going through each platform by providing a single place to manage them all.

Most of these tools will allow you to post to multiple accounts simultaneously or schedule them on specified dates, some even going the extra mile of giving you statistics about how your content has been performing.

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Sendible

If you’re savvy with social media automation already, you might have expected Hootsuite to lead the pack in this article, but we opted for an undiscovered alternative gem, thus we introduce you to Sendible.

Users have raved and reviewed it to be better than Hootsuite, offering a similar set of features despite it being a newer one. They offer support for the major social media platforms (Facebook and Facebook Ads, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) as well as some well-known blogging platforms (WordPress, Medium, and Tumblr).

Sendible’s dashboard is considered cleaner than Hootsuite’s streams, as it puts everything in only one timeline, but you have control over what pops up in it.

Publishing and scheduling posts to multiple accounts are made easier to keep track of because of their content calendar, giving you visual reminders of the posts. Moreover, they have an integrated approval workflow, so everyone working on your accounts gets a say about each post or content before it goes live to your account.

Their social listening statistics are great for keeping up with your brand’s reputation in the platform, as well know how your accounts have been faring. You can export these reports and statistics to help you analyze how your social media accounts are doing, and make a move according to these reports.

Sendible offers affordable plans for using their services, but their mid-tier plan is the sweet spot for getting access to all these great features while paying an affordable fee for it, making it a perfect social media automation tool for small and medium businesses.

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Sprout Social

Sprout Social supports the same major social media platforms as Sendible, but without the blogging platforms. Their dashboard is called Smart Inbox, which manages private messages, mentions, likes, and other interactions on your social media timelines. There, you can also filter messages and monitor keywords and hashtags.

They also have automation tools like the Bot Builder, which you can use on Facebook Messages and Twitter DMs, to help you with the bulk of messages that can be easily answered. Sprout Queue is their fancy name for the queue of the posts that you schedule ahead of time, while ViralPost lets Sprout Social decide what’s the optimal time for your posts to go online, by analyzing your audience engagements.

Team collaboration tools are also available, from letting you see which items are finished and even letting multiple members work on a single item.

Tagging items helps with organization, which is incredibly useful for large teams. Most of all, Sprout Social is well-known for its top-notch reports and analytics, which are very easy to understand.

For all its glory, Sprout Social can fall off in its prices, being priced rather luxuriously. However, if you are indeed serious in your social media marketing, the plans will be definitely worth it.

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There are still a lot of other social media automation tools like Buffer, SocialPilot, Hootsuite, and eClincher. Each of them offers varying degrees of support to the major social platforms and sometimes blogging platforms, and their core features are similar, if not the same. The main differences usually boil down to customer preference and user experience.

The goal of these tools is simple: to make social media marketing as easy as possible. Streamlining a process of posting similar content across multiple platforms, social media automation tools are too integral to an online marketer’s toolkit, their benefits usually worth the price tag they don. And if you are well on your way to take social media marketing seriously, then you will definitely need to pick up one.

Florists, are you currently using an automatic social media tool? What are your recommendations to other florists? please share your comments below!

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Floranext makes great florist software. Florist websites, floral POS, florist wedding/event proposal software, and florist technology. Let us know if you want a free demo or try our software for free here.