Florists’ goal is to make money doing the thing they love most!

Writing technical papers like business plans sounds like a lot of work, and you may think it’s irrelevant for someone who’s starting out. However, business plans are even more important for a business early on.

What Makes a Floral Business Plan Important

A business plan guides your helps you track your long-term objectives and the strategies you use to achieve them. Planning is crucial in business because we are not simply dealing with money; time and effort are on the line—your time, and everyone helping you. Also, formalizing your vision helps you assess your current position and your capabilities of reaching it.

Aside from that, business plans let you plan ahead for possible problems you might get into. This requires you to analyze the market trend of flowers around your area, and look into your possible competitors. By getting this knowledge, you can appropriately predict possible highs and lows of the industry.

Business plans are also a requirement to get a loan from most banks. Banks need to determine if you can, at minimum, pay the loan back. This is very important especially for newcomers and people who plan upgrades to their shop.

Parts of a Business Plan

Title Page

The title page contains all the basic information about your flower shop, which includes your shop’s name, address, your name as the owner (and of others who co-own the shop), and other relevant information like the registration number of your business (if you have any, this may vary by area). It should also contain your business logo.

Executive Summary

The summary of your business plan, It has its own parts in it: (a) the business summary, (b) the future summary, (c) the market summary, and (d) the finance summary.

The business summary basically contains all the basic information related to your shop (think title page but more comprehensive).

The future summary outlines your vision for your shop, as well as your goals and objectives.

The market summary contains the information you’ve gathered about your customers and the marketing strategies you’ll use.

Lastly, the finance summary contains your expected sales, the money you need to start up, where you’ll get these funds and other monetary information. It should tell the reader your current financial position.

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Management Plan

The management plan or the operations section contains all the nitty-gritty details of your business, from your flower suppliers, equipment, and production processes to your inventory, payment modes, operating hours, and communication channels. You can list out the products and services you plan to deliver. This can easily become the longest and important part of the business plan, so take your time writing this part.

Marketing Plan

As the name suggests, the marketing plan contains your analysis about your potential customers and competitors. It also includes your key marketing strategies that you plan to implement for your shop, such as running special discounts on holidays and other special occasions.

Future Plan

Again, the name suggests that the future plan contains your prospective plans for your shop. Here you can state your vision for your shop (something like the “premier flower business in the locale”) and your business goals. It is important to not just think of quick goals to attain but rather long-term goals that you hope to achieve.

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Financial Plan

The financial plan contains everything about your shop’s finances. Here, you go into detail about the cash flow of your business. You are expected to list out your current creditors and debtors, your source of funding, and your projected cash flow; these are often tabulated with the figures and dates. If you have been working on your business plan with your shop already up and running, you can also add a profit and loss statement.

Supporting Documentation

At this part of the business plan, you can include some documents that are relevant to your business: permits, maps, financial tables, and other attachments that readers of your plan might use to refer.

Florists, do you have a business plan in place, What are some things you put in place that could help other florists, please share your comments down 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 present-day florist, you need to diversify the services you offer to stay above your competition.

We all know that simply selling flowers doesn’t cut it in the floral industry and economy of today. That’s why florists offer delivery, holiday decorating, weddings and event florals, and many other products and services to help business thrive. Organizing workshops is one technique we’d like to spotlight today that helps draw in potential customers and serves as a way to give back to the community.

A floral workshop is a space you can personally engage with your customers. You can do many kinds of workshops, from general flower arranging, caring for various houseplants, to arranging for different occasions and flowers.

Preparing the space and materials for the workshops can be hard work, but another part of the preparation that many florists forget is getting the word out about your workshops. What use are your workshops if only a few people attend it? The good news is thanks to the proliferation of social media, spreading the word about something has never been easier.

Florist Marketing Materials

First off, you should have marketing materials ready at your disposal. To be able to reach as much audience as you can, you should reach out to as many media outlets as possible and have appropriate materials for each medium. One important marketing material is the poster, one that you can physically print out to be posted in your immediate vicinity like your shop, community boards, and other places in your area that allows you to post such materials. 

You also need to have a virtual copy of that poster for a variety of purposes online, mainly for your newsletters (if you have one) and your social media networks. For newsletters, you can just reuse that same poster and maybe add more information, as well as an invite link to online registration if available.

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Social Media Marketing

In social media, you’ll have to put in a bit more effort. To effectively let your marketing material catch attention, your poster must be designed so that it contains all the pertinent information in one go. You will need to take advantage of the thumbnail sizes of each social media platform so that when people scroll through your post on their timeline, they don’t need to click on the image to see the information they need and you can avoid cropping out important details. Here are some thumbnail sizes of some social media sites:

Facebook: Facebook automatically generates a thumbnail for images with a maximum aspect ratio of 2:3 (vertical). A good poster to post in Facebook would then have the same aspect ratio , or a shorter aspect ratio (up to 1:1 or a square) to avoid having any part of your poster cropped out. If you opt for a landscape poster, take note that Facebook will simply scale down your image to 500 px wide, retaining the aspect ratio. Make sure the details are still clear once viewed.

Twitter: Like Facebook, Twitter also generates thumbnails for images. Tweets with single images display their photos to an aspect ratio of 2:1 (landscape), so horizontal posters work best there. Posters that are 1024 px wide and 512 px tall are good enough for Twitter.

Instagram: Once renowned for square photos, Instagram has since then supported non-square photos, but this aspect ratio is still the popular choice among users, thus it’s the safest go-to aspect ratio for the site. For horizontal posters, you can go up to an aspect ratio of 16:9, while portrait photos go up to 4:5 before anything gets cropped out. Letting any dimension reach 1080 px is good enough for Instagram (for example, 1080 x 1080 square photo).

Facebook, Instagram Stories and Snapchat (and all similar platforms): Stories are all portrait pictures, and generally have an aspect ratio of 16:9. However, you don’t have to focus on this; posting the same image that you did to the main platform will work.

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Be Excited About Your Event!

After the visual materials, you need to show enthusiasm about your own event, and let that positive energy spread. Facebook, especially, helps you do so with Events, which works like a normal Page, but for specific events with a date and time. Putting up posts works like normal, so you can pretty much easily pick it up the first time.

Keep the customers excited by slowly giving a sneak peek at the materials, venue, and things to learn. Dropping tidbits of your preparations let them be part of the event way before it even started, and it might even spark interest for those who weren’t interested beforehand. Engage with the people who comment on those posts by replying, always reminding them to attend the event and let them you are excited they’re coming. To encourage people to interact with your posts, incentivize engagements by giving discount coupons or something similar.

You also have to manage the frequency of the posts. Posting too much can intimidate customers or give them a blind spot for the event, while posting too little can allow them to forget about the event entirely. Posting once per day until the day of the event should be your goal.

Workshops can be tiring to execute, but at the end of the day, if done well they will contribute positively to your business and help your business grow.

Florists, what are some ways you promote or market your workshops? 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.

Flowers speak a visual language in the natural world, communicating with colors and shapes.

Flowers also have meanings and connotations that we have devised for them. As a florist, you can take advantage of this beauty because people nowadays have become especially receptive to visual content. Given the rise of platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, making use of this high time for visual content is a no-brainer.

How do you take advantage of this, you ask? By creating visual content like pictures and videos! To do so, you can set up your space to be perfect for photo shoots. Today we will be discussing how to make the perfect DIY flower photo studio right at your shop, with little cost!

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A DIY Photo Studio’s Physical Look

First and foremost, the most important thing we need for our DIY photo studio is the space. There should be some dedicated space around your shop for a photo studio. Consider the following:

Natural Lighting

In photography, nothing beats natural lighting in terms of its cost and effectiveness. Preferably, your photo studio should be near a large window, where you can have natural light from outside most part of the day. If natural lighting is hard to come by, then don’t fret, because artificial lighting will save the day (see below). But again, nothing can still beat natural lighting, so do your best to find a good space for this.

Space

This shouldn’t be that big an issue for florists; the largest single arrangement you may need to take a picture of is a wedding or funeral piece. However, your photo studio should still be spacious not just for the products but for your camera set-up. Give enough distance between your products and your camera, and for your artificial lighting rig.

Furniture

For the most part, you will only need a table (preferably circular) or a bouquet stand when you take pictures. A folding table is useful since it can be folded and tucked away when you need your space back. Keeping a chair around is a no-brainer, too.

Backdrops

If you happen to have a white wall in the space, then you probably don’t need any other backdrop—that’s more than enough for basic photography. If you want to get more creative with your flower shots, you can hand paint materials like a wooden board or canvas to make textured backdrops. With a bit of ingenuity, you should get fairly decent backdrops with that method.

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After choosing your space, we will deal with lighting and how to manipulate it. As said before, natural light is by far the cheapest and cost-effective light source that you can have. With natural light, you can get by with only a white cloth or cardboard as light diffusers. However, if it cannot be helped, you can use artificial lighting.

Artificial light’s main advantage is your full control over them, but as a part-time flower photographer, this may not mean much to you. In photography, there are two types of artificial lighting: continuous and flash. Continuous (or constant) light sources are similar to natural light, and should be the most relevant type of artificial light for you. Flash light sources can be used in very niche situations, so you might not need to get one right away.

Even though artificial lighting sounds like it’s going to break the bank, with some creativity an ordinary desk lamp can go a long way for your flower photography. Any similar, or larger lamps can work for your set-up, too.

After deciding your lighting set-up, you should also get light modifiers in cases where your current set-up produces bad results. Some basic light modifiers are umbrellas, softboxes, and reflectors. In fact, in tight budgets, you could get by with just an umbrella and DIYing your softbox by covering a standing lamp with a white cotton or silk cloth. For reflectors, any material white and flat enough should work.

Studio Set-up

Now that we have our space, we need to set it up as a photo studio. As a quick rule of thumb, you should make sure to put your flowers or products near the light source to get as much even light as possible. Keeping this in mind, a good position to start with is having the table placed perpendicular to your light source, letting the light face the side of the product. Opposite the window and past the table is your reflector, to help distribute light evenly into the product. Put up your backdrop behind the table and your camera set-up in front. This should be  your basic set-up for most cases.

Of course, you can freely change this set-up for specific scenes that you might to play with. Don’t hesitate to add more objects as you see fit, as much as your studio allows.

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A DIY Flower Photographer’s Tools

As a florist-turned-DIY flower photographer, you might be thinking that you need to splurge hard for your tools, especially with the camera. However, for all intents and purposes that will be covered by your studio, smartphone cameras are actually decent enough.

With today’s camera technologies, smartphones can deliver DSLR-level images with little to no fuss. Of course, dedicated cameras will still be superior over these devices, but for someone like us, newbie photographers who may not know much about photography, a good eye for images is all we need with our smartphones to make it work. Not only is it cheap, it is also convenient.

If you really want to get into the dedicated camera route, and you are confident about learning photography tricks with it, we recommend getting cameras that allow manual settings for exposure and aperture—most cameras on the market should allow at least this much.

Aside from your camera, one crucial tool that you will need is the tripod. No matter what camera you use, stability is important in taking that perfect shot. You should get the appropriate tripod that you will need for your set-up, there’s no avoiding this.

Lastly, to finish off your photo studio, you will need your knowledge as a florist to make everything work. As a florist, you have a keen eye as to which flowers look best and how well these flowers will look. You should let your creative florist heart lead each photo shoot to make sure that you capture the flowers’ beauty in its entirety, and be able to enrapture potential customers.

As a budding flower photographer, you don’t need to start out with the professional tools to be able to put out quality content. With a little bit of creativity and ingenuity, you can get by with a small budget and deliver beautiful pictures that give the flowers justice in their images.

Florists, how are you taking photos of your arrangements now? Any plans to change your setup? Share your thoughts and ideas 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.

Online advertising, online promotions, and online visibility are all musts to stay relevant with your target audience.

Facebook has had the biggest user base among all social media networks, boasting 2 billion users globally. However, the story is dim for Facebook’s younger user base in the United States.

For the past two years, Facebook has lost 15 million users, and the majority of them are teenagers and young adults. Instagram, a social media network also owned by Facebook, is experiencing the reverse of that trend: in the same span of time, its user base composition of teens rose from 64% to 66%.

Snapchat, another social media network with a similar form as Instagram, is also experiencing the same trend.

Still, Facebook remains relevant as a platform for businesses, given its user count and expansive set of tools for advertising. However, Instagram and Snapchat become new pastures to be ventured or focused on, and the motivation to put out visual content is ever so higher.

Prioritizing these platforms is critical for businesses whose audience are the tweens, and we florists hit that criteria. So get your cameras and flowers out and start taking photos!

Pricing in Floral Advertising

Since Instagram is slowly entering as one of our main platforms to focus on, we’ll be dealing with its pricing strategies for advertising. However, spoiler alert: there are no clear-cut prices for it. Reasonable estimates round off to be $0.20-$2 per click or $5 per 1,000 visitors, depending on the advertising model that you want to do.

There are many factors that affect the price on Instagram. If you are familiar with Facebook’s advertising tools, then you’ll also know how Instagram advertising works, since Facebook, as the owner of Instagram, uses the same set of tools. 

Facebook’s advertising system works like an auction, and thus the pricing varies depending on a lot of factors. Instagram demographics are usually feminine, with a youth bias, and targeting this demographic will increase the price.

The factors that affect the pricing are the amount you are willing to bid for your campaign, your ads’ Relevance Score (determined by the quality of your ad, among other things), and your estimated action rates (how likely your audience will do your desired outcome, i.e. interact with it).

In this auction system, they subsidize relevant ads. To quote Facebook, “an ad that’s relevant to a person could win an auction against ads with higher bids.” The important part here is to note that ad quality and relevance matter in their pricing. 

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Florists and Search Engines

In the world of the search engine, Yelp has partnered with Bing for better local Bing search results.

For example, Yelp reviews of local businesses will now show up on Bing’s search results page. Much like in the form of Google My Business and their Google reviews, you can also sort these reviews into Recent, Critical, and Favorable.

For businesses with multiple locations, it gives users the option to go through each location’s reviews. Information about businesses is also now available in Bing’s knowledge panel, courtesy of Yelp.

Yelp has always been a people’s favorite for assessing the quality of business places, and thus you should always maintain a good standing there. However, with this partnership with Bing, Yelp data are now more visible and thus you should be more mindful of them now.

Remind yourself to reply to reviews in Yelp; express gratitude and encourage people who left good reviews to come back, dropping possible offers or promos, and inquire and attempt to resolve issues addressed in the reviews, replying back if it has been done.

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The world is not living in two versions of reality as you might think; the digital reality is interacting with our reality in very close-knit ways. Taking advantage of this will not give your business an even edge but rather a requirement in today’s fast-paced world.

Florists must be up to date with these business practices to stay relevant. Keeping yourself updated with changes in social media, search engines, and more can help make your business grow.

Florists, are you using Instagram, Snapchat, or Yelp to promote your Floral business? Any suggestions, comments, or ideas that could help 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.

Today’s consumers rely heavily on the internet for everything, and shopping for flowers is no exception. That’s why your online presence must be strong!

Search engine optimization should focus on customers in your direct vicinity. Local SEO is important, perhaps even more so than general SEO, because your direct source of reliable income will be the customers nearest to you. so optimizing your online presence that will prioritize them should be the first step for your business SEO.

So, search engine optimization, as its name suggests, allows your business website to be easily seen at the top of search results, thus increasing your online visibility. The best way to go about your first steps of SEO is through Google My Business.

Florist Tools For SEO

For starters, Google My Business is a free tool that Google provides that helps business owners manage their online presence across Google’s services, particularly Search and Maps. It helps you organize information about your business, and complements your website if you have one. Optimizing your Google My Business listing is important since 90% of organic searches are from Google itself. GMB also seamlessly connects Local Search and Maps, saving you the effort of optimizing for two of the most useful Google services for businesses. But most of all, what makes it really attractive as an SEO tool is the arsenal of tools it has to manage your online presence effectively.

How to Start with Google My Business

So, to start with Google My Business, you’ll need a Google account. It’s best to make a separate account for your business, or use the one you want to be associated with your business. Proceed to google.com/business and click on the “Start Now” button at the upper right corner. From there on, fill up the basic information about your business.

Google also lets you set up the service area so that they can set it up for Local Search and Maps. There are five ways to verify your listing, so you can choose which way is easiest or most convenient for you. Putting up your store’s operating hours helps people know when you’re also available.

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Google My Business Profile

After dealing with the basics, we should go over to the rest of your business’s listing. Go through your business profile and fill up as much information as you can, because anyone can “suggest an edit” to your listing for missing information, so getting accurate information the first time is crucial.

Upload as many images and as high-quality as possible; according to Google, businesses with photos see 35% more clicks to their website and 42% higher requests for driving directions in Maps. These images should showcase as much of your business as possible so that people can easily spot your business when they go past it. 

After your listing goes live, people going through it can also leave reviews about your business. In this case, you should try to be as responsive to all reviews as possible, whether the review is positive or negative. This way, people will see that you care about how satisfied your customers were after availing your services.

Thank customers for leaving positive reviews, encourage them to come back and maybe even drop an offer for a new service. For negative reviews, aim to resolve the issue, and get back to them if you have done something to fix it. Each response is a mark of sincerity for your dedication to customer satisfaction.

Continue to update Google My Business

Google My Business also lets you publish posts, which you can use for announcing events, offers, new products, and more. It can be useful to get new information related to your business out to prospective customers. What makes it such a great feature is that these posts appear alongside your listing in the Google search results page, so you can put out announcements that might entice customers. It’s a terribly underrated and underused feature of Google My Business that you should check out.

Further Optimizations

As with business, improvements for GMB will always be available at any point down the road. Luckily, it also offers tools that help you know which parts of your listing might need optimizing. GMB Insights is a nifty tool that shows how people have interacted with your listing. 

The Insights panel in the Google My Business dashboard tell you (1) how many views your listing had, (2) how and where people find your listings, (3) what people do with your listings, and many more. You can work around with the information you get there to know which parts of your listing might need improvements. You might need to update information around your listing, work on places where your listing is falling off, and make good use of the ways that people interact with your listing the most.

You can also add some sort of FAQs right at your listings. Called Q&A, this section lets people ask questions about your business that you can answer. The questions stay in your listing, so you should endeavor to answer common questions that you think most people will ask. People can also drop their own questions, so you should also check it from time to time.

Of course, do not forget about updating the information in your listing whenever it changes. Keeping your listing updated is ever so crucial in this fast-paced world, and missing a beat will also let you miss a lot of potential customers.

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Keeping up with the trends of the business world can be daunting. It wasn’t until 10 years ago or so when the world became ever so dependent on the Internet for a lot of things. Businesses who wanted to be in the forefront of this era took advantage of this traffic, and Google has given businesses with the Google My Business tool to help ease the difficulty of keeping up with things like search engine optimization.

Not only does it help in your first steps in local SEO, it’s relatively easy to set up and greatly enhances your online presence, especially in Google’s most used services Search and Maps.

Florists, how has Google My Business helped increase your business’s visibility? Please share your comments, thoughts, and suggestions 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.

Social media has had an overwhelming impact on human interaction since its inception, particularly in business.

Social media has changed how people obtain information, and vastly increased the volume of content that we consume. Facebook remains the most-used social media platform, but recently its title is being threatened by another social media platform focusing on images and videos, Instagram.

Origins of Facebook

Inspired by unviersity face books which contain students’ photos and basic information, Facebook began at Harvard University in 2003 as FaceMash. It creator, Mark Zuckerburg went on to open “TheFacebook” to other Harvard students in 2004.

As time passed, membership expanded to other universities, high schools, then to private companies, until it finally opened to everyone in 2006. Since then, it has slowly accumulated users, reaching a staggering 2.3 billion active user count by December 2018. As a company, Facebook, Inc. has also acquired other services, including the photo and video-sharing social networking service, Instagram, which also boasts a user count of 1 billion as of May 2019.

As two different social networking services, Facebook and Instagram compete against each other for the same audience, despite being owned by the same company. With similar features but a radically different overall focus, both services are popular all over the globe and Facebook takes the lead for most number of active users.

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Facebook’s Decline

Over the past two years in the United States, Facebook has lost 15 million users, per a study from Edison Research and Triton Digital.

The decrease is most obvious among users aged 12-34, or teenagers and young adults. In the same age bracket and time period, Instagram showed growth, increasing from 64% to 66%. Snapchat, although outclassed by Instagram, sees the same trend across the United States and the United Kingdom.

From this data we can infer that tweens and young adults are turning to Instagram and Snapchat for their visual content, and eMarketer says the same. This does not pose a huge threat to Facebook, because they still rule the realm of social networking services. However, it will be a concern that they are losing out among younger age groups. As Facebook owns Instagram, that should soften the blow. But what does that mean for your business?

How Does This Affect Florists?

In the grand scale of things, it only slightly affects the floral industry. Facebook will remain relevant as a platform for promoting businesses for the foreseeable future, given its expansive set of tools for promotions and its largest user base compared to other services.

However, the motivation to focus on visual content becomes higher, especially for businesses whose main audience are young people, because this age group communicates most using visual content. The floral industry can greatly benefit from this traffic, as flowers speak in the same visual language. By focusing more on visuals, your floral businesses can reach your audience more easily.

Visual content is not limited to pictures, it also includes videos. Sped-up or “time lapse” videos are trending across social networks, which is a trend you can join in on with just your smartphone. You may also consider a montage of arranging the flowers for events, like weddings or parties.

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Facebook may still be the king of social media, but in light of current trends, it’s high time for industries reliant on or benefitting from visual content to expand to other platforms.

Florists, have you seen a decline in engagement on Facebook? Are you using Instagram to market your floral business? Share your comments, thoughts, and ideas 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 Caught Up on Google My Business?

Google My Business is a Google service launched about five years ago that allows businesses to make public profiles, and become more readily seen in Google Local Search and Google Maps. With over 150 million businesses registered and 3 billion consumer-merchant interactions, the platform is constantly growing, not just in user count, but also in its new features. Google My Business has launched two new features—florists, are you using these?

Florist Special Offers

Last year, Google launched the “For you” tab in the mobile Maps applications. With this update, they have allowed customers to follow businesses like yours.

Now, Google is helping businesses give incentives to people who follow them on the platform in the form of special offers. Businesses can give these special offers to people who follow them the first time around, and these people can simply show these offers to redeem them in your store.

This is a great opportunity for you to strengthen your flower shop’s online presence by encouraging customers to follow you via Google.

By introducing offers like discount and coupons for example, Google users will be more likely to start following you. Through the platform, you can then interact with them through actively posting in Google My Business about events and updates about your business, since these posts can be seen not only in Search, but also in Maps.

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Florist Short Name URLs

Google has also improved the merchant side of Google My Business by enabling businesses to have short name URLs.

Working much like Twitter handles, these short name URLs are unique and are distributed on a first come-first serve basis, so you need to be fast on your fingers here. Since the name is short, it is making them easier to share among customers and for customers to share among their circle of friends and family.

As a quality-of-life improvement, this allows people to have quick access to your Google profile. This gives emphasis to your business GMB listing, and it is almost mandatory to constantly update it, as it now becomes a hub for your potential and current customers to get news from you.

Additionally, this also makes your Google profile stand equal with your social media accounts and website, as they can now be easily accessed with short names and easy-to-remember handles.

Note: Only verified businesses can get this feature and the short name is unique across the globe, so you might want to get your hands moving fast before someone gets your desired short name first.

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Other than the two features mentioned above, Google is also making it easier for you to give quick access from any part of the online world to your Google profile with window stickers like “Follow” and “Review.” All these new features make Google My Business an even more attractive place to improve your local SEO.

As it stands, it has become a quick equivalent to a social media account for your business, and you should really treat it as such; it’s going to be the virtual face of your business and as with any face, you should keep it looking fresh and good, as the tools are also getting better and better.

Florists, have you been using these new Google My Business features? Please feel free to share thoughts and 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.

Studies show flowers helps patients recover!

Sending flowers to anyone you know that is sick or sad might be the go-to gift, but the sending of flowers is actually more helpful than you think. It might surprise you, but there are more to flowers than just the look and smell—they can have some really positive effects on your health as well.

Floral Studies

A few years ago the American Society for Horticulture Science performed a study seeing if plants have any influence on patients, and the results were outstanding. A group of patients was split into rooms with plants and flowers and the other half with no plants or flowers. The patients who had plants in their room had better results than those who did not have plants.

According to the study, those exposed to flowers and plants needed less pain medication, had lower blood pressure and heart rates, were less anxious and tired, and generally were in a more positive psychological state than patients in rooms without plants. The results of this research actually show that flowers should be offered to recovering patients.

Another study published in Contemporary Therapies in Medicine records that bouquets of flowers can also reduce our stress levels. The study gave women in college a fresh bouquet of roses for their dorm room. Results showed that each woman felt more relaxed and stress-free.

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Flowers and Plants in the Home

They say home is where the heart is, and you should feel good being at home. Like patients in recent studies, a room with plants or flowers help overall well being, so why not add flowers in your home?

Keep flowers in your bedroom, like gerbera daisies. Gerberas emit oxygen and absorb toxins and carbon monoxide at night instead of during the day like most flowers, and some say they sleep better.

Having flowers on a dining room table is a must. Studies have shown that people who have flowers on their tables while eating are in a better mood—as long as you don’t bring up politics!

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Plants & Flowers in the Office

Seem like you are in a rut and cannot focus at work? Why not add flowers and plants to your working space! Plants placed in a room help rejuvenate the oxygen in the room helping us think more clearly and keep the focus on the task at hand. Seeing green plants also helps with creativity as evidence has been shown in a case study by Shibata and Suzuki.

Flowers placed in the office not only helps our mood visually but also the smell of the flowers can help. Smelling floral scents seems to put us in a good mood and make us feel less anxious. Floral smells can help take the edge off during exams or before any major presentation you have before a group of people. So as they say, stop and smell the roses!

Floral Colors

Floral colors can also attribute to our well being and mental state. Flowers that are less saturated and brighter are generally more relaxing, while bold saturated colors will help energize you. Colors near each other on the color wheel will be more calming than those opposite on the color wheel.

Customers search online about the things they want to buy, even if it’s a simple local purchase.

Google is not only helpful for consumers, but it’s also good for businesses. As long as you can use that to your advantage by strengthening your business’s online presence, your floral e-commerce website can succeed. 

Florist Quick Guide to Google My Business

Google My Business is Google’s one-stop shop for all things online for your business. It is an online platform that contains tools where you can manage how your business will look like in Google and Google Search.

Google My Business (GMB) improves your local SEO by:

* Giving you the options to add your business and the relevant details to Search and Maps

* Viewing and replying to customer reviews

* Adding photos

What are Google My Business local Guides?

Google My Business’s Local guides allow people to contribute to the following:

*Adding information to Maps

*Adding photos

*Updating information on businesses they are familiar with or local to them

*Adding new places to the platform.

The program differentiates individuals into tiers, depending on how much they have contributed to Maps. The goal for them is to keep Maps updated and help other people be fully informed about the businesses and places around them. 

Aside from adding data, Local Guides can also add reviews to business listings. However, they are considered to be more reliable users, thus their reviews appear more frequently and on top of the reviews list. 

Image via Shutterstock

How Can I Improve My Local Pages?

Customers who come across your business, those who make a purchase or require service can be a Local Guide. It can be hard to tell Local Guides apart from normal customers. Local Guides reviews are trusted more by people just with the sheer fact that their reviews are given priority when displaying reviews on your listing.

You cannot just pick out Local Guides from your customers and give them the best service you can. The key here is to treat all your customers the same and give the best service as much as you can to everyone. 

Encourage customers to leave reviews for your business listing in Google Maps.

When receiving Positive Reviews:

*Reply to reviews in your listing

*Make sure to thank the reviewer

*Offer them to return 

*Try out a new service that you might have started on your business.

When receiving Negative Reviews:

*Be polite and courteous

*State the status of the concern or issue the review was having problems with.

*Apologize for the issue or concern

*Offer to replace or fix the issue

Doing this will give people the impression that you are very mindful of the concerns that your business has and responsive to your customer base.

Image via Shutterstock

The tools that GMB provides are beneficial in boosting your online presence, and most especially in the local setting. Taking advantage of these tools is thus invaluable in helping out your business grow.

Florists, have you been using Google my Business: Local Guides? Please share your thoughts and comments below!

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