Throughout our Flower Arranging and Floristry Courses we talk to our students about social media and marketing themselves. First and foremost we encourage our student to set up a Facebook Page to promote themselves from.
Here are some important tips to consider when using your Facebook Page to market your Flower Business or Flower Shop
Set up a business page not a personal profile page for your business - most people do not want to be friends with people or business that they don't know, as a business page you can not see any info about any of your "likers" pages.
Don't publish your page until you are ready with all your relevant information - business name, phone number, website details , areas covered etc.
Fill in the "About" section - include the areas that you will cater for ie. if you're in Dublin you may not be delivering flowers to Donegal.
Include your contact phone number - people need to be able to contact you
Have a good cover photo & profile photo which tell people at a glance what you do - read FB policy's on cover photos and make sure to abide by their rules.
Invite all your friends to like your page and ask them to invite their friends also - these will most likely to be your first customers.
Once your page has been published you need to use it - if you don't post photos and details of what you do, no one will know what you do.
Take photos of every design you make and post these photos and explain why it was made - ie. This flower arrangements was made for Mary for her Granny who was 70 today, Mary wasn't sure if her granny had a vase to put flowers into in a nursing home so we decided an arrangement would be best suited, the colours will match her granny's bed linen in her room - this type of posting tells your fans you care about your customers and what suits their needs.
Do not "copy" images from other pages and claim them as your own, if you do use someone elses images always make sure to credit them with a tag or a link back to their website /FB page
Do not "copy" images from other pages and claim them as your own, if you do use someone elses images always make sure to credit them with a tag or a link back to their website /FB page
If you do a lot of designs in one day, hold back some of the images fro days when you might not have any to post
You should be posting approx 3 times daily to engage with your customers / likers.
Encourage integration with your likers. - ask questions of them ie what is your favourite flower? Discuss everyday events ie. what I are your plans for the weekend?
Do not discuss customers and customers requests, your page is public and everyone can see what you post.
Deal with negative feedback in a positive manner, don't get into a slagging match.
Promoting your page"like & share " competitions are against FB rules and they will close your page for running them - use a competition app like Shortstack to run a completion.
You can ask people to like and comment, but you can't ask them to tag others or share with others. Read FB policy's on competitions here.
You can promote your page also by running FB adds, these are quite reasonable, can be specifically targeted to who you want to reach ie. if your business is in Rosslare you can target people in Rosslare and a 10 or 25KM radius. There are lots of targeting mechanism that make these adds work very well. Also you set your budget, so you know exactly what you are spending.
I would advise anyone who is serious about their business to think about doing a Facebook workshop to learn how to use it in the most effective way for your business.
At Kay's Flower School we recommend Martina Ginty at Content Social Manager or Felicity McCarthy at Spark Digital.
We wish you the very best of luck in your floristry business
For more information on our Floristry & Flower Arranging Courses
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