Have been mulling this option around in my head, why not develop a florist store/app that integrates in Facebook. People use Facebook to announce weddings, birthdays and anniversaries so there looks to me to be an ideal opportunity to put flowers/bouquet gifts in front of friends that use Facebook. Flowers can then be ordered within Facebook and sent via a florist with store app.

Florists need to be able to integrate their outside shopping cart products into their Facebook page, this would make Facebook an even more powerful tool as it would bring FaceBook to business and not just social networks. If they cannot integrate outside applications maybe just an app built purposely for Facebook. Can this be done?

Check out this post on floristblog.co.uk about a company calling florists trying to sell them advertising on FaceBook, if you are a florist certainly worth a read and could save you time and money.

I have just received my first ever call from a company in Manchester trying to sell me advertising on FaceBook. Obviously from a sales orientated organisation as the background noise was a wash with chitter chatter sales patter as sales pro’s looked to find someone to say yes as they play the numbers game!

This call first off was a surprise, a company calling me to see if my florist (not that I’m a florist) would like to advertise on FaceBook. Advertise on FaceBook, I thought FaceBook was a social networking website not a place that people visit online to find a florist to send flowers! If you look-up FaceBook on Wikipedia this is what you get “Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc., with more than 500 million active users in July 2010. Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by workplace, school, or college.” Okay so we have ascertained that FaceBook is not a search engine and that 500million users actively use the site on a regular basis. Wikipedia on Google also tells us that Google is a search engine that processes over one billion search requests every single day, so my point is why would a florist advertise on FaceBook when they may as well advertise on Google that is a proven place that internet users visit to find things.

“Do you use FaceBook” the lady asked looking for her first yes reply to the question! This is how sales people work, the sales person looks for a series of yes answers from the prospect to lure them into a a sense of agreement and then ‘BAM’ the closing question and before you know it you find yourself quids out of pocket and the new owner of adverts on FaceBook. My answer to the question was always going to be “No” regardless of what the question was even though I was telling the truth.

Right I need to buy the ingredients for beef wellington later, where shall I go online to find a website to buy from? Any ideas… and don’t say FaceBook!

I’m failing to find a reason why a florist business would micro-blog using twitter… Can anybody help me out here please? I’m able to understand a florist writing a blog but then micro blogging their daily activities is beyond me.

I’m certain that web designers who have nearly all these days self-titled themselves SEO experts are harping on about Twitter and Facebook being the Holy Grail in search engine marketing. Apparently if you setup your florist on Facebook and Twitter this will generate your top search engines listings and make you lots of money

Apparently Facebook and Twitter are the new Google :o)

Twitter and Facebook are the starting pages to visit apparently when you go online if you want to find a florist to send flowers. You can search Facebook for a florist and get fantastic results! (Not) If you search twitter you can find lots of florists all twitting on about everything from a supplier delivery they received earlier to tweets about them delivering flowers 6 days a week except on mother’s day and that they deliver flower locally from their shop in x!

Hang on a minute are these not details that show up when you visit a website anyway, e.g. telephone code, address, we arrange flowers for mother’s day.

Here are a few florists I have found using Twitter:

• http://twitter.com/flowerworksuk
• http://twitter.com/zaraflora
• http://twitter.com/florist
• http://twitter.com/jerrysflowers
• http://twitter.com/KabloomFlowers

SEO (web designers) experts lead many business owners in many industries from Floristry to Builders to believe that a link from Twitter or Facebook back to their own website will make you stand out from the rest in Google’s eyes, I think not. Google looks at quality content, the way in which a website is built from the bottom up and relevant links back to your own domain from industry/topic specific websites. A link from a site such as twitter or Facebook is worth no more than a link from a general directory. If you are a florist reading this, for the amount of time it takes to keep writing these mini tweets or micro blogs as I like to call them, login to your Facebook page and update it you may as well go and find a good florist directory and pay to get listed on it! This way Google will see a relevant link from an industry related site to your own and be able to place you within a network of related sites. Secondly why not just become a writer, write about your business, the flowers you design and publish this information on your website for all of your customers and Google to see? Thirdly, how about actually getting a real blog and writing something meaningful to share with other likeminded individuals.

A link back from Twitter or Facebook will do little if anything for you business in terms of rank on search engines, however if you fail to write anything meaningful, worthy, of use on these sites you stand the chance of wasting your customers/potential customers time.

Are most tweets being used to promote voucher codes or tell people that they do wedding flowers at weekends? Are they now another form of online chat/support modules that customers can use to complain about a delivery that will stay published for all to see? Having taken 1 hour of life that I will not get back this is all I could make out from the 40 or so florists on twitter that I looked at. One florist was so desperate to reach 1000 followers I think they would sell their soul to achieve it!

Twitter has a reason for being here hence being ranked @ number 11 in the world today, I’m just not sure every business has a reason for being on twitter, social networking does not mean business. Maybe I need pointing in the right direction… I would like to point out that this is only my present opinion, what are your thoughts on the subject? Post any comments below.

We call our blog ‘ gossip in the garden ‘ browse our [ blog ]

Secret Garden Flowers are located in Jesmond, Newcastle - you can order flowers online, in person or over the phone.

Our website is brand new today, we have just added a blog page that we intend to update on a regular basis. We are a florist based in Oldham in Greater Manchester. As well as offering free delivery in the area we also get involved in designing stunning flowers for weddings, we cover a radius upto 100 miles for wedding flowers, locally we deliver flowers same or next day 6 days a week upto 10 miles away.

April Cotton Florist [ website ] or [ blog ]

We are a affordable flower delivery company based in London.

Our aim here at 321 Flowers is simple: to provide great flowers at affordable prices.

We keep all our costs as low as possible so that we can pass savings on to customers without sacrificing the quality of our flowers.

We buy our own flowers from growers and send them direct to customers so that we can ensure quality.

We offer all the most popular flowers all year round so that people can always send their favourite bouquets and varieties.

We offer free delivery by courier, this means you can choose a specific delivery date. We also provide free next day delivery.
We have what we hope is a simple and easy to use website, so that ordering is straightforward and secure.   We hope you like it.

321 Flowers

We have a great range of bouquets.  Our most popular product is the Heaven Scent bouquet.  With a competitive price of £19.99 it is great value.  The bouquet contains blue iris, white lilies and green chrysanthemums and will brighten up any recipients day.

I hope you visit our website and get to know 321 Flowers.

Regards,

The 321 Flowers Team

Something personally I have always felt that any online shopper buying flowers for delivery here in the UK or anywhere in the world for that matter should do is:

Never buy flowers from any website that does not publish their business address, why would anybody risk sending flowers from such a company! Simply put why would a website owner not publish their address, I can only assume they want to stay hidden so there is not possible come back. There are many national websites live that sell flowers, the vast majority them post your flowers out for next day delivery. If you search for the contact us button all you will find is their email address and national telephone number. 9/10 you will find these suspicious sites in my opinion via a sponsored listing on a search engine. The reason you do not find them that often within search engine organic results is because the content that they publish is limited, they have no address resulting in the search engine not having that much to go on therefore they rank so badly it is almost impossible for them to be found within search results unless you search for their website name.

This post should not put you off buying flowers online, certainly not! The World Wide Web is a shopper’s paradise, you are in control! You can check out multiple florists within a short period of time, find the right product and best price that meets your budget.

Sending Flowers Locally

Find a florist in the area you want to send flowers too, search keywords by location with terms such as florist, flowers, flower delivery, send flowers, flower shop, same day, anniversary flowers, funeral tributes, wedding florists, wedding flowers and so on. Support these words with your location e.g. Birmingham, Dover or Sheffield for instance. This way you will find local florists in the city or town that want to send someone flowers to.

Send Flowers Nationally

There are many fine long established internet florists arranging and delivering flowers nationwide here in the UK and around the world. Often you can get fantastic prices from some of these companies because they deliver literally hundreds and hundreds of bouquets each every day to UK customers, for this reason they have good buying power from the growers because they buy their stems in bulk. Just remember to look for an address on these sites; it always helps to know who you are buying from. However it is good to consider the local florist as well by searching for them online, they arrange and deliver flowers each and every day in the place you want to send flowers too so your sure to get a good deal.

Have you ever ordered flowers from a national florist website, what did you think? Please leave your comments here and share your experience about the company that delivered your flowers and help others buying online in the future.

Counting Down to this years Chelsea Flower Show - Visit the website @ The Royal Horticultural Society or check out the flowers shows pages on the BBC.

Aconitum known as aconite, monkshood, wolfsbane, leopard’s bane, women’s bane, Devil’s helmet or blue rocket is a genus of flowering plant that belongs to the buttercup family. There are 250 plus species of Aconitum.