Give Freely and Give Often

At a social media/marketing conference a few years back, I listened to a guy tell us to “Give Freely and Give Often.” He continued that there are no trade secrets. He wanted us to throw all secrets out the window and to instead, be engaging. And how are you engaging? By connecting and sharing. So back to his “give freely” status.

For most of us, that’s hard. We earned our stripes the hard way and there is no way we are going to share our little secrets. But his point was that EVEN if you share your secrets and EVEN IF that person tries to mimic them, there is no way they can do what you do, like you do it.

Fast forward to today, and I just witnessed a perfect example of this.

I brought home a bouquet from the wedding show and the following morning, we had our first snow. perfect photo opp!

I’m working a little holiday hours with a local florist. The guy is eccentric to the nines, but fun to be around. As a florist, what you put out for a floral arrangement or wedding bouquet is 100 percent YOU. So florists get a little weird with photos.We were at a wedding show and of course, all the brides-to-be wanted to take photos of the wonderful bouquets our shop created. My manager first started walking up to brides and asking them NOT to take photos of his display. With more than 2,000 brides expected in a few hours, I could see this was a futile attempt. Smartphones are a bride’s best friend.

I approached my manager and explained the circumstance. I understand those arrangements were one-of-a-kind, but does he think another shop could recreate it exactly from a smart phone photo?

Sure, the photo would provide ideas, maybe even a sketch of a design, but it wouldn’t look like his simply because he didn’t do it.

You could ask 10 florists to create a rose and lily arrangement and you will get 10 very different floral designs. They all went to some sort of florist school – so why aren’t they all the same?

Because no one can do what you do as well as you do it.

Now, we share our arrangement photos and wedding bouquets on Facebook and Twitter. Let the competition try to copy our fantastic designs. They aren’t there for them; they exist for our customers. We are GIVING them ideas and we are PROVIDING those ideas often.

I expect to have a success story from the social media skills I’m teaching this floral shop very soon!