Writing a Blog About Flowers to Deepen the Brand Experience
Online florist Beyond Blossoms (http://www.beyondblossoms.com) has started a blog to talk about what else, but flowers. The blog is not just for people who want to send flowers, but as a place to provide unusual and interesting information about all things floral, from flower gardening tips to art exhibits featuring flowers, to fun facts about flowers.
With all the talk recently about blogs, Beyond Blossoms co-founders Josh Grossman and Gina Maschek wanted to position their company as on the cutting edge. Josh says, “Creating the blog is a way to make the website more than just a place to buy flowers. It’s a way to interact with customers and hopefully provide content that they find informative, useful, and even funny,” referring to one post about a man who planted flowers in, of all things, a toilet.
The company is willing to write about anything and everything related to flowers. Recent posts include a new computer game about flowers, England’s effort to improve public bathrooms with fresh flowers, how to plant fall flowers, and rare orchids found in Idaho.
“Beyond Blossoms chose to develop a blog in order to enhance the overall experience customers have when they come to our website to buy fresh flowers,” says Grossman. “A flower blog helps communicate our company”s love for flowers and deepen our brand”s connection with customers. The more interesting content we can provide, the more enjoyable our site will become to visitors. Since the blog is updated every day, we hope customers find it worth reading on a continual basis.” Grossman hopes the blog will become a gathering place for readers passionate about flowers and sees the blog as a way to differentiate Beyond Blossoms from the competition, demonstrate their expertise, and gain mindshare with the consumer.
Blogs are quickly making their way into mainstream companies. Once the domain of high tech companies and political websites, blogs are now commonplace on the web. Some consumer products companies that are using blogs to communicate with their customers include GM, Stonyfield Farms, and Ice.com. One recent estimate suggests that 80,000 blogs are created every day.
Knowing it faces stiff competition from the well-known flower companies, Beyond Blossoms continually tries to improve the experience customers have when they send flowers online. Grossman says that “Since there are many places to buy flowers, we chose to focus on the overall shopping experience and create a fun website. Besides the blog, we differentiate our company in as many ways as possible by featuring a flower picture contest, our favorite flower quotes, flower biology, and the meanings of various flowers.” The fresh flowers come from growers around the world and feature both single variety flowers, such as roses and lilies fresh in the bud stage, as well as elegant European style, hand-tied, mixed flowers – all at affordable prices. Beyond Blossoms specifies the exact flowers in each bouquet, so the buyer knows exactly what the company will send.
Grossman and Maschek founded Beyond Blossoms in 2003. The idea for the company “flowered” when they needed to write a business plan for an entrepreneurship class in grad school. “We were looking for a business that would allow us to be creative and sell something that people love. Flowers are the perfect item,” Grossman states. “Now with blog, we can continue to be creative in what stories we post and how we communicate new developments in our company and the world of flowers.” Grossman advises that writing a blog on a daily basis takes a definite time commitment and is not a project that can be taken lightly if you want to do it right.
Beyond Blossoms chose internet marketing firm Radiant Marketing Group (www.radiantmarketinggroup.com) to assist them in the design and development of the blog.
Beyond Blossoms offers elegant hand-tied fresh flowers from the grower. Visit its website at http://www.beyondblossoms.com. The blog can be found at http://www.beyondblossoms.com/blog.
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