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Traffic, Awareness, Loyalty, Social Media

Written by Beka Johnson

The Most Popular Flower on Social Media

It’s been just over a year since we landed the Geranium Rozanne account, and man, has it been a great year! For those who don’t know, Geranium Rozanne is an award-winning hardy geranium that is easy to grow, tough to kill, and perfect for first-time gardeners. As a flower, Rozanne has a great many virtues, but as our friend, she has even more.

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In a year’s time, we’ve given our humble little flower her own personality and voice through social media, and we’ve grown her fan base from 300 to over 17,000. In fact, to our knowledge, Geranium Rozanne is now the most popular flower on social media! By personifying the flower, we’ve been able to connect and interact with people in a different way than if we had chosen to simply market the flower in a more traditional way. People respond and talk to Rozanne like she’s a person. They ask her questions. They compliment her. They tell her jokes and share stories. And in so many ways we’ve been able to communicate her award-winning floral qualities through human characteristics.

She tough, she’s thoughtful, she’s creative, she’s philosophical. She’s artistic and caring. She’s durable and loyal. She’s beautiful but humble. She’s uplifting and encouraging. She holds her friends accountable. She’s independent. She’s honest. All of these things are great qualities in a human, but in a flower, they’re sort of magical. At the very least, you know she won’t require a lot of maintenance and that she will last a long time.

Sparking A New Love of Gardening

But our task was bigger than just growing the Rozanne fan base. Most view gardening as something that only older generations are into. So, we were out to prove a model that could work across the board in the horticulture industry and spark a love of gardening in young people around the world. From that perspective, I think we’ve also been able to prove that the interest from a younger audience is there both in the UK and the US. We’ve also shown that people do pay attention to creativity and respond to it.

On the Rozanne Blog, we’ve tried to spend time addressing the new gardener. We want to encourage people to give it a go and to not be too timid. We talk about garden organization and common gardening mistakes and the health benefits of gardening. We introduce people to garden technology. We talk about garden parties and cocktails and garden decor. In other words, we are working to connect the dots for people about how gardening can fit into their modern lifestyle. And not only that, but how gardening can actually enhance their lives in many ways.

In our targeting, we’re reaching out beyond a gardening interest to people who like food and wine and home decor, because we see all of these things as connected. And with blog posts and social content that continues to connect these worlds, our hope is others will begin to see these all as aspects of a well-rounded, happy life.

The Rozanne Experiment

One of the more interesting things we’ve done is that we’ve opened some of our marketing data and research up to the public through a hidden portal on the Rozanne website. We did this so others in the horticulture industry can follow our work, learn about our successes and our failures along the way, and maybe gather ideas for their own brands.

We currently have around 90-100 industry leaders following our work through monthly email updates, and the open rate on these emails is dynamite. Each month, we pull the highlights from our social media and write a little analysis of what did and didn’t work well that month both in social and in advertising in general.

A New Era for Horticulture

We are excited about what all of this means for the horticulture industry, because it means we can and we will be able to capture the next generation’s heart for gardening. It means gardening as an art will not die. But it’s going to require a leap into the beautiful world of sustainable marketing, changing and challenging the way the industry chooses to interact with the new consumer.

And Rozanne, our clever, savvy, perennial friend, will happily lead the way.

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Beka is a Strategist at WindFarm Marketing. She loves dabbling, reading, scheming, writing, and dreaming up ways to make good things better. When she's not working, you can find her gardening, throwing dinner parties, and/or drinking champagne.
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