I wont go back

an indelible reminder of the steel I lack

Do you ever wonder?

Someone asked me about my diatribe from yesterday so I thought I would explain a little more. I talk to a few florists during my work hours and some are doing some things with SEO and some are not. In the group of florists that are doing something some are doing a lot and some are doing very little. A few examples of sites that are doing things are Find a Florist from Teleflora, Sebastian Florist from Florida and 11Flowers a local florist in California. The neat thing about the last florist is he is doing a lot of different things with different sites he has one site that is hosted with Teleflora’s eFlorist program 11Flowers.com he also is trying to do what roses nation wide did with building another page that he has more SEO control of at Flora Rose. This is a great chance to see what part true SEO plays in order volume. I personally am so excited about it because I can use it as a demonstration of what can be done with a more open framework and hopefully use it to force change on the structure I work within today. If a site that doesn’t have as many constraints as the sites I work on have can do better then a site that has similar constraints to the sites I work then it might show to the powers that be the value of an open SEO friendly core system we can build on. it will be fun to watch and see what happens. I would also love to see other florists rise up and do this for there own shops or start there own large order gather site that is well marketed nationally and just sends them the orders there by making them the largest "OG" on the internet with the shop getting 90% to 100% of the order value.

My day job

Before I go into what I was going to talk about I thought there needed to be a brief explanation of the flower industry for the people who may read this that do not know how you really get flowers delivered. Most of the time you want flowers you swing by a local shop on your way to where you need the flowers but when you are not going to the place that the flowers are then you must use another method and this is where the wire service come in most often. If you choose to call, go online, email, or what ever method you choose to send flowers if it is going to a town other then the one you are ordering from it will go through some type of wire service. The wire service is the mechanism that allows a flower shop to have your flowers delivered for you by someone out of town. The wire service guaranties that all parties involved are happy with the transaction and that the consumer gets what was ordered, or at least this is how it is supposed to work.

Now that I have poorly and more importantly briefly described a wire service (you can look at ftd.com or Teleflora.comm to see a wire service). Lets talk about OG’s. I can no longer hear someone refer to someone being an “OG” the same once I started working here. In to non-flower world “OG” is some sort of ghettoism that refers to something I am a little to pale to fully grasp but in the flower world “OG” is something completely different. One way they are the same is that in the flower world as in the non-flower world an “OG” is the most vial label that could ever be bestowed upon someone. In the flower world “OG” stands for Order Gatherer which is someone that just acts as a type of order funnel or hose sucking up all the flower orders out there and then pushing them to different shops around the nation along the way charging a fee of some type. Many florists think this is the most vial practice ever because if they had gotten the order in the first place they would have made more money. This is where I have to ask, because I do not understand, how is it wrong for someone to do something to get more customer’s isn’t that part of business? I have meet many florists that are very talented at flowers, and everything associated with flower arranging but I have yet to meet more then a handful of florists that have any idea how to build, market, and maintain a good SEO optimized web site. I would never think of asking dave (the nice guy who fixes my car) to work on a web site for me. This isn’t to imply that dave would not be able to do this in fact I have seen some of his coding and he has some mad skilz (another ghettoism for flavor) but it isnt his main focus much as I can change my oil and I understand how my engine works but I would never dream of touching it again dave is better, faster, and more experienced at it then I will ever be. In that same light I would never expect a florist to be a good web developer or SEM (new term it stands for search engine marketer). If some of these order gathers did not gather these orders they would go to big players like FTD or PROFlowers (and maybe soon Teleflora also if you listen to some of the florist rumors out there) that drop ship flowers straight from the growers the consumer dose not know or care how they get the order as long as its nice, quick, convenient, and cheap. The problem is that if the order from a place like FTD or PROFlowers they are not getting anything but quick, and cheap. Other big players in the industry are still pumping there orders straight to the flower shops so they are still capturing the order and more importantly the flower customer. I would say to any flower shop that is upset about a “OG” gathering there local business instead of posting on some obscure web site dedicated to florists where you only get seen by a few people go hire a SEM firm and become a “OG” for yourself. You don’t have to target the nation if you only want to do local marketing more power to you that will give you an upper hand over the national order gathers in places like google local and other such local sites. The first rule in SEO and most of business is be as good as your competition and then be better. So now I am done with my rant and I am off to order a few flowers from a florist I know. Fenny will love them.

I will get to it

Blogging to me is much like weight lose

It seems that since I was around 20 I have had the plan to exercise more. From time to time I succeed in this endeavor but it never seems to last long I will get busy and forget to go to the gym and after a few weeks I just give up again. It seems to me that blogging is falling into this same cycle I think about blogging often but I never seem to have the time. I will make a commitment to blog more because I think it is important that I spout off online to fill the either with more noise. I will even do well with it for a few days posting often then I forget and get busy and never get back to it. I have now launched what is being super secret project number 12 and have started working full force on super secret project number 13. 13 will take more time, money, and effort then 12 did but that’s ok since it should also produce more money with less input in the long term. With number 12 we are well on our way to the first rebuild which is almost funny since we just launched. A side note and update on work the new boss is here after the last one lasted 6 weeks this one is being called the October/ November director of web development we will see if he out lasts the title. I don’t know if I want him to or not and it may not matter I may start working on SharePoint again(which I LOVE) so I may get away from SEO or do SEO and SharePoint, now that would be a full day staying on top of google and admin and build a SharePoint site for a large company.