Here’s How to Build Trust with Floral Clients—Without Costing a Dime

So much of our work is done digitally through the written word, no matter our role in the floral industry. Emails, blog articles, social media marketing, website refreshes, proposals, orders, and more demand our attention—and our writing skills. In the digital age, you can truly set your business apart and build trust with others (even before you meet them!) by prioritizing clear, clean written communication. And you don’t have to be a grammar wiz, or know the difference between the different types of dashes, to do so. 

Marcie Meredith Photography

In this article, I’ll cover:

1. Why clear, clean written communication is important to clients (yes, it really is)

2. Why consistency is important—and how you can create a simple in-house style guide to maintain brand consistency

3. Why taking the time to self-edit is valuable (and I’ll give you a couple self-editing tips—if you need quick help, jump to this section!)

I’ll also provide a few general writing tips that will result in the best user experience possible for your clients/readers. Let’s dive in!

Why Clear, Clean Written Communication Is Important

Have you ever opened up an email, only to be confused by its intentions? Or perhaps you’re reading an article contributed by an industry expert, but it’s filled with grammatical errors throughout. Readers have a keen eye, and we can all spot when something’s amiss (even if we don’t exactly know what). We can tell when communication is rushed—and when we spot a serious grammatical issue in an otherwise reputable source, it leads us to ask, Can I trust this source of information? What if they were so rushed, they forgot what I asked for in our phone conversation? Perhaps they don’t have such great attention to detail? 

Even if we don’t hear ourselves asking these questions, we subconsciously have these concerns as readers. Words are important, and how we use them (and the grammar we use to frame them) can build trust, a strong sense of professionalism, and display care and respect to our readers—even if it’s just a 120-character social post.

Does this mean we have to be perfect all the time? Nope. (You should see my internal messages with the Team Flower Staff or my personal text messages. They’re littered with hilarious errors, and I couldn’t care less!) However, you can bet that in my out-facing work or my own small business, I take excellent care with each small piece of communication. Putting in a bit of extra effort into our business communication doesn’t cost us anything, doesn’t add much to our workload, and can have great long-term dividends in building a trustworthy professional relationship with clients. 

Marcie Meredith Photography

Consistency Is Key: How to Create an In-House Style Guide

You don’t have to write in a formal voice to sound professional—in fact, sounding like your brand (and yourself) is vital to a great client relationship. However, consistency is key. And an in-house style guide can help you maintain that consistency!

Consistency (yes, even in our grammar and word use) can build trust with clients and display a strong sense of professionalism and care, even before they see that displayed in our floral work. Staying consistent in our brand voice, punctuation usage, and phrasing and capitalization choices can hint to clients that we’ll be consistent in our service to them as well. 

Just like a brand guide or mood board sets design parameters, a style guide sets parameters for your business communication, web copy, social media posts, and blog content. It’s essentially a simple document where you record style decisions to refer to again in the future. A style guide is helpful whether you’re a soloprenuer or have a team, but it’s especially helpful when you have a staff and multiple people are communicating with clients. Smart things you can include in your style guide include:

• Capitalization decisions. Do you prefer to capitalize all of the flower variety names, whether they are proper nouns or not, or just the varieties that are proper nouns? If you have a blog, what kind of headline capitalization style will you use? 

• Brand voice/tone. Do you take a casual, fun brand voice vibe with clients in all written communication? Or do you serve high-end corporate clientele that expect a formal tone? Do you have taglines, fun phrases, or words of encouragement you like to routinely include in written communication? Do you use big words (flowery or academic sounding language) or small words (simple language, like this blog post) in your communication? Are contractions like don’t and aren’t okay for your business to use?

• Spelling/word record. When you have to look up the spelling of a word and there are two separate and correct choices (ranunculuses vs. ranunculi), it’s great to log your preference so you can stay consistent throughout all your content.

• Grammar choices. A style guide is also where you’ll note if you prefer to use the Oxford/serial comma, avoiding the em dash, and so on. 

Marcie Meredith Photography

In our Team Flower style guide, we have examples of how we live out our core values through our written communication, examples of tone/voice, unique words and phrases we use and don’t use, style specifics (such as when we use italics, how we capitalize the names of websites, etc.), and a word list of our preferred spellings and capitalization choices. We have different sections in a document where we note each of these things and can jump back in to reference them or add new decisions. 

Creating your own in-house style guide is as simple as opening up a blank document on your computer and making note of how you would like to stay consistent throughout your written communication. You can get fancy with charts, examples, and more, but having a reference to maintain consistency is the important thing.

Don’t Overthink Your Writing, But Do Take Time to Self-Edit

Have you ever spent an hour (or more) trying to craft a perfectly worded email? Do you throw out the idea of hosting a blog on your website, because you feel like your posts won’t be good enough? We’ve all been there, and we all tend to overthink important written communication. But once you have a style guide in place, those voice/tone decisions can be made a lot quicker. 

Minimize the time you spend overthinking and second-guessing your written communication, and focus on putting that energy into a quality self-edit. Self-editing is valuable as it helps you fine tune your communication, build your style guide, and improve your writing skills and speed.

Tools such as Grammarly can also provide a grammatical safety net and some additional confidence, but be careful: They don’t catch everything, can occasionally introduce errors, and sometimes suggest phrasing changes that are totally off-brand for your business. 

Marcie Meredith Photography

Here are my favorite self-editing tricks to share with those working on written communication—I even use these myself as a professional editor!

1. Read backwards. For a quick editing trick, read your communication backwards, starting with the last sentence first. For example: Start at the bottom of your drafted email and read one sentence at a time, starting at the last one and working from there. Reading each sentence piece by piece outside of the narrative can really help to catch your own errors and improve tone.

2. Step away for an hour (or a day, if possible). Getting some distance from your work is the best way to see it with fresh eyes before hitting the send or publish button! 

3. Think like your reader—read aloud (and in-between the lines). Reading your work aloud is a big help. You’ll pick up on words you’ve accidentally left out, strange phrasing that needs revision, and things that sound off-brand. When we write something, our brain knows what we mean, so we can actually “fill in” any missing information or words that we forgot to include. Is there anything in your writing that’s missing that your reader desperately needs? This could be anything from leaving out the your in the sentence I have placed order to not providing clear explanation or reasoning. 

4. Remove any accidental hints of negativity or defensiveness. This is an important one, especially in professional communication. It’s easy to accidentally offend over email! For example, take a look at this sentence: You told me you wanted bleached fern in the centerpieces, so that is why it’s included in your proposal.

   We can easily edit this to instead read: I included bleached fern in your proposal because we discussed that in our consultation meeting together. Let me know if you’d like to see changes!

   Those revisions create an entirely different tone that will be well-received by your reader. 

5. Look it up! Don’t be afraid to pull out the old dictionary, do a little Googling, and ask your grammar-nerd friend for their advice. If you’re unsure about a spelling, hyphenation rule, or capitalization method, usually a little research can go a long way. Then note it in your style guide, and celebrate that you’ve learned something new!

Marcie Meredith Photography

General Writing Tips for the Best Client Experience Possible

Okay, you’ve reached the end of this long article. I hope what you’ve taken in so far is helpful! But before we part ways, I want to offer a couple tips for those who just don’t feel they’re good at the written communication part of their floral work. Since how we communicate with clients really does create a foundation of trust, it’s important to invest in this area!

It can be difficult to feel you’re communicating well in the digital age if you don’t feel like a “natural” writer, but even the best communicators got there through serious practice.

Here are a couple final tips to help increase your confidence with your professional communication:

1. Mix up your sentence structure. When drafting and email, blog post for your website, or Instagram post, make sure to add some variety to your sentence structure. This helps with reader flow and rhythm. Think about how you apply the principles of design to an arrangement to create movement and rest, and do that with your writing.

   Example of an Instagram post: Today I went to the flower market. They had quite the blooming selection! I love being able to create art from such beautiful, living ingredients.

   A quick edit to mix up the sentence structure really adds depth: Today I went to the flower market, where quite the blooming selection was available. Being able to create art from such beautiful, living ingredients is something I truly love. 

2. Get grammar help. If this really isn’t your strong suit and doing some online research to remember those grammar rules you learned in English class isn’t fruitful, getting a tool such as Grammarly can really help. Just remember, sometimes these tools can make suggestions that are wrong or seem off-brand, so don’t be afraid to reject the suggestions! And if you’re working on a big project (like an e-book, a digital magazine, or an article you’re submitting to a high-end publication), hiring a copyeditor or proofreader is a smart investment. 

3. Make your communication reader-focused, not you-focused. One of the most valuable shifts, even if you aren’t a great writer from a grammatical standpoint, is to work hard to put your reader at the center. All great writers do this, even if they’re writing their own life story! This takes a little practice of knowing where to look to make these changes, but it’s well worth it—especially on your website, where clients are looking for how your business can help them with their needs, not how special your business or your own personal journey is. 

Marcie Meredith Photography

Example on a website About page: I have been in the floral business for fifteen years and entered into it because I grew up planting flowers with my grandmother. My love of flowers and gardening greatly influences my style, which leans toward organic and natural. 

A couple edits puts the reader/client at the center, which helps grab their attention: With fifteen years of experience in floral design, I’m able to confidently help you create the wedding of your dreams. While I lean toward an organic and natural design style, your design goals are my priority. My love of flowers is deeply rooted in growing up gardening with my grandmother, and I cannot wait to put that same sense of care and love toward your event.

Do me a quick favor. Take one moment to go back up and read that example one more time. 

Did you sense a different pacing and rhythm in the two examples? That’s because I also used the first tip in this list and mixed up the sentence structure. See how the first example feels like a “start-stop, start-stop” rhythm, while the second seems to flow and automatically keep the reader’s attention? It takes a little practice to know where to look to make these types of edits, but the effort can go a long way.

Ultimately, doing your best to use clear, clean, consistent (and don’t forget kind!) language will work hard on your behalf to build trust with prospective and current clients, better connect you with readers in your social posts and in your website copy, and give a strong sense of professionalism to those who encounter your floral work. There’s no need to overthink every sentence (well—unless it’s your job to be an editor!), but displaying your heart and talent through quality written communication can go a long way in building trust in your brand.

Happy writing, flower friends!