A visual platform like Instagram makes perfect sense for Sweet Root Village, an event floral design studio founded almost a decade ago by Lauren Anderson and Rachel Bridgwood. After all, before they founded their studio – and way before Instagram became a thing – they were photographers who also loved floral design.
It’s no surprise, then, that Lauren and Rachel have found in Instagram a successful way to showcase their designs, connect with other floral fanatics and otherwise share who they are as a studio.
“As our following grew to not just clients but also fellow floral designers around the country and even the world, we’ve been able to share more about our processes and tips and tricks and not just our current work and portfolio,” they said. “It’s made Instagram a lot more fun and interactive, being able to share about us as people, woodworkers, hustlers, movers and shakers, and more.”
who Sweet Root Village, an event floral design studio in Alexandria, Va., founded by Lauren Anderson and Rachel Bridgwood in 2010.
why we like it Gorgeous weddings with stunning bouquets and magnificent floral chandeliers. Behind-the-scenes secrets and laughs. And a few kiddos thrown in for fun. There’s a little something here for everyone.
starting point “We started using Instagram in 2012 just a couple years into our business and a couple years after Instagram began. This was right around the time we opened a studio space to work from, and I believe it was just a natural progression to start an account based on what friends in the industry were doing and what we were ready to take on as we started to become something and grow.”
the how behind it Instagram can be as simple as using an iPhone to post pics on the fly. The team at Sweet Root Village goes a tad beyond that. “Our feed is mainly a collection of images that we take both on an iPhone or a DSLR camera and that we edit either within the Instagram app or with Adobe Lightroom on our laptops. We also share images from events taken by professional photographers. We write the captions and post them ourselves, occasionally scheduling help from the app called Later.”
Strategy? What strategy? “We’ve never really attempted a formal strategy. mostly because it’s quite overwhelming to try and ‘hack the system’ of Instagram when it feels like it changes so frequently. We just do our best to post on our feed when we have things to share, anywhere between once a day to once a week. And then we share on Instagram Stories daily. We don’t pay for ads or targeted followers at this point, as it hasn’t felt necessary.”
posts with the most “It varies, but typically images of us busy at work in our studio, large-scale installations at events, and clean images of individual flower types or stems get the most love. So these are definitely things we share a lot.”
the payoff “Instagram has always held true to being a way for us to show off snippets of what we are working on now, and it has been far more accessible and manageable for us compared to keeping up on a blog. Many of us are also working moms who often bring our kids to work, so it’s been an incredible tool to showcase that, and now our clients follow our lives, and we find that they become more invested in us.”
see for yourself @sweetrootvillage
