The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Repurposing Content Like a Pro: Extend Your Social Media Reach

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 54

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In this episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I sit down with Deirdre Sullivan, who turned her traditional flower school into an online sensation, amassing over 338,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. 🚀

We dive into:
✅ Better done than perfect - why perfection is overrated.
✅ The power of consistency - how showing up daily changed everything.
✅ Short-form video strategies - creating content that works across multiple platforms.
✅ Expanding beyond local markets - how social media took Deirdre’s business global.

If you’ve ever felt stuck on social media, this episode will show you that success isn’t about getting it perfect—it’s about getting started. 🎬✨

Tune in now and get inspired to take your brand to the next level! 🎧👇

SHOW CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:25 Meet Deirdre Sullivan: Transforming a Traditional Flower School
01:19 The Accidental Success of Social Media
01:47 Embracing Imperfection: Just Start
02:49 Going Virtual: Reaching a Global Audience
03:56 First Big Success on Social Media
06:06 Post-Pandemic Social Media Strategies
07:00 Tips for Short Form Video Success
16:33 Expanding Beyond Ireland: International Recognition
22:26 Conclusion and Final Takeaways

Connect with Deirdre Sullivan:
LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to my podcast because more like this is on the way!

If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

My 2025 Social Media Content Planner & Guide is now available! Packed with 400 content prompts, expert tips, and $377 worth of free resources to help you save time and get results in 2025.

Grab your copy now on Amazon!
Amazon UK
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Welcome to the Social Media Takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonnell, and this is the show for business people that want to know how to use social media more effectively to drive sales and leads for their business. If you enjoy the show, please make sure you subscribe. And if you know any friends or business colleagues who may benefit from this episode, please make sure that you share it with them. Today, I am so delighted to be joined by Deirdre Sullivan. Old friend of mine and Deirdre has a legacy of training flowers across Ireland for the last 37 years. She's normally the face behind the camera so you don't normally get to see her but with the challenges of the COVID pandemic, Deirdre and her sister Jeanette transformed their traditional flower school into a virtual powerhouse. Reaching enthusiasts globally. Now, wait till you hear this, guys. On Instagram, they have 76, 000 followers. On Facebook, they have 125, 000 followers. On TikTok, they have 116, 000 followers. And on YouTube, they have 21, 000 followers. So they have on social media, across all their channels, 338, 000 followers. I just can't wait to chat to Deirdre about how she has achieved that and what advice she gives. You're very welcome to the show, Deirdre. Louise, I'm delighted to be here. I've learned most of this from you. And sometimes like we'd be asked to talk to events to talk about social media. And we sort of say we're the accidental success of social media because initially starting out, we didn't really know what we were doing. So we just tried everything that people told us. to do. And, and some things worked and some things didn't. You know what, there's a learning in that in itself. Because I know there's so many people that I feel sometimes stand back, or they're on the outside looking in, or they just don't know where to start. But that's a really, really important message to start off with. Just start. Start. Yeah, stop waiting for it to be perfect. Stop waiting to look perfect. And obviously with flowers. You want the finished product to look well before you post it. But to be honest, sometimes it's the derpy floor that gets more interaction than the actual finished product. I think I like the fact though, that you were a traditional flower school. So you already had your area of expertise. You already had an ideal customer that you knew that you were targeting. And for many businesses, I think. Not knowing what they're selling, not knowing who they're serving is possibly where they fall down first of all. So you at least have that clarity and you might not have appreciate that theatre, but you had that clarity and you probably had all the years of teaching and helping people and then you just transferred it over, over to the screens. Absolutely. And you're, you're so right there because. Again, we had before the COVID pandemic, like we were using social media to an extent, um, and we were helping our florists that have finished training with us get their social media up and running and stuff like that. But I said, I suppose the pandemic really changed how we thought and And we were trying to reach the people that we knew we wanted to reach because, and I should say, we knew who our customers were. We knew who wanted to come and train with us. And we used to always say before the pandemic, should I come to Dublin anyway? If they want to come and train with us, they're going to come to Dublin anyway. And they did. And they came from all over Ireland. The advantage of going online, I suppose, was first of all, we didn't realize people so far out of sight of Ireland. We didn't realize that actually the distance was limiting a lot of people. And so many people said. I always wanted to try and I always wanted to do that, but I had kids and I couldn't leave them for four days or I just work a full time. I didn't want to waste holidays to go and do something that was for me. And so that really opened our eyes up to not only the people that would travel to come and train with us, but the amount of people that wants to train with us, but that couldn't because. of their lifestyle and their family and that sort of thing. And so, yeah, that was a really interesting shift in how we done things then because we were sort of aiming at different people that we didn't realize were our target market. Okay, so take me back to a time, because I'm just very interested to hear this story, to the first kind of nice big success that you got on social media where yourself and Jeanette sat down afterwards and went, Jeannie Mac, is there something in this? Yeah, and do you know, I can see, and I remember the night. Um, it was actually an afternoon and I was saying to Jeanette, you're going to do a live. We'll do a live. And she was like, like, look, just pretend, which is how we did when we started recording the classes online. I says, just pretend that there's a classroom sitting in front of you. I says, and just talk to them as if it's the classroom, but the questions they're going to ask. So we went on live. I think we cocked up so many times and it was only Facebook back then. So we went on live and all of a sudden there was. People watching, people watching. And we got off that live, I think it was, that we were on for nearly an hour and a half now remember this was obviously during, during the pandemic and people had nothing to do, but the sit and listen to us. But we got off that live and the two of us were buzzing from it. And all of a sudden the emails started coming in. I'd really love to learn more. That could it. And we were like, oh my God, this is something. So that was sort of the turning point where we says, okay, we need to start doing live. And during Covid, we were going live three times a week and kept us going. Not financially, because we weren't making money from the lives, which looking back now was probably a big thing that we missed out on because we probably could have made a lot of money from them. But the business started to become, people became aware of us. There was a brand awareness, people that never knew we existed. And we were getting emails from people saying, my mother watches you and you're only for you. She keeps telling us, oh, Jeanette and Deirdre were on and they did this and they did that. There was more Jeanette was on because they never saw me. I was always just behind the camera. And I think that was the turning point. And I remember the first Christmas of 2020, when the pandemic, the amount of Christmas cards we got from people that we never knew who they were, but they watched us live and COVID and I'm sick and it's this. And that was a real, it was a turning point for the business. It was a turning point for us. And it definitely got our name out there, Ireland, I suppose, and then eventually further afield. So the pandemic is over now. So that moment has passed and it was a moment. And I suppose it was an opportunity that lots of people, including myself, we were lucky enough to be able to embrace it. So now we are moved on after the pandemic, now how are you using social media? How are you getting that success online? I think the success online is what you see is what you get. It is us. There is no waiting to put the makeup on or everything to be perfect. Like we'd obviously be somewhat right and keeping it very custom. We do believe that by giving out information that people then see you as being the authority and they want to come and train with you. I think that was it. I think how we do it has changed. We don't do as many lives. Because we don't get, sometimes when we went live, we could have 6 to 700 people watching us. People are not available now. Things, we're back to the pre pandemic. Everything has to be fast. Everything has to be quick. And we're finding a real, showing them something from start to finish, that's only. One and a half minutes, we're getting better reaction from that than we would have from a live class showing how to do that. Okay, for somebody who is maybe doing short form video and not getting success from it. Somebody who's really wants to get this to work. What advice do you give for short form videos? What are you doing that's working? Video everything. If you're emptying a rubbish bin, video it before and after, do something like that. I really feel for us sometimes behind the scenes. The tricks of the trade or stuff like that actually get more, like this morning I put up a reel. This is February and this morning a supplier sent us over pussy little, like big long pussy littles. And because we said send them on to us, we're going live later on when we show them off in the live and we do that also we promote as many people as we possibly can but as we're walking across the floor I took the camera out I mean video Jeanette and I said Jeanette what have you got on your hat? She says I've a load of pussies here in my hand Already, that's after getting so much reach on social media. I had to change the spelling of Pussies Button It Up though, Instagram wouldn't let me put up the proper spelling. Like, that was literally just walking across the road. She didn't even know I was going to be videoing her. I just took the phone out and just started to record. Sometimes, when we're closing the shutters on the building, I'll video close the shutters and I'll say, End of the day, really busy day, can't wait for tomorrow. And that's a meal that will go up. And this is another thing that I say to my clients or my coaching, as you know, my coaching clients all the time. You don't have the phone out and in your hand. Yes. Like, look, people do the day in the life. Now, we've never done anything like that. Oh, we did. And, but you know what, that day in the life actually took us about a week to record. And Dan said, you know, walking out of the house, getting into the car. She didn't need to get into the car, our office was across the road. Opening the shutters, sweeping the floor, emptying the bins, opening the flowers, going on the laptop, all of that. And just put up a day in the life, then put it together. I would say to people, when I record content, My phone, now I do have an iPhone, I don't know, 15, it's the latest one, and I do have a terabyte of memory on it, right? Because I record so much video. But what I do is, every time I record, I put them into albums. This morning when we recorded Pussy Willow, I opened an album, Pussy Willow Videos. And next year I'll use that video again. So, anytime it's categorized in that, you can maybe use it in different cases. And people say I don't have time to post or to make reels. I have loads of little clips there and at night time or maybe in the morning, because I wake very early in the morning, I might be in the bed and I'll just put together a reel and have old content because of loads of little clips rather than big clips. So two, three second videos. And every time I put it together, it's obviously different. So Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, whatever, they all see it as a new video. Yeah, that's fantastic. And like to the people listening in, you say, I don't have time to do that. Like if you don't have time to do marketing, that means literally you're saying, I don't have time to find new customers. Yeah. So, you know, marketing is what it comes before sales. Um, marketing for us is probably a bigger part of our business than the actual training. The training is probably the easiest part. It's probably the part that goes the most smoothly, that we know we're good at what we do. We know we produce the most phenomenal florists. Um, a lot of florists in Ireland have trained with us, are winning awards left, right and center. We know we're good at what we do. We know we give a really good service and really good value. But people don't know that when they're only thinking about training as a florist. They don't know how good we are. And online immediately puts people on the back front and say, Oh no, I don't want to do it online. You can't train as a florist online. So the marketing to sell how good we are takes so much time. And like those videos that you're talking about with Jeanette, like the day in the life or Jeanette walking across the road and you taking a funny video. Some people will, but that's not showing how good you are in floristry. I'll give you a funny, we put my dad, Mr. K, up quite a lot and he's just so funny. And there recently he was making the St. Bridget's Day crosses. Well, my mum was in hospital at the moment and he was in the lift in the hospital. Coming down the list and somebody says, Oh, Mr. Kerry, how are you? That was a question I had on my, I was like. Are you, like, famous now with your 350 followers? I wouldn't say famous, but we do get, Jeanette would be recognised, obviously, a lot more than me because I'm behind the camera recording her. But, so yeah, she was in Lanzarote there, at least she spends half her time there anyway, but she was in a chemist in Lanzarote and she was talking to the girl behind the counter and this woman came up to her, she says, I recognised your voice, you're Jeanette from Pace Telescope. So yeah, it does happen. Yeah, it definitely does. It's funny. We get such a kick out of us. We just think it's great. Advice so far, just have the camera ready, be ready to take content. And everything that you're doing from emptying the bin to sweeping the floor is potential content because people like that and it's still getting the know and trust factor with you. Second thing you said, which I think is absolutely fantastic. Create little albums on your phone. If you record a little video today, you can put that with five other different clips next year, and it'll make a completely different video. So you're reusing, you're not constantly looking for new stuff. You're reusing what you already have. Absolutely love those two absolute nuggets. Okay, tell me, 2025, what are you seeing the different nuances between the different social media platforms now? So like, how do you treat Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube differently? Or do you treat them all the same? Yeah, obviously we treat them all the same. Um, and we probably shouldn't. I don't know. But Facebook would be the one I think I definitely think we get more business from Facebook Instagram. I love Instagram and it's probably the first app I will open in the morning will be Instagram because I love Instagram and I have to keep reminding myself to go back to Facebook. The other thing that we also, we're very proactive about responding to people. So if somebody comments, we do go back and we thank them for the comment. If they've asked a question, we'll answer the question. We really do try to do that. And that does take time to do it, but it's nearly, you'd often get a reply back saying, Oh my God, I can't believe you commented, or you replied to me. And that sort of thing. So I think that's really important. TikTok was a real accident, to be quite honest with you, and and up until December 24, I would've said, I like TikTok. I scroll on TikTok, I post on TikTok. We accidentally went viral many times on TikTok at the very beginning. Not so much now, but definitely at the beginning, like we literally went off the scale. And I always would say our customers are not really on TikTok until a video. And not a funny video, it was a video advertising funding for to train us to be a florist because we get funding through skill nets and social welfare and all that for people to come and train with us. And it was a video advertising that and it went viral for whatever reason on TikTok and all of a sudden I was being inundated with emails. Saw you on TikTok, saw you on TikTok, TikTok. And I was like, oh my God. So I actually made a little more of an effort to post more stuff on TikTok. We have a lot of top tips as well. So top tips on how to stop your roses from dying or top tips on how to graft your daffodils or top tips on whatever. There's a bit, we have a free tutorial like there's 80 different cut flower videos in that tutorial. And even though it's put together as a tutorial, all those videos we throw out free on social media as how to or that sort of thing. So I would still be more conscious now looking after me TikTokers because I didn't really look after them until that happened and I actually realized actually our audience is on TikTok because I'm on TikTok and I am my audience, my customer, um, YouTube, anything would go live on all platforms. We would have, and I've probably seen photographs of this. We actually have, my dad made a stand that literally holds six or seven phones. And we would go live across all platforms at the same time. So. We would go live on YouTube and we have a lot of tutorials on YouTube. And again, we're on YouTube a long, long time. Um, so I was actually doing something there recently and I was looking for a particular video and I was like, Oh my God, that's got 300, 000 views, that video. And we only monetized TikTok or YouTube last year, but the shorts on YouTube are the same shorts that I put on TikTok, the same shorts I put on Instagram, but I do try to put them using the music from that platform. I don't take a reel from Instagram and save it down and put it up on YouTube. I have it on my phone and if it's a reel and I put it together and then I put it on Instagram, I use Instagram's music. I put it on YouTube and I use YouTube's music. I put it on TikTok and I use TikTok's music. I definitely feel they like their own music rather than. somebody else's. Yeah, does it also probably signal to that platform that the Reel has been made within the platform because you've added a few words of nothing else and that it's more organic, I suppose. I know and I've read recently about different features that say Instagram has and are saying you should use those features because Instagram like you to use, I don't know, stickers or the polls or the question boxes and stuff like that, that they have these features and well. I don't know. Again, you read so much, but they say if you use those features, chances are Instagram will look at you a little bit closer. I don't know. Sometimes we could put up a video and it might be, as I said, like the most stupid video and it only gets 200 views. And then we could put up a video and get 10, 000 views. And then I could put that same video up, got 200 views next week and could get 10, 000 views with different music, more or less the same content, but a different video. That's what I struggle with social media, is that the only thing I know that works is consistency. Yeah, well, you know what, there's, that's also an important message. If you put something out and it didn't do well, it could just, it could be down to nothing. Wrong timing. Time of the day or the day of the week or the weather that day. And then with all your success then, Deirdre, Had you found, like, that your audience is further afield than just Ireland now? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, we, three years ago, I would have been probably 21. 2122, um, there was an awards, this florist in America who we all followed and she had these awards for florist of the year, floral educator of the year, all of that sort of stuff. It was a flower and it would be a big recognized awards. And we got an email saying, you've been nominated for these awards and we were like, oh gosh, something went on live and we're saying to people, oh my God, we've just been nominated for these awards. Would you go and vote for us, our nominators, whatever they had to do. The awards came about and we won the award for our floral educator of the year. And the person Sarah Campbell contacted us and she was like, I need to find out more about you. She says, we have never got anything like the votes and nominations that you guys got. She says, I have to research and find out who are these people. So she said, so she runs these big conferences, like massive conferences over in America. So the following year, she got in contact with us and she says, would you come to the conference? And we were like, Oh God, no. Like that's way over our budget. Like, like they're massive money. And then obviously Trapid. No, no, no, no. She says, I'm inviting you to come. We want you to come. Your fees will be paid to come. And we're like, what? Oh my God. So yeah. And all of a sudden, um. America opened up to us and we started getting more and more American. Like we've had, we actually have a pin board in the school. So we've had America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Malta, South Africa. And see what happens with us. So obviously in Ireland, we supply all the flowers and materials and some of these people that are on the courses, that's part of their fee. So if they live in England. Or anywhere else. We give them a discount off the price of the course for them to buy their own flowers. And in England it was no problem helping them to get their own flowers and get in contact with wholesalers there. So all of a sudden it was like, shite, how are we going to get them their flowers in America and Australia? Now, fairness, Sarah was actually really good and helped us with our Americans to put them in contact with wholesalers. And we would advocate for them saying, look, we're a little old flower school here in Ireland. This student is, this is what they need. Can you sort that out? So then we had. And we were able to sort them out. And last year we had a lady from South Africa and we're like, Oh my God, how are we going to do this? How are we going to organize this? So again, we got in contact with our reps and our reps. Yeah, no problem. Leave it with me. I'll get you. And he got us a flower wholesaler who would deal with her in South Africa. So I suppose the social media has advocated for us across the continent that. Not only do people know, but when a wholesaler then wants to look us up and see who we are because this person is looking to buy flares. Well, then they know, okay, this is a legit business. This is the real thing. And Europe as well. And we started again, which we would have done a lot years ago. We would have traveled to Europe, to Holland, to different events, or we'd be invited to Holland over to growers and that, and, and yeah, now we're like growers are, our people are looking for us to go over for, to create the content, so they're paying for us to go over now and they bring us to their farms and we create the content. It works for us. Like we have. And again, we batched the content. So if we're in an orchid farm, this is now we're in the season of orchids. So I will be posting about that at this time of the year for the next 10 years. So yeah, the social media really has opened up across the world. We do advertise in Ireland and now we started to run ads only on Facebook. I don't put ads on anything else in the UK, but I don't target. America and all, the world's status is too big. I don't know how to target that. Probably Louise, I probably need your help on that. But, uh, America is so vast. For to target ads there, though, we do just, if we're paying for ads, we just do England and Ireland for paid ads, only on Facebook though. Yeah, and Facebook ads are still super, although there's amazing value now with TikTok ads. Okay, nice. Sent my nutgrass, yeah? Yeah, because, and I totally agree with what you said earlier on, like, Facebook is still the number one platform for All are agency clients. Without a doubt, they still generate, and like everybody worries about Instagram but gets more business from Facebook. It still amazes me because Facebook really has wrecked my own head as a user and I'm a bit fed up with it. I'm the same. The only thing I post personally on Facebook now is things I want to up my memories because I love the memories and so something, the kids or whatever, yeah, win a match or whatever it is, I'll stick it up and for my personal timelines. Otherwise, I don't really use Facebook myself that much, but I do lurk and I'm actually think that's what's happens with everybody is they're lurking, they're looking, but they're not. Where Instagram, I think it's so easy just to double click and like where Facebook, yeah, not to physically like it. And Facebook, the link's going to be there if you want to find out more. So I think that also separates it. I think, you know, with TikTok, I think it's gone mainstream. I think that transition happened for whatever reason, whatever happened for late, late 2024 in TikTok. I just came into the, and I kept saying it in the agency. I was like, TikTok has gone mainstream. Forget about it just being for the young ones anymore. I said, everyone is on TikTok now. There's still good, there's really good value with ads at the moment. Like I was. boosting one of my posts for myself and I couldn't get it to go to the number of I wanted to spend. It just kept defaulting to three euros and I was like, Oh, for God's sake. So, because I only wanted it to be something very quickly for a day. It was just one of my podcast teasers. And like thousands and thousands of news for three quid. I'm like, wow, what's wrong with that? Oh, I definitely got to look this up then. I never actually thought about putting ads on TikTok. And I suppose only because initially, when I say in the last module, like from January, so whatever, that particular video, and we're seeing it now, like the rest of the videos. Oh, excuse me, are getting a lot of traction. But, as I said, it wasn't a video showing anything. It wasn't, it was literally a video, Cuné standing in front of stairs and talking about funding. There you go. I think this has been an amazing episode. So what we have learned is, first of all, you've got to be there. Second of all, don't wait until it's perfect. Third of all, repurpose as much and hold on to your clips and repurpose as much as possible. Fourth of all, like, there's going to be a few people there who told you, Oh, you have to have a different strategy for this platform or that platform or that platform. You don't. If you're producing a short form, vertical video, which is a reel or a TikTok or a YouTube short, put it out everywhere. And then after that, like, have a mechanism for generating leads from all that so that your business absolutely benefits. Deirdre, congratulations on your amazing success because everything that you've got, you absolutely deserve because you're always so helpful to everybody and so pleasant and it doesn't surprise me that both you and Jeanette are so successful. So congratulations. Thanks so much for sharing all your advice. How do people find you? Hayes Blair School. That's Hayes Blair School across all the platforms. And you have a nice online free taster flower course. So for anyone who's listening in here, who even had a no, he trusted of flowers, just interested, like it could be, you might get a bouquet of flowers delivered to your house for Mother's Day or Easter or something like that, and you want to arrange them. We have a free course that you can sign up completely free and learn how to do it. And you'll find that at ksflowerschool. com forward slash free hyphen flower hyphen course. That's it. Thanks for having me on Louise, it was a pleasure. That's it everyone, that's another episode of the Social Media Takeaway. If you have some feedback, make sure that you tag us on social media, you'll find me under Sel on Social M, or on LinkedIn you'll find me under Louise McDonnell. I'd love to hear your feedback and what you thought about the show. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss out on any future episodes. And if you know anyone who may be interested, be sure to share the show with them too. Thanks everyone.