Hello! I’m Renato and serve as Vice President of Digital Strategy and Education at BloomNet, a premier florist services company. My primary role is to serve BloomNet’s member florists by developing customized services and solutions focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), social media, content marketing and mobile strategy to help them build web sales and engage customers. I also serve as lead educator for new technology, digital marketing strategy and business, consumer and demographic trends at the Floriology Institute in Jacksonville, FL.
Prior, I served as Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Society of American Florists (SAF), the floral industry’s trade organization providing marketing, technology and government relations for flower growers, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers.
I regularly evangelize technology and marketing benefits and best practices through a weekly blog at floriologyinstitute.com, a monthly column in Floriology magazine, articles in state and regional floral association publications, presentations at floral industry events, monthly webinars, on social media and chat (yes, on the phone) with BloomNet members to help solve their challenges.
I served as an active volunteer for the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) where I chaired the ASAE Technology Council, was a founding member of the Young Professionals Committee and continue to be active as a Diversity Executive Leadership Scholar (DELP).
April 8, 2014 is a day of reckoning. For those with PCs running Microsoft XP anyways. Microsoft will no longer support it after that day and if you’re a small business, that means no security updates which makes your shop no longer PCI compliant. It’s tough to do business nowadays without taking credit cards! My friend Paul Brockway of Conklyn’s Floirst in Alexandria, VA steps in this month to serve as a case study of how he went about to replace his Windows XP machines with either a Windows 7 or 8 computer or those running Linux.
