Whisper Boutique have just launched their new website, courtesy of Branding Bay.

The website is fully eCommerce enabled and lists over 200 of the company’s products for sale online.

In particular, the site is:

– Easy to use
– Full of comprehensive features
– Developed to target different languages and sell to different locations
– Beautifully designed to accommodate mobile and tablet shoppers
– Streamlined to enhance the shopping experience
– Highly optimised – we employ the latest Search Engine Optimisation standards

Caraline, owner of Whisper Boutique, said: “This new site is perfect and will dramatically increase our Online Sales. It was a pleasure to work with Colin & the team at Branding Bay!”

What can Branding Bay do for Your Business?

– Advice on the most relevant online store for your business
– Consultancy on all aspects of eCommerce to increase your online sales
– Experience with Realex Payments, Sage Payments, Paypal and Stripe
– Create 24-hour selling machines with full measurement and statistics

Having a robust, optimised and customisable online store that sells products that users want is of course a sure fire business winner. Let Branding Bay provide you with the advice you need.

The post Whisper Boutique launch their new eCommerce website appeared first on Branding Bay Shopify Belfast.

Our team tweet, like, share, pin and +1 brands to social media stardom. Whether it’s part of a wider SEO campaign or a standalone service, we muster all of our social skills to win you friends, followers, reblogs and fantastic online publicity.

Fun is one of the most important and underrated ingredients in any successful venture.” Richard Branson

Follow The Leader

It’s a popularity contest and, if you win, you’ll enjoy significant exposure, customer loyalty and brand engagement.

It can be tough work building up a strong social following but, once you’ve made it, you’ll be able to get the word out about new products, special offers and exciting developments in 140 characters and with just one click – that’s cracking, cost-effective digital marketing.

Interesting news and fun content spread like wildfire through social channels so make your material relevant and clickable and you could enjoy impressive exposure. The key is selecting the right platforms for your business, growing your loyal band of followers and understanding what gets them sharing…

How can we help?

…So how do you do that? Hot content and regular interaction are crucial. Nobody likes a show-off, which is why it’s just as important to talk about what everybody else is doing as it is to talk about what you brand is up to. Branding Bay’s social team know how to play by the unspoken rules of each social platform, whether it’s Twitter or Tumblr, Lookbook or Facebook, building a powerful presence with personality which works seamlessly with your brand identity.

Forums and fans

Another smart way to get people talking is to give them the tools they need to do just that: talk. A forum will keep commentators and interested customers clicking back to keep up with their contemporaries. Whether it sits inside or external to your website, a flourishing forum is a great resource for any business with big digital ambitions.

If you’re interested in growing your social presence and getting people talking, talk to our social media marketing experts first on 028 9091 8969 or drop us an email at hello@brandingbay.com, you can even tweet us @brandingbay.

The post Can Social Media Help your Business? appeared first on Branding Bay Shopify Belfast.

Thankfully, SEO has come a long way in a short time, with audiences rejecting spammy marketing techniques and Google conducting up to 800+ changes to its search algorithm every year to ensure that users are retrieving only relevant content.

Organic search remains the very best form of FREE advertising available but it’s vital to bring your SEO strategy into the present day to make it work effectively.

Here are three very basic methods to update your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy today:

1. Be local.

With the rollout of Google’s Pigeon algorithm last year, local SEO has taken centre ground, connecting web search and map search more cohesively than ever before.

As a first measure, you must ensure that Google has your up-to-date business details in order for your customers and clients to easily locate and contact you.

Local directory listings also need to play a fundamental role in your SEO strategy because Pigeon is providing higher visibility for review websites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp and OpenTable. That means working with directories to build positive feedback on your services and ensuring that all external links are directing to the right places – in other words, any dead links require 301 redirects immediately.

2. Use YouTube.

YouTube (coincidentally owned by Google) is the second most used search engine in the world, and as many marketers find video content daunting, the race for higher page rankings is less competitive.

If you’re not yet producing video content for lack of equipment and material, the chances are, you’re overlooking the whole film set directly in front of you: your workplace.

Many SMEs are now producing brilliant video content using nothing more than a digital camera, their office as a backdrop and their staff as the subjects. Whether you work in recruitment, property or marketing, simple two-minute educational pieces presented by key members of your team are unique, engaging and sharable – all of which are assets that Google is looking for.

To incorporate video content into your SEO strategy, include keywords in titles and video descriptions, regularly publish fresh, engaging content that will generate comments, likes, shares and increase your number of subscribers, and provide embed codes for viewers to link back to your content on their own websites.

As with all SEO practices, it’s about the long game, so create interesting videos for your audience as opposed to what you think Google will like. Once the views rack up, Google will take notice and rank you higher.

3. Make SEO a company-wide initiative.

SEO is the key to FREE exposure for your business, thus every department must understand their power to make an impact on your search engine ranking. Make sure you train all users of your website the important of using search engine friendly content. We at Branding bay can of course help by providing training with this!

There is nothing worse than a member of staff updating your website blog with good content that is not being found on Google!

The post 3 simple ways to update your SEO Strategy appeared first on Branding Bay Shopify Belfast.

Depending on your business model, you might use Twitter to conduct customer service, see what your competitors are up to, or promote your brand.

But more and more of our clients are asking us: “How do I actually make money from Twitter?”.

Create a Strategy

Before you can think about making money on Twitter, make sure you have a strategy or plan for using Twitter.

Some tips would be:

• Use a desktop application such as TweetDeck to manage your accounts.
• Setup different Twitter accounts for your personal and business sites.
• Establish yourself an THE definitive authority in your particular area.
• Follow lists that relate to your area and then create lists.
• Retweet others, especially influencers, to get on their radars.
• Work on Twitter (not play!) for at least 30 minutes every day.

Once you’ve got this discipline in place, start looking at how the most successful businesses use Twitter.

For example, some share quality information, others generate buzz, others inspire, and some are deliberately controversial. They use different styles to attract readers, engage, and increase their sphere of influence.

So, before you start selling on Twitter, monitor how others do it, adapt their tactics, and then see what works for you. The key fact here is: if your audience trusts you as a person, they’ll be more likely to buy from you in the end!

Let’s Make Some Money On Twitter

Now that you have the tools, made observations, and seen mistakes others make, how can you start to make money on Twitter?

Sell your Product

Start by developing a Twitter following around the benefits your product offers – not the actual product itself.

An example? Instead of selling websites, share tweets about the benefits of having a website, how to use websites more effectively, tips and tricks for website marketing, and other useful information that encourages others to share your tweets.

Then, once you have a critical mass of interested followers, drop in a subtle tweet selling your product and ask your followers to retweet it.

Find leads via Search

You can use the search function on Twitter.com (or, even better, use a social media management platform like TweetDeck) to find leads and generate sales on Twitter.

Enter, for example, ‘web design?’ (note the question mark). This returns tweets with questions about web design.

Answer the question and direct people back to your site. In other words, use the search to find problems others are having and then position yourself as an expert in this area. This is a very simple and effective way to interact with potential clients.

This will take some trial and error, but once you’ve got up to ten good keywords, you have a great source of potential leads.

Tip: in order to reach out to potential leads, you will have to send unsolicited messages via Twitter. You should send an @mention to possible leads using a very soft sell, and letting them know that you found them via Twitter.

Interact with Followers

Social media isn’t like any other type of communication. It offers businesses new ways to connect to potential customers in two-way conversations.

You can make money on Twitter by getting your followers involved in your business. Run a campaign asking for creative input from your customers, like getting them to design a logo or write a product description/ review for you.

This may not initially lead directly to sales, but it will increase your visibility on Twitter as well as the brand loyalty of your followers.

Sponsor Tweets

Once you have a critical mass of followers in a specific area, for example, developing web sites for the Financial Sector, contact companies in this sector and offer sponsored tweets.

Some final tips and tricks to making money on Twitter

• Avoid hard-sells: Twitter users are looking for real connections and valuable information, not hard sales pitches.
• Don’t use Twitter solely for making money: build a community, a brand presence, and engage with your followers.
• It’s not all about the followers: quality matters much more than quantity, so if you have a low follower count, you can still make money by achieving a high conversion rate or by generating leads using search.

Conclusion

Twitter is a numbers game depending on your following (and quality of followers), but it works once you get followers who share, retweet, and spread the word about your business. And the key word here is Share. Having followers is fine, but actually connecting with those who spread the message – that’s how you’ll make money on Twitter!

The post Do Businesses Really Make Money On Twitter? appeared first on Branding Bay Shopify Belfast.