Over the last few weeks we’ve been busy on working on a couple of exciting new websites, we’ve just published two new websites for our clients.

Winning Insights

Ross Clark of Winning Insights provided us with a excellent brief – looking for a welcoming design for his new subscription and eCommerce based advisory service.  The result can be found here – Winning Insights

South Lanarkshire Biodiversity

The Team at The South Lanarkshire Biodiversity Partnership asked us to redesign their existing website with a more modern, clean and simple to use site.  You can view the new website here – SLBP

As the lines between search engine optimization and social media continue to blur and form one synergistic effort, it is critical that both small and large companies stay up to date with new opportunities for spreading brand awareness and connecting directly with their audiences. When Google makes a move in the social space, it’s important to pay attention to, understand, and identify how the offering can and should be leveraged for your business.

With the recent announcement of Google+ brand pages, many people may be saying “My business is already active on Facebook and Twitter, why should I bother with yet another social media channel?” This is a valid question due to the amount of time and resources that are required to effectively manage each social media channel. At the surface, Google+ brand pages may seem like just another Facebook with a fraction of the user base. However, these are a few unique elements that you should consider before writing it off:

Smaller User Base

While it’s true that Google+ does have a much smaller user base than Facebook (estimated at 40 million vs. 800 million), it doesn’t necessarily mean you should ignore it and focus all of your efforts on Facebook. With fewer users, come less noise and more focus in the space. Facebook is packed full of updates from the recent integration of services like Spotify and The Washington Post, as well as games, “happy birthdays,” and pictures of friends and family. Google+, on the other hand, seems to be driven more by content of a professional, informational, and industry-specific manner. Because of this, brands may be able to create a much more direct and personal relationship with their audiences.

Unique Functionality

Google+ offers very unique functionality with its ability to host “Hangouts,” or live audio/video chats, between itself and its audience. Hangouts provide an opportunity to directly engage in discussions, receive immediate feedback, and/or provide exclusive content. One example of a brand already using Hangouts is The Black Eyed Peas, where they hosted a session backstage prior to one of their concerts. The Hangout allowed them to connect with their fans, give some inside information on the band, and thank their fans for their support (watch the full recording here).

Another creative use of Hangouts can be seen with Dell. Michael Dell mentioned the possibility that the company may soon leverage Hangouts as a place for face-to-face customer support and sales rather than requiring customers to call in.

Future Integration With Other Google Offerings

As Google continues its recent effort to unify its products and offerings, Google+ is ripe for deeper integration with services such as Google Places and Maps, Web and Image Search, and YouTube. Google has already begun this process in several ways. One of the most recent is the addition of Google +1s into Image Search.

This could become beneficial to increasing a brand’s visibility, socially and via organic/image search, where the brand frequently post images to their Google+ brand page (such as artists or photographers who sell a product or service), and have an audience that is likely to share that content.

Ultimately, whether or not using Google+ brand pages is right for your business depends on your target audience and your level of creativity to use the service to its full potential. In most cases, businesses must fully understand what types of audiences they have, where they are spending their time online, and what types of content they want to consume from each service. Finding the right balance of social interaction and commercial promotion is critical in creating that connection, positively affecting other marketing initiatives such as SEO, and ultimately generating the next sale.

Are you using Google+ for your brand? If so, in what ways are you engaging your audience? And if not, why did you decide against it?

This article originally published at ClickZ here.

Quality, engaging and exciting content should be an integral part of any website design. No matter how glossy and shiny the website itself is, if its not using the right words to get the right message across to your customers, then you are taking a risk with your business. The best designed websites do indeed draw customers and users to sites – but it’s the content that keeps them there.

Meaningful, useful and interesting to read content will keep visitors to your site engaged for longer. The words you use and how you put them over to your customers, can say a great deal about you, your business and the way you do business. All are essential components in encouraging people to form a relationship with you and consider doing business with you.

This is even more important if you online presence has an ecommerce element to it. Your website is your showroom, your retail site, your office. You are welcomming customers in to browse and buy. No-one spends particularly long in physical retail outlets which are unkempt and shown no care or attention from their owners, nor do they tend to purchase from them. Keep your ‘shop space’ alive and fresh by including ‘Latest News’ or informative and topical blog articles which demonstrate to your customers that you are actively working your business, that you are properly running the business as a going concern, that you care about your business and want to make your website a place where people want to spend time. Consider your website as an extension of you and your business. Ensure your content reflects exactly what you’d want people to say about you.

All website content should be clear, easy to read and digest, meaningful for customers and interesting or inspiring. A critical point, but ever so simple is to remember the basics – speling errors, poor grammar, broken links and out of date information don’t exactly portray the best image of your business.

It’s important that content is relevant and fresh too. Whats happening in your industry? What might customers like to know about your business? Regular maintenance and topical updates encourage people to come back to your site to find out what’s new.

By all means, draw visitors in with the visuals, but keep them there with the perfect words.

Chocolate Lime now offering Copy and Content Writing Service

Chocolate Lime have recently been asked to design more characters for clients.  Our mascot design service couldn’t be simpler.  We’ll sketch your mascot initially based on the design brief given to us.  Once the client is happy with the sketch, the mascot is then coloured to the style preferences requested.

See below for some transformations from sketch to fully coloured mascot!

Over the last 12 months more and more of my clients are asking about Facebook pages and how the can create them as a extension of their website marketing activities.  Facebook fan pages have become an essential weapon in the online promotion of business, starting initially through their friends and family and subsequently through their existing and new customer base.  Facebook fan pages allow businesses to:-

1) Communicate with your customers.
2) Gather valuable insights into customer behaviours and interests.
3) Help customers advertise their business services throughout their own social network.
4) Run online marketing promotions and special offers to targetted groups.

Here’s how to create your own Facebook fan page:

Spend some time comparing other Fan Pages

First of all, make sure you’re an individual member of Facebook. Then try a search for a fan page. For example, do a search on “Coca Cola” and click on “pages” when you get the search results. Click on “Coca Cola” to view the Coca Cola fan page. Examine how the page is structured.  Next try and search for your competitors or businesses in a simialr industry to yourself.
TIP: Take a look at Facebook’s gallery of pages which follow best practices for their business category – here.

Create your very own Facebook fan page for your business
Facebook pages allow your customers to become deeply connected with your business or brand. Customers can express their support by adding themselves as a fan, writing on your Wall, uploading photos, and joining discussions with other fans.
Try: Before starting, read how to create a business presence through a Facebook page and Facebook’s guide to creating a page. Then create your own fan page, When you create a new Facebook fan page for a business, you select either the “Local Business” or “Brand or Product” option (unless you are an artist, band, or public figure). If you select “Local Business”, choose your business type – cafe, store, bank, etc. Then click “Create Page.”

Add some basic company information to your page

Initially, add basic information such as website, company overview, contact details and products. Add your logo or another picture that represents your business. After adding info, make sure you publish your page.
Start promoting your page through your immediate social network
Now that you have your fan page up you have to attract potential fans without annoying them — and that’s more art than science. First see if some of your existing customers are on Facebook, and become Facebook friends with them if you haven’t already. Then, invite them to become fans. Also let all of your customers know about your fan page through existing media campaigns, and encourage them to show their support by joining Facebook and becoming fans. Once you have some fans, it’s easier to get more.
Try: Keep your fans happy by offering them useful and relevant info. For example, send special updates just for them. Facebook recommends messaging fans no more than twice per month. Remember, the more users interact with your page, the more News Feed stories for users’ friends are created, magnifying awareness of your page.

Promote Your Page Off Facebook

Promoting your page externally helps spread the word to new customers and fans.
TIP: Facebook provides guidelines on promoting your page outside of Facebook. They also provide a Facebook Page Badge graphic that you can download for use on your own site that says “Find Us on Facebook.” Hyperlink your badge to your own page’s URL.

Now off you go!