Bella Web Design, Inc. is proud to announce that we are now a HootSuite Pro Solution Partner.

HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. Key social network integrations include Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, plus a suite of social content apps for YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr and more. Our company has used the program more than 2 years to update all of it’s channels at the same time and get metrics regarding which posts are most popular and shared.

Earlier this year HootSuite hit 3 million users with over 700 million messages sent through over 6 million unique social profiles. Along with HootSuite’s web platform, 20% of users access the dashboard through their mobiles including iPhone, Android, Blackberry and iPad. HootSuite also offers localized versions of their dashboard in six languages – English, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese.

There are many benefits to HootSuite Pro

Engage: Optimize your audience engagement by creating search streams, scheduling messages and monitoring all of your social network profiles from one customizable web and mobile dashboard.

Collaborate: Invite clients and colleagues to participate in your social media management. Assign messages for follow up and share streams, helping you increase efficiency.

Analyze: Measure your efforts using over 40 social analytics modules to build and share custom reports. Or select from one of our pre-made templates for quick and easy reporting.

Secure: Share access with team members without compromising security. The team permission levels and advanced sharing options ensure you remain in control of your valuable social profiles and accounts.

Sign up for a 30-day free trial of HootSuite Pro now: Click here!

Bella Web Design announces the launch of its Bella Cares Program today offering free WordPress template websites to non-profits around the world.

The program actually goes back to 1998 when Desiree Scales, CEO, began offering one free website each year to non-profits she believed were making the biggest difference. “I’ve always believed in giving back to the community which has helped our company grow even when we weren’t on anyone’s radar.” Desiree stated. “We’ve always felt a civic duty to help those not able to afford a professionally created website to help them represent their organizations online. I’m proud of the fact we’ve been able to do this for so many non-profits for the past 14 years. It’s a great feeling to know our sites not only benefit the organizations, but the thousands of people they help as well. The work we’ve done through this program is the work I’m most proud of throughout my entire career.”

Desiree expanded the private program in 2006 and began to give away three free non-profit sites per year. Today marks the formal launch.

Bella Web Design will begin asking fans and friends of the company to post their favorite non-profits on its Facebook page and vote for the 3 non-profits who will be granted free sites in January, 2013. (The program is so popular, 2012 was booked up by February via word of mouth.)

For more information about the program please see this page. Qualifications and rules of the program are outlined here as well as examples of work Bella has done with non-profits in the past.

Foursquare is a mobile application which is location based. Users “check-in” to venues with their smart phones. The GPS in their phone locates venues that they are near. Users get points for checking in and can connect with friends on the app as well. There’s also a leader board that keeps track of user’s points. The individual with the most check-ins at an establishment is dubbed “The Mayor.”

One of the biggest reasons users love Foursquare are the badges earned during check-ins. Some are earned when checking into a certain number of different venues (ie, 10 different movie theatres earns you the Zoetrope badge). Other badges are earned with group check-ins. A swarm badge is when 50+ Foursquare users are all checked-in at the same location. Some badges are more ambiguous like the Socialite badge, which doesn’t have a clear definition of how it is earned. Users must continue to check-in at various locations not always sure what unlocks different badges.

Foursquare also allows businesses to give users specials when they check-in to their venue. This can be a dollar amount off a product or a free appetizer, or any number of specials. There are also loyalty specials. For example, “Receive a free coffee on your fifth check-in.”

How Foursquare Helps you Attr Customers:

• Businesses can offer “first-time” specials to get customers to give them a try.

• Foursquare check-ins can be shared on Facebook and Twitter for added exposure for businesses.

• Specials promote loyalty. You can create specials that users get after a certain number of check-ins. Check-ins are the new punch card.

• Mayorships are like bragging rights for Foursquare users and pit them against one another. No one likes to lose their Mayorship which advocates loyalty and repeat business.

• Tips – users can leave tips about a venue that others can read. Avid users of Foursquare read the tips before visiting, to know what their friends recommend.

These are just a few ideas of how you can use Foursquare to increase traffic to your business. Foursquare can help your company win first-time customers as well as encourage loyalty. To get started, claim your business on Foursquare and set up your first special.

We are excited to announce our CEO, Desiree Scales, was asked to speak at Tory Johnson’s event for women business owners, Spark and Hustle. The event will be held at the Cobb Galleria on June 15, 2012 and will feature a full-day event filled with great information on how to start and build your business.

The Spark and Hustle National Tour was founded by Tory Johnson (you may know her from Good Morning America where she’s a weekly contributor) and
These events follow a hugely successful tour last year, which attracted top speakers including maternity pioneer Liz Lange; Stella & Dot cofounder Jessica Herrin; QVC cosmetics queen Laura Geller; #1  NYT bestselling author of the Happiness Project , Gretchen Rubin; Vera Bradley cofounder Barbara Bradley Baekgaard; trio creators of Elf on the Shelf ; star social media strategist Gary Vaynerchuk;  TV personality Judge Glenda Hatchett; radio personality Mel Robbins; NASCAR driver and environmentalist Leilani Munter; Dove Real Beauty ambassador Jess Weiner — and dozens of other top achievers across the country.will visit 20 cities in 10 weeks from May through August—connecting face-to-face with 10,000 women, all of whom are current and aspiring small business owners.

“I’m so honored Tory’s team reached out to me to speak at this event. It’s a dream come true for me! Tory has touched the lives of so many women and helped them find their perfect path. I hope I can do the same and help women learn  how to navigate the online marketing sea of information. My talk will be about how to start, build and promote your online ecommerce presence and/or take it to the next level. I encourage anyone who is thinking about or who currently has an online business to attend!” said Desiree.

Here are other topics that will be covered:

• Social Media
• Branding
• Money Management
• PR
• Time Management
• and a ton of other topics to help you no matter where you’re at with your business!

Facebook has put users on notice that all pages will be updated to the new Timeline version on March 30, 2012. (Here’s a great link to learn more https://www.facebook.com/FacebookPages) Have you already prepared your business page for the new Timeline? If you have not yet had a chance, Bella Web Design has prepared a short summary of what you need to know about Facebook’s new format and what it means for your page. (Check out OUR new Timeline at www.facebook.com/bellawebdesign!)

The biggest change to Facebook is the cover photo. This is a huge rectangular photo that is at the top of your page which should be as visually appealing as possible. The cover photo size is 815 x 315.  You can use an existing photo, but it is probably best to create a new one for your page that conveys your company’s message. According to Facebook, you can brand your company as much as possible but they do not allow blatant sales information, contact information or calls to action.

With Timeline, you have much more control over how your content is displayed. Facebook now allows you to customize the placement of photos, hide posts, and make other posts more prominent. Here are a some other features of Timeline.

• Pinning – If you have important content you can “pin” it to the top of your Timeline. Facebook limits this to seven days, but because they are at the top of your page, you can expect lots of engagement from these “pins” during the seven-day period.

• Highlights- Set any post to be highlighted which means it will take up both sides of the page. This feature enables you to bring special attention to a particular post within the Timeline.

• Milestones – Add a milestone using the Composer bar (the same place where you update your status or add photos) at any place on your Timeline. Milestones display the most important things in your company or brand’s history. Think product launches, grand openings, and more!

• Tabs are now Apps – With Tabs being replaced by Apps, the default landing tab goes away, but this doesn’t mean you lose control over what users see. Four tabs are on display under you cover photo which you can change. Each app also has a unique url, so you can direct visitors to that url from your website or anywhere outside of Facebook.

• Admin Panel – This is where you’ll access any insights for your page. What’s new is that fans can now send you messages. This is much like the person to person message feature that Facebook also uses. Admins will see these messages in the top right corner of the page.

Be sure to invest some time in planning out the structure or layout of your page in Timeline. Of course, it is always a good idea to mix up promotional posts with fun updates. Think about holidays and what is relevant to your customers when you post. Funny pictures and videos as well as shout outs to your fans are important as well.  Although it takes a bit of getting used to, the new Facebook layout gives businesses a terrific opportunity to brand themselves and engage their customers even more. (BTW, if you’re looking for a cool Timeline design, we can help you! Give us a call at 770 509 8797)

Bella Web Design has earned the designation of a 2011 Constant Contact All Star. This prestigious designation is only given to the top ten percent of the 500,000 Constant Contact users, so we feel extremely privileged to have earned it.

A Constant Contact All Star is a subscriber of the company’s marketing services that expertly has used email campaigns throughout the year to reach and engage their customers. Because Constant Contact allows tracking of links, forwards and sharing of email newsletters, a company’s effectiveness at communicating with their customer base and getting them to take action can easily be measured. “We’re happy to be recognized by Constant Contact for achieving strong marketing results. Constant Contact’s tools have helped us better manage customer relationships and engagement through consistent communication in a unique and fun way.” said Desiree Scales, CEO of Bella Web Design, Inc.

Bella Web Design is proud to have worked with Constant Contact for quite a while and found their marketing to be quite intuitive to learn and use successfully. We’ve used the reporting tools provided by Constant Contact to help us monitor and improve on what works best for us. We’re also pleased that Constant Contact stays on the forefront of new media, helping us to integrate Social Media with our marketing efforts.

Constant Contact customers using any combination of the company’s Email Marketing, Event Marketing, and Online Survey tools are eligible for this award. Constant Contact looked at the following criteria to select this year’s All Stars:

• Frequency of campaigns, events, and surveys
• Open, bounce, and click-through rates
• Event registration rates
• Survey completion rates
• Use of social features
• Use of mailing list sign-up tools

“There is nothing we like more than to see our customers finding success. It’s the reason Constant Contact was founded, and it’s a thrill to see the fantastic results that our All Stars are achieving,” said Gail Goodman, CEO of Constant Contact. “This group is really leading the charge when it comes to delivering relevant, engaging content that drives real business results. We salute this year’s All Stars for their success, and are honored to have played a part in their achievements.”

We are so pleased to be have been selected as an All Star Solution Provider for 2011. And we look forward to a bright 2012 with insightful information from Constant Contact on how to engage with our customers even more.

Project Type: Custom WordPress

Features: New Logo and Branding, Site Redesign, Appointment Requests

Case Study: Bella Web Design created a new logo and branding for this spa in Dunwoody, GA. Once this was done, a custom WordPress website was created to reflect the colors, images and logo to fully represent the new brand on the web.

And there are two things critical to your site’s success: 1.) The site is easy to index by search engines and 2.) The site is easy to navigate once the user gets on the site.

Technology has evolved to the point that so many users not only have just a PC or laptop but a mobile device and perhaps even a tablet. In fact, millions of iPads have been sold so far. Did you know that a site created in flash cannot be viewed on mobile devices or iPads? Apple continues record-breaking sales of iPads and iPhones with those making up $33 billion of the company’s total $46 billlion in revenue.

When users are browsing your site on their mobile device or iPad, they are most likely looking for information to make a decision fairly quickly. Perhaps they are ready to buy your product or want to dine at your restaurant. If your site has flash, they won’t be able to see your content necessary to make their decision and will most likely move on to your competitor.

Reasons not to use Flash:

Flash sites take longer to load. In the age of internet, users landing on your site don’t have much patience waiting for your site to load. If it takes more than a couple seconds they will move on. Flash sites take far longer to load vs. non-flash sites.

Flash is not SEO friendly. Flash is not indexed by search engines. If search engines cannot “see” your site, then they can’t refer anyone there and no one searching for your product or service will find your site.

Can’t track analytics. Your analytics are key in understanding what is working on your website and what needs to be tweaked. With analytics you can track referrals to your site, how much time is spent on different pages, what users click on and even more information. However, most flash sites only load one url. This means none of this data is trackable. So, how will you know where you need to improve?

Making changes with Flash is costly. Sites built in flash are difficult to update. That means you are paying your web developer lots of money to change your site on a regular basis. Compare this to a WordPress site, which most Bella websites are built in, which only takes minutes to update and you can see why this is a much better way to go.

Poor User experience. With Flash sites, a user cannot bookmark your url and they are not able to press a back button. Have you ever been on a site where the back button was disabled? How many times did you visit that site again?

The bottom line, if you have any Flash on your site, it’s time to bite the bullet and find someone who can convert your animation to another mobile-friendly format. In most cases, this doesn’t have to be an expensive proposition but it will take some time. Your site will regain it’s original “flash and dazzle” it had when you first launched it in no time and on every platform.

Project Type: Custom WordPress

Features: Rotating Photo Gallery, Online Quoting System

Case Study: Bella Web Design created a new logo and branding for this new venture. Once this was done, the custom website was created to reflect the colors, images and logo to fully represent the new brand on the web.

So, we’ve put together a short list of ways you can get the most out of YouTube.

1. Treat YouTube like a search engine. Even though your video content is important, search engines don’t look at video files. They look at much of the content or the keywords that surround it. Find your relevant keywords and make sure they are in your title, description and tags. Cute or clever titles don’t get views – targeted keywords do.

2. Write your description of your video with SEO in mind too. Use keywords and descriptive phrases in the description. If you need help coming up with keywords visit: https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool. Use 4 – 6 descriptive words or phrases in your in your description. If you’ve searched YouTube for videos based on keywords, you know it brings up a list of videos. Chances are, someone wants to see more than one video on the topic they are researching and will likely click on your video if it is grouped among the correct keywords.

3. Start Sharing – we’ve long been advocates of sharing your content on Social Media accounts. Did you get to this blog post from Facebook or Twitter? We always share content on various social sharing networks. You can do the same when you upload videos to YouTube. Simply click on your username at the top right corner then go to: Settings > Sharing, to share with your followers on Facebook and Twitter.

4. Add Captions and Annotations – perhaps you would like to add some call outs to better represent your business or service. You can change the font, color and even make the font larger or smaller. It is simple, just click on “Annotations” or “Captions” tab to add content.

5. Choose when a video starts to play when embedding it. This is a great feature if you have a long video but want to start displaying it at a certain point. For example, perhaps you have a product demo that is five minutes long, but you want to highlight a certain piece of the video. You can set the video to start playing at a certain place. When you get the embed link, click on the options button and you can select when the video starts to play. Note that the code with looks something like this: http://youtu.be/G_wFk120meE?t=15s

Treating YouTube like the search engine it has become will bring your video campaigns much farther much faster if you follow some of these rules. Getting the most of video sharing will help your customers connect with you in a much more efficient and powerful way.

Project Type: Custom WordPress

Features: Education Center Blog

Case Study: Dr. Henson of Field Foot and Ankle hired our company to create two sites, one for his practice and one for his invention (coming soon!). This site is the practice site which gives patients information and provides information about various procedures and foot afflictions.

Project Type: Custom WordPress

Features: Private Client and Employee Areas

Case Study: Designed for a B2B audience, this site is an informational brochure for current and potential clients of The A. I. Group. The site features a private employee area as well as a client login where clients can see their policies, billing and documents.

Project Type: XHTML/CSS

Features: Menus, Online Reservations

Case Study: The site was created for a new restaurant in Alpharetta, Georgia. The site features online reservations and menus as well as forms for employment and private dining reservations. The site reflects the beauty of the restaurant itself in the design.

Project Type: Custom WordPress

Features: Patient Forms, CMS

Case Study: We developed a new logo and custom WordPress site for this client in Whitefish, Montana. The site is easily managed with WordPress and will include videos in the future as well as a backend for dentists to train using the latest laser equipment.

Project Type: Custom WordPress

Features: Galleries, Product Catalogs

Case Study: This client has been with us for over 12 years and wanted a redesign into a platform they could control. We built their new site in WordPress with a custom design and they were thrilled with the result. We also designed a new logo and branding materials. This site has also been on the 1st page of Google for over 11 years for the word “staircase” due to our world-class search engine optimization as well as many other keywords.

http://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=staircase

If you haven’t heard of Pinterest, it is a virtual pinboard. It allows users to organize and share the images they like. Users “pin” pictures to their boards of varying subjects and can share with others. Pinterest is a community where users share pictures of crafts, design, and really any image they feel is popular. There’s also a box for a description, caption or link back to a website.

Pinterest has about 4 million users. According to Desiree, “Pinterest is the new Facebook.” For every one new Facebook user there are three new people joining Pinterest. One of the benefits of Pinterest is that that users can also post their pins to Facebook and Twitter. This enables even more sharing and more reach for a business.

So, how do you get started? Pinterest is a bit different in that you don’t just sign up. You have to be invited to join. Chances are, if you have even a small social network, someone in that network is on Pinterest and can give you an invite. (You can ask Desiree!)

Once your invite is approved sign in (via email or Facebook). You’ll then be prompted to click on some categories of interest and start following some others. When starting out it is a good idea to create boards of specific topics so one board doesn’t get cluttered. Additionally, you can also choose to let others share photos on your board.

Here are some tips on how you can use Pinterest to increase your business:

• Invest time – As is true with all social media, the more you invest the more you’ll get out of it. With Pinterest, post quality pins than will make others want to repin.
• Share your words – You don’t have to just have images. You can share pictures of quotes or funny sayings or information. People share these kinds of images on Pinterest quite often.
• Follow the biggest users  – They have lots of users paying attention to what they are posting. When you follow them AND have quality pins they will likely follow you back and repin.
• Make sure your business is a match – It may sounds obvious, but keep in mind, Pinterest is about interesting pictures and content. If your business sells copy machines, it may not be the best match.
• Promote more than your business – It is tempting for businesses to only post pictures of their products. However, users want to see a variety of interesting pictures. When you do this, it keeps others interested in your content and makes you appear less self-serving.

Want more ideas? Check out Desiree’s Boards: Pinterest.com/dscales Just be careful…we’ve heard there is a “Pintravention” for people who get hooked on this service!

Last year, Desiree spoke at the RETSO convention on the topic of Twitter: The Art of Engagement in 140 Characters or Less. Desiree demonstrated how to she engages her audience of 50,000 and keeps them interested in her message.

This year she will be demonstrating how to set up a mobile site using WordPress and talking about how to get your site found on Siri.

RETSO is a campground for the real estate industry’s brightest minds, most innovative companies, and greatest doers to gather each spring in North Atlanta. They share ideas and knowledge that is ready to implement to make agents, brokers, vendors, partners, and the industry better. – RETSO website

Although RETSO is real estate based, there is plenty to glean from the insightful information shared by industry professionals. This valuable information on how to better use technology can be translated and put to use in other industries as well.

Some of the past topics covered are:

• Using tools like Twitter and Blogs to get business

• Mobile – why it’s hot and how to use it

• You don’t have to be a techie use social media successfully

• Making videos to market yourself and your business

• Paying it forward: how helping and promoting others can help you

• Using Location based marketing

• Photography – taking the best pictures to showcase homes

Who: Realtors and other tech savvy professionals

What: Real Estate Technology Conference

Where: Gwinnett Center | 6400 Sugarloaf Parkway | Duluth, GA 30097

When: April 2012

Don’t miss out on attending RETSO this spring. Tickets can be purchased at RETSO.com.

Make plans to attend now as space is limited. The day long seminar is free but will fill up quickly. Details are below.

Some of the topics that will be covered during this one day conference are:

• Time Treasury

• Why Join a Chamber of Commerce

• Small Business Accounting

• Three Keys to Email Marketing

• Content is Key

• 5 New Ways to Look Smart Online This Year (Desiree Scales)

• Creating the Right Impression with Video

• Social Media Marketing Made Simple

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear first hand from those who’ve mastered the art of running a small business in the age of the Internet and social media. Find out what works and what doesn’t. Sign up for Constant Contact’s Get Organized! Email + Social = Success here. See you there!

Modeled on El Sistema, Venezuela’s National System Of Youth And Children’s Orchestras, the Atlanta Music Project is an after-school, youth orchestra and choir program targeting underserved communities in metropolitan Atlanta. Founded in February 2010, the Atlanta Music Project is a tax-exempt, 501(c)3 organization.

AMP believes the pursuit of musical excellence leads to the development of confidence, creativity and ambition, thus sparking positive social change in the individuals and the communities they serve.

The AMP program is rigorous with classes taking place five-days-a-week for two hours each day. AMP believes all children are musical and there are no entrance auditions or requirements for students to have any musical experience. The only thing required for a student to be in AMP: commitment to attending all classes.The Atlanta Music Project provides for each of its students: an instrument, classes, world-class Teaching Artists and performance opportunities.  AMP classes include orchestra, choir, musicianship, African drum and dance and group lessons in the following orchestral instruments: violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, clarinet, trumpet and trombone.

Desiree’s background is steeped in music. She began singing when she was 3-years-old on her swing set, swinging to the beat of her song as her mother often loves to tell people. She was involved in choir from elementary school all the way through college graduation and sang several solos and in musical groups such as madrigals. She has performed with school choirs all over the United States including New Orleans, Illinois, Atlanta, Ohio, Missouri and Indiana. She has also performed solos with her high school choir in Europe including Sweden, Norway and Denmark. She studied for three years Vocal Performance at Northern Illinois University on a full-ride scholarship, but later decided to major in Public Relations Journalism and minor in Music Performance. Desiree continues to perform with her church choir.

Desiree first heard of the Atlanta Music Project while attending TEDxPeachtree in 2010 where she was blown away by the greatest clarinet performance she had ever heard by Alcides Rodriguez who is a member of the Atlanta Music Project’s Board of Advisors. She approached co-founders Al Meyers and Dantes Rameau and couldn’t wait to hear more about the project and how it started. Thus began her journey to becoming a Board Member. Desiree is excited about the opportunity to spread the love of music to kids and communities who may not have a chance to participate in music programs without AMP. “Music is a language which breaks all barriers and speaks to the heart of the individual in every corner of the globe.” she states. “Giving the gift of music to a child is a gift that will continue to give long after the child has grown in teaching discipline, responsibility and providing creative expression. I’m so proud to be part of a powerful agent of social change which will make a big difference in our community and, eventually, in the world at large.”

The retail firm RevTrax just released some interesting findings by a study on ecommerce and retail. They conducted two years of research and found that ecommerce sales are linked to future in-store sales. What they found is that for every dollar of ecommerce there were six dollars spend in-store with regard to paid search. This means that online sales are a conduit of sorts to bring customers into a retail store.

That got us here at Bella headquarters thinking, if paid search generates in-store sales, couldn’t the same be true for organic search? Absolutely! The process is largely the same: it is about matching keywords to what someone types into a search engine. With organic search optimization, the more relevant the keywords, the higher you’ll rank.

Organic search is good because once it is in place via articles, blog posts, directory listings or the like, search engines index them, pushing a steady stream of visitors to your site. With paid advertising, once the ad is gone, the traffic goes with it.

The long and short of it is, that when done right, organic search engine optimization can bring buyers to your store. With the advent of smart phones and mobile marketing, the process has been made much easier. If done correctly, organic search brings customers to your site and landing pages display coupons that customers can print out and redeem in-store. Here is what is really interesting – one of the other key findings is that 40 – 50 percent of the customers were new customers. This is quite remarkable in that these weren’t existing customers that were looking for a deal from a retailer. These are newly acquired customers.

Savvy retailers, who capitalize on organic search ranking, may find it to be a viable alternative to the costly advertising found on the many deal-a-day sites that are popping up all over the internet. Read more about what we have to offer as far as organic SEO.