PITTSBURGH—Today's competitive environment favors those businesses who connect their brands to their communities and what's happening around them. One case in point is Eyetique, the 17- location-and-growing eyewear retail group based here with strong ties to its city and patients, ties which it has strengthened via digital and social media in all forms.

Eyetique founder and CEO Norm Childs, VP Brad Childs and their marketing team maintain a visible and enthusiastic presence in a variety of media platforms, emphasizing quality eyecare as well as messaging formats that stoke their eyewear fashion and celebrity/community connections.

As Eyetique continues to expand beyond Pennsylvania, including its first outpost in Cleveland and other markets, the company recently purchased a new HQ location, as VM's dba recently reported, and the team emphasized that it sees great value in a multi-tier presence using traditional and digital media tools.

Andrew Davis, Eyetique's marketing coordinator, noted a variety of initiatives, including an ongoing celebrity campaign which also cross brands via other businesses. In the realm of e-commerce, he noted, "In the Internet age, we now accept PayPal as a form of payment on all online orders. This has been huge for us, a quarter of our transactions this year have been via PayPal.

He adds, "We do use SEO and Ad Words to promote our website. From contact lenses, to free shipping, to any special promotions.

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Davis also pointed out that Eyetique encourages social media check-ins. "We offer prizes and giveaways whenever someone checks in to one of our 13 locations. If you check in to an Eyetique store via the Yelp Mobile App, you'll receive an Eyetique T-shirt, which is designed by a local artist."

In addition, Eyetique's view about customer reviews? Bring it on. Said Davis, "We let our customers know that if they leave a review on any of our social media pages, Yelp, Google+, Facebook, whether good or bad, they're automatically entered to win a pair of sunglasses. We have an ongoing campaign where we give away a pair of sunglasses to a random winner every month.This has increased our traffic to our social sites but also in our overall review ratings."

Eyetique's Facebook presence is active and updated regularly, featuring posts about the Golden Globes and the Oscars as well as including community involvement events like Brad Child's, founder of Pittsburgh Aviation Animal Rescue Team, recent opportunity to take Inside Edition along on their most recent rescue mission.

As well as Twitter, Davis is also liking Instagram lately. He said, "It's easy to use and fun and a great way for retailers to showcase their product, staff and stores." Instagram is also, he noted, "great for engaging with your customers. We get tagged in dozens of photos of customers on Instagram wearing their new glasses. We love seeing and sharing these with the hashtag "#Selfique."

In fact, Davis pointed out, " We love hashtags. Anything pertaining to Eyetique and our services we like to use "#EyetiqueExperience" which is something unique, but simple enough to understand. For all the award shows, like the recent posts we did at Golden Globes we saw 17+ shares from optical retailers from around the world. I like to use "#BestEyewear" for anyone wearing eyewear at the big award shows. We love live tweeting the events and discussing what everyone is wearing at the events."