Online reputation management has been critical for local businesses for as long as consumers have been researching businesses online. With the rise of blogs, social media, and review sites, not to mention continued innovation in local search and local discovery apps, the need for reputation monitoring has only grown and will continue to do so as the way people discover info about local businesses gets more and more diversified.
Tell us about your strategy for monitoring your reputation.
Yext is one company that aims to tackle the problem with a solution called Yext Rep. Launched this week at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, Yext calls Yext Rep the "first online real-time reputation management service for local businesses."
Businesses can use the tool free of charge, and the company describes it as a way to obtain a "clear and accurate" picture of how your business is represented across online properties with the highest visibility, including business listings, reviews, and social media. It includes a real-time feed of online listings, profiles, and reviews.
Through the real-time feed, businesses can interact and respond in real-time with customer reviews, tweets, posts, check-ins, etc. Businesses will also receive notifications when profiles or listings are incorrect or do not exist, and will have access to automatic setup to correct or create listings.
"Never before have companies had the opportunity to manage their online reputation in this way and Yext Rep allows them to do so for free," says Yext CEO Howard Lerman. "Online listings and reviews can have a very strong effect on the success of a local business and Yext Rep is the key tool owners need to ensure they are being accurately represented on the web."
Just so you're aware, I've not used Yext Rep personally, so I can not attest as to just how "clear and accurate" a picture it does indeed paint, but the concept is a good one, and certainly worthy of bringing to the attention of any small business owner looking to keep a positive brand image on the web in a time when opinions are flying all over the place and are easily accessible from the pockets of potential customers.
Don't Let A Bad Reputation Drag Your Business DownManage Your Online Reputation in Real TimeSBMU: Reputation Management for Social Media Online Reputation Management as an IndustryReputation Management and SEO Are Not the Same ThingDon't Let Blog Comments Ruin Your ReputationA Must-Read for Reputation ManagementA Nice Tool For Reputation ManagementMany Businesses Unprepared For Reputation ProblemsThe Top Five Content Management Systems
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Comments
Sounds great!
Keeping a good reputation for my safety and security web site is critical to customer confidence in me and my products so this is a great idea and free is definitely a great price! Thanks, Chris.
Sent In My Request
Reputation Management
The concept is good but I haven't found local business oweners willing to make the investment in responding to "what people are saying" about them good or not so good. It takes work and seems to only happen if they have somebody else do it for them. I've tried to advocate to my clients they need to not only pay attention but also respond. It's the responding step they can't seem to get done.
Cliff
I like Yext but no reporting
I tried Yext Rep and it seems to be working well in monitoring online reviews and business listings. It would be top notch if it had reporting capabilities.
I also agree with Cliff that I have honestly not found a small business owners that cares to put the effort in for this. Especially the ones that are sitting right on main street and will get business no matter what.
Reverse SEO
A little reverse SEO never goes astray in these situations either.
Restaurants and others
I've recently watched the online reputation of a local furniture place go south thanks to a small local ning powered website. Funny but the place deserved to be slammed because of its business practice but the power of Google search allows everyone to had problems with this shop find other people complaining.
Online Reputation
It's still hard to say how companies are using reputation management services, but industry players say clients fall into two camps. Some want to understand and respond to customer complaints.
Reporting isn't enough
Chris.. first off.. nice post and very timely. This subject is hot with the small business owner and getting hotter by the day.
There are a lot of nice reporting suites out -- Yext, Marchex, and a few others. I've been in and around this space for the last couple of years dealing directly with business owners and almost equally on their mind with having the knowledge of ratings, reviews and mentions was the ability to ensure their data is accurate throughout the web.
Do a search for a business and you will find wrong addresses, bad URL, old descriptions and more. A lot of directory sites either import old data or set their crawlers to scrape data once and never update. This leaves businesses in a bad position. Bad data isn’t just a problem for small sites – Google, Bing, Yahoo, SuperPages and other top tier sites have issues.
True reputation management takes control and manages the content throughout the web and then reports on the consumer actions.
A little about our offering.
I think when it comes to
I think when it comes to business safety it is important to keep a small circle of social networking apps under your watch and not spread yourself thin by trying to please everyone. A strong showing on a few important sites will benefit you more than a weak showing everywhere.
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