business with stars and a written review, and they let business owners or manag- ers respond publicly to each review. Your settings can be adjusted to have all new reviews emailed to you when they’re post- ed, which makes it really easy to stay in the loop. Make sure your information is correct, including but not limited to: your business hours, address, services offered, contact information, etc. A few years ago here in the San Francis- co Bay Area, scammer locksmiths edited local locksmiths’ listings and changed the phone numbers to the same (800) num- ber. Google has improved things since then, but it’s still very important to claim your listing. Yelp for Business Owners Most folks are familiar with the Yelp web- site. This is potentially the most popular online ratings and review site for busi- nesses. It’s a useful tool to gauge the pop- ular opinion of consumers on any given establishment from parks and hotels, to restaurants, daycares, hair salons and — of course — locksmiths! Yelp offers a special portal for business owners. Once your account is activated, you can upload images, offer specials and include details about your business. You can also upload your own profile image and respond di- rectly to customer reviews. I will discuss more about this in the next section. I understand that there are many opin- ions held about Yelp, its practices and general trustworthiness, but regardless of these nuances, it’s important to be aware of how your customers are portraying their experience to others. NextDoor NextDoor is an online platform that’s centered in specific neighborhoods. It offers many different features for resi- dents, but the one we care about for the purpose of this article is the “Recom- WWW.ALOA.ORG Figure 1. Every business has a free Google listing affiliated with the maps component of the Google site. To combat scammers, it’s still very important to claim your listing and maintain your information there. Figure 2. Yelp offers a special portal for business owners. Once your account is activat- ed, you can upload images, offer specials and include details about your business. mendations” feature of the site (for more information on NextDoor, see my article in the September 2016 issue of Keynotes). With this feature, residents can search for a service needed and find the business- es their neighbors recommend directly on the site. Businesses aren’t given a star rating, but text reviews may be leſt. You can recommend a business by searching for them on NextDoor.com in this sec- tion, or you can post the business name on a conversation thread in response to someone’s post. Oſten, a neighbor will post about their need for a certain service, hoping to re- ceive neighborly referrals. When I joined NextDoor, I was pleasantly surprised to see that so many of my favorite places were highly revered in the neighborhood. While you can’t respond directly to the recommendations on this platform, you can view the original posting where your business was recommended. With appro- priate etiquette, you are welcome to join that conversation in your neighborhood. I always welcome posters to contact me via direct message on NextDoor if they have specific questions or concerns. The neat thing about NextDoor is that there isn’t a formal way to not recommend a DECEMBER 2016 KEYNOTES 27
