Industry News: Apple Maps Introduces Reviews and Other Important Platform Updates

It’s time for a new industry news blog! The world of digital marketing is fast-paced, and local search and social platforms are consistently making platform updates. As a multi-location marketer, it’s critical to stay on top of the latest updates and understand how they can help improve your localized marketing efforts. With so much information, it can be tricky to keep up with the most important trends, but SOCi is here to help. Within this blog, we’ll break down the essential localized marketing platform updates and explain how you can incorporate them into your business’s marketing strategy to find success.

Facebook Begins Rollout of Facebook Reels

In mid-August, Facebook announced that it would begin the rollout of Facebook Reels across the country. If you aren’t already familiar, Facebook Reels will be similar to Instagram Reels, which are short videos users can share from their profile. Facebook users will also be able to share the reels in Facebook Groups. The interface for Facebook Reels resembles the interface of Instagram Reels, and the functionality will be very similar.

When making the announcement, Facebook shared that while it’s not yet available, they are planning to make it possible for users to leverage Facebook Reels in advertising. So, what does this mean for your multi-location business? If you haven’t already tested out Instagram Reels, it’s time to consider it. Video content often outperforms other types of social content. To have your local social content stand out from the competition, testing reels on both Facebook and Instagram is worth a try. After testing them a few times, your business can then analyze the performance of the reels and see how it compares to other types of local content your multi-location business shares.

Yelp Helps Businesses Communicate Vaccine Requirements

We’ll keep this update short and to the point! With uncertainty growing around the current pandemic, many businesses have started implementing new health and safety measures for their customers and employees. To help consumers understand what measures companies have put in place amid the changing pandemic, Yelp has added two new free attributes that a business can highlight on its profile - “proof of vaccination required” and “all employees vaccinated.” As a multi-location marketer, these new attributes are something to be aware of and consider when keeping your local Yelp profiles as updated and accurate as possible. Users will now be able to sort by these two attributes when searching for a business, so if either of them applies to your business, it’s important to note that on your local Yelp profiles.

Apple Maps Releases Ability to Review Businesses

This update is focused on reputation management! Apple recently released its Apple Maps reviews and ratings system in the United States. When viewing a business on Apple Maps that are in a reviewable category, you will be prompted to select a thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate whether or not you would recommend the business. If you choose to select the thumbs up or down, you can then decide to add a photo to your review. You will also be prompted with more attributes you can give the thumbs up or down on. For instance, “atmosphere,” “overall,” and “customer service” are some of the attributes you might find in the more detailed review section. It’s also important to note that the rating and review section does not offer an option for consumers to leave any written feedback. If your business falls under one of the categories that can receive these reviews, your marketing team must keep an eye on them. While you can’t respond to any text, it’s crucial to understand which areas of your business are doing well and which could use improvement. The thumbs up and thumbs down model makes it easy to understand how a customer feels about various aspects of your business. Keeping all reputation management efforts at the forefront of your localized marketing strategy is essential as a multi-location marketer. Data shows that 88 percent of consumers now trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. While managing ratings and reviews across 100s or 1,000s of business locations is no easy task, SOCi is here to help! While you can’t respond to reviews on Apple Maps, it’s essential to respond to other reviews your business receives on Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp. That’s where SOCi comes in. SOCi Reviews allows users to view every action taken on reviews and monitor every activity on social media. Now, your local, regional, and corporate teams will always know which reviews and social engagements are addressed and which ones still require attention to ensure the prompt responses consumers expect.

Facebook Releases New Content Report

Earlier in August, Facebook released The Widely Viewed Content Report. This report breaks down the most widely viewed content in Facebook newsfeeds in Q2 2021. As a multi-location marketer, this information is valuable. Understanding what types of content are performing best on Facebook without going through as much trial and error is critical. Some of the top findings include:

The majority of posts people see in their newsfeed, 57 percent, is from family and friends
The highest viewed posts don’t necessarily have the highest engagement
Many of the most viewed Pages or posts share content focused on pets, family, cooking, and relatable viral content

What does this mean for your multi-location business? While it doesn’t mean you need to rework your local social strategy, it does give you a good understanding of where to focus your efforts on Facebook. For instance, your business’s goal might not be to have the highest viewed content but rather to drive high-value engagement. Similarly, tying in some of the most viewed content categories could help boost performance. Developing a local social strategy for your multi-location business can be challenging, but insight from this report can help. Details from the report can help inform your content strategy, but it should go beyond that. Our Localized Social Content Guide can provide further guidance if your multi-location business needs help determining which types of content perform best locally.

On the other hand, SOCi’s Social Solution can help manage local social efforts across all your business locations. SOCi’s Social Solution enables multi-location businesses to manage and deploy localized content at scale while maintaining brand consistency at both the enterprise and local levels. The tool also allows users to publish to all major networks to amplify audience engagement with localized shareable content, increasing the high valued engagement your business receives on posts.

Now that you have all of the latest industry news, it’s time to start implementing it into your localized marketing efforts. As mentioned above, SOCi can give your business the support it needs to dominate both its local search and local social efforts. SOCi is the central command for multi-location marketers and the all-in-one platform for your localized marketing needs. For more information on how SOCi can elevate your business’s localized marketing efforts, request a demo today!