Your Brand’s Winning Team: Yext Listings + Social

The customer journey in 2024 is rarely a straight line from discovery to conversion. Instead, customers typically ask multiple questions, read reviews, and compare products across platforms before finally making a purchase.

What are the top places people look for brand information during this nonlinear journey?

1. Through search engine results (84% of customers),* which typically showcase listings

2. Via social media (51% of customers)*

The takeaway? Harnessing the combined power of listings and social media management is key to getting more customers to find and engage with your brand today.

Here's why — and how — you can build your listings and social management strategies alongside each other to maximize discoverability for your brand.

The first place most customers turn for information is still traditional search engines like Google. 64% of customers start their search journey on a search engine.*

Showing up in search results is how brands get in front of these customers in the first part of their digital journey. Having the right listings management strategy is key to success here: the more robust the information on your listings, the higher you're likely to rank in local search results. And the more frequently you update your listings, the more likely the information is to be correct and relevant — helping you build more trust with customers and search algorithms alike.

(We have the data to prove it: a Yext study found that brands only managing their information with a few major publishers see substantially lower overall web performance from Google. In contrast, brands that appear across >75% of publishers in the Yext network measure a +186% increase in clicks to their websites from Google.)

But listings management has been central to local SEO for a while. As customers increasingly turn to social media, social is becoming the next battleground for local discovery.

With a majority of customers (51%) now using social media to search for information — not just to "like" posts — they expect brands to present accurate and helpful information on these platforms, too.

But brands are facing challenges in this area: 79% of local social media teams say it's difficult to maintain brand consistency** at the local level. 64% of corporate teams say the same. This consistency struggle might be why only 45% of customers say they trust the information they find on social media** — indicating a big miss for brands looking to convert customers who engage with their social profiles.

The power of social media now extends beyond social platforms themselves. "Social signals" are starting to influence "traditional" search rankings, too — further proving the link between social and listings management. (By the way: 69% of marketers already say social media is important in their brand's overall SEO strategy.)**

In these two ways, social management is becoming more important to local SEO. It's time to treat your brand's social strategy and listings strategy as equally crucial parts of managing your brand's digital presence — by leveraging the same robust information to power both.

Listings and social have more power when they are working together toward the same goal of improving your digital presence.

Going forward, you should treat social channels with the same importance as listings publishers. Just as you strive for accuracy and visibility across listings platforms, your brand's social media presence should be equally robust and trustworthy.

Across every channel, you should:

1. Keep your data organized and up to date: You should use structured data principles across listings, social media and web pages. This helps you make sure the information your brand shares is accurate, easily accessible, and consistent across all platforms.

2. Keep your message consistent: Maintain coherence in your brand message across all digital touchpoints and locations. Whether a customer finds you on Google, Instagram, or Yelp, they should encounter the same reliable information.

3. Update your information frequently (and reliably): Regular information updates across platforms are essential, but consistency is equally important. Avoid overloading one channel with too much content while neglecting others: a steady, balanced approach builds trust and engagement.

Listings and social management are two sides of the same coin. Building your strategies for both together helps make sure your brand is discoverable, trustworthy, and engaging — everywhere.

Ready to combine the power of listings and social with Yext? Click here to learn more.

*Survey details: The results are from an online survey of 2,312 adults who purchased something online within the past year. The survey was conducted from June 14 to 25, 2024, by Researchscape International on behalf of Yext. Results were weighted by country population, age, and gender. Respondents were from five countries: France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

**Survey details: The results are from an online survey of 379 marketing professionals from companies with more than 10 locations that was fielded from July 23 to August 20, 2024 by Researchscape International on behalf of Yext.