The Benefits of Claiming Your Iowa City Business Listing on Patch

Gold stars to ,, , , and for claiming their business listings over the last week.

What is involved in claiming a business listing you ask? Read on.

Before Iowa City Patch launched in May of 2011, our team ventured to local businesses to collect information for our massive directory. The result: Patch Places.

Patch Places is an Iowa City specific business directory tool where users can find descriptions, hours, accepted payment methods and more for locations in and around Iowa City. Also, because Patch is a preferred Google user, these listings will always rank among the highest on Google searches.

All users are able to add events taking place at local places, rate the business on a scale of one to five stars and add a review. But did you know that owners of local businesses get extra bonuses when they claim a listing?

This is a great tool for businesses that don't have their own website. In fact, it's a bit like having their own webpage. The best yet: It's free. Schools and churches can also be claimed and followed by the public.

How to do it

1. Owners or managers can search for their business listing and select "claim your listing" in order to make updates to the page.
2. A form will pop up asking for your name, contact information and proof of ownership.
3. In a few days, someone from Patch will contact you to verify your authenticity. You'll then be approved as the business owner. Once approved, you'll have a Manage Your Listing button on the top of your Places page. Click the button to be taken to your dashboard.

Benefits of doing it

Claiming your listing allows you to see the stats of visitors who arrive at your page, for you to post events or daily specials to our calendar and tie them to your business, to customize you page by adding photos, and also the ability to respond to reviews as they come in.

, for example, added PDFs of their menu to their listing after claiming, and you can see they responded to several reviews below.

Customers can also follow your listing and receive automated messages when you post new specials or make changes to your listing.

From the control dashboard, you can make changes and updates to your listing. On the left side of the dashboard you have several options:

• Your Stats
• Edit Listing
• Manage Photos & Media
• Reviews
• Free Tools
• Paid Tools
• Contact Sales

Your Stats:

Here you can see how many users have rated, reviewed or follow your listing. You can e-mail your customers to seek out more reviews, and link the Patch Place to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Edit Listing:

Add photos, website information, hours of operation, contact information and more under the Basic Info tab. Some of this information cannot be changed, but you can request a new description if you think your business is inaccurately described.

Choose Extra Info to add information like the founding date of your business, what kinds of payments you accept, if there's street parking or a lot, and more.

Manage Photos & Media:

Here you can add and edit photos and choose which image is featured. If you have video or PDFs, you would add that here, too.

Reviews:

Take a few seconds to see what people have to say about your business.

Free Tools:

Post events and add job openings to our classifieds section, also known as the Marketplace.

Paid Tools:

You can upgrade your listing with a video profile, add a message from the owner and become a featured business on the Places page for a fee. You can learn more about these options and how to get in touch with a sales team member.

Have your customers engaged and rate your bussiness and talk with them right on Patch!

Questions? Contact Patch Editor Stephen Schmidt at stephen.schmidt@patch.com