How to Write a Truly Useful Directory Listing

Write it Right

This article is aimed at people who are thinking of using to add a listing to their local business or people who work for a company that handles local businesses. Whatever your role is, please understand that if you want to create a truly useful directory listing, you have to invest some of your time.

I know this seems obvious, it’s definitely straightforward, but sadly, the vast majority of people filling out forms for company profiles on this website, and other directory sites for that matter, don’t invest the right amount of time.

Accordingly, a lot of their listings seem shallow. Instead of presenting a very robust, dynamic, and even progressive image of the local business that you are listing, your listing can easily become flat, generic and not very memorable.

Now, why is this a bad thing? You might be thinking that people are just looking for your phone number or people are maybe looking for your coverage area. In other words, you may be assuming that they’re just looking for basic information regarding your business. Well, you assumed wrong.

You have to understand that your competitors are also on social media and on the internet. It’s a dog eat dog world out there, and unless you’re going to position your business in the best light possible, chances are, you will be losing a lot of potential business. That’s the real deal. That is what’s really going on.

And sadly, too many local businesses and establishments are blind to this. They think that it’s just a ministerial type of activity, and that you just have to go through a list of how to be visible on the internet, and call it a day. Well, it would be nice if it was all that bureaucratic, but it isn’t.

This is not just pencil pushing. This can mean the difference between your business continuing to grow and expand and be profitable long into the future, or die an early death.

Social media is inescapable. The internet is ever present, thanks to constantly internet connected mobile devices like mobile phones, tablets and whatnot.

It just has to have 3 elements.

Right Directory

The first element is thorough information. For example, if you’re at a restaurant that provide certain foods, it’s a good idea to not only scan a copy of your menu, but list out the menu items so the food items are searchable in our website, as well as from Google and Bing.

If your business has been around for a few years, chances are, there are lots of people in your local area who have a favorable view of your business. Why not leverage this in the form of social proof?

If potential customers see that your listing has a lot of “likes,” “thumbs up” or any other form of positive feedback, they would be interested. They would read more and possibly decide to visit you. But that’s not going to happen if there’s no social context.

So provide this information. Let us find you on the major social media platforms and give us permission to access your social indicators.

Text directories are a dime a dozen. We live in a multimedia world and even the smallest competitive advantage can mean the difference between prospective customers overlooking you or choosing to do business with you. It’s your choice.

So it doesn’t really take much for you to take a picture of your premises, or take a picture of the stuff that you’re selling, or the food that you’re serving, or some sort of logo or diagram that indicates the service that you provide. Whatever the case may be, one picture definitely goes a long way.

As the old Chinese saying goes, one picture is worth a thousand words. This is how you write a truly useful directory listing. Focus on usefulness. Focus on audience impact and you can maximize the value of your directory listings.