This is the first in a series of articles designed to help local area businesses get the most out of their social media presence. Don’t think you have a social media presence online? If that’s the case you may be in for a bit of a shock.

Nearly every business today has an online presence whether they know it or not. For the business owner that’s pro-active about there online presence all is good. For those still wondering what I’m talking about all may not be so good at all.

For instance here’s a review that I found on Yelp for a restaurant by the name of Thrive which is listed in the Vegetarian, Juice Bars & Smoothies category:

6/20/2009

After being very excited about being in the area at the right time to try this place; I am sad to say it was a bit disappointing. Just wanted to grab a couple truly healthy smoothies to go; it took 30 minutes for two smoothies! Interesting that a place that advertises smoothies as a main item has only one smoothie blender! The kitchen looked completely disorganized with staff members circling with questioning on their face-stacks of containers and ingredients everywhere in a very small space. The smoothies I ordered were very good but I wouldn’t return; with that much time I can go shopping and make my own. The rest of the menu looked good, but again I wouldn’t want to wait sooo long for other items. Keep working on it guys and you might have a better business and not have to ask people to “invest” in the business.

You can view all the reviews for this establishment here some of which are better and others are even worse.

While this business does have a website and the manager is aware of the remarks being made about her place of business (I know this because she has responded to a few of the bad reviews) there are many others that don’t have a cue of what being said about their businesses.

In this series we’ll introduce you to online tools you can use to find out what’s being said about your business online and discuss ways you can use this information to your advantage.

If you own a small business you’ll want to bookmark us or subscribe to our RSS feed so you won’t miss any of the resources or the insight we’ll be providing in this series.

Stick with us on this series and we’ll help you and your offline business bridge the gap to success online.