With the official release of our web based directory, we would like to provide some tutorials for business owners and consumers to fully utilize the directory. This tutorial will deal with claiming a business. We need this feature as many of our businesses are submitted to the directory by supporters and not the business owner. Claim Business allows a business owner to associate a previously submitted business to their user account which unlocks additional data points to complete the business listing.
Early on, our team exclusively added businesses to the directory. This process was very tedious and time consuming so we quickly added the Add A Business page. This page allows anyone to submit a business to the directory; however, the listing only contains limited information.
In order to give the business owner an opportunity to complete the listing, we now provide two mechanisms for maintaining a complete business listing. A user account gives the business owners access to add a logo, description, and social media accounts. Both methods require a user account which can be created via our manage page.
1) Claimimg a business that was previously submitted to the directory
For this method, a user simply logs in, navigates to the business listing page, and clicks the claim business link. If an email address was provided during the original submission, it will be sent a custom claim business link to which the business owner can click to complete the claim business process.
As of now, we only provide claim business functionality for listings with an email address. If an email address was omitted from the original submission, a user can email the IABB team with the business email address and some form of verification such as a website or Facebook page. After our team verifies the email address, we will update the business listing allowing the user to complete the claim business process. *We do plan to offer phone or text verification in the future if there is enough demand.
2) Creating a new business via manage page
After creating a user account, a create business button is available. The following page then allows a user to create a complete listing from the start.
No matter the method, newly created business listings will be immediately available in our directory. We strongly encourage business owners to take advantage of user management module to complete their listing. A complete listing helps with results in our directory and results in search engines (Google, Bing, etc) and overall data integrity. And as always, our business listing fee is $0.00.