Shorthand vs. Yext

Shorthand is ideally suited to visual stories where you have a good number of images and/or embeds or video to include. It is well-suited to long-form stories, where you wish to keep the readers' attention longer than usual. It can help to differentiate particularly important or intriguing stories from others on your website - and for this reason, it could be used as a premium content tool, perhaps for subscribers. It can also be used to showcase stories about awards you've organised, giving them special treatment. It is less suited to breaking news, or very time-sensitive news stories, as it can take some time to prepare, post or update shorthand stories. And it doesn't work well for stories with strong accompanying imagery

Incentivized

We have multiple branch locations throughout our market area. It's very challenging to manage the web listings for each location, with a large volume of listings across numerous platforms for each of those locations. Yext significantly reduces the workload by allowing me to make a single update and Yext automatically pushes the notifications across the other platforms

Incentivized

• Enabling visual storytelling with multiple pictures
• Embedding rich media within a story, including video
• Engaging readers for longer than average dwell times
• Making it easy to create striking article design without coding experience

Incentivized

• Yext is very, very user-friendly and easy to use.
• Yext provides information within the portal on how you can enhance your listings as well as how you can fix any issues with your listings that may exist.
• Yext's dedicated account managers can help you with any issues that may arise. For example our location pin on Apple Maps was wrong on one of our clinic listings and our Yext account manager reached out directly to Apple support and fixed the issue.

Incentivized

• Additional flexibility in how text is overlaid on pictures would be welcome so that there are more choices on what images to use with particular layouts
• Enabling users to control the path of text - for example, enabling runaround - could enable some excellent designs
• Adding additional section templates could speed up design
• More flexibility in caption placement would be helpful

Incentivized

• Cost. This platform offers a lot of powerful features, but it has an expensive barrier to entry.
• Annual contracts limit flexibility for smaller companies
• The biggest drawback is that you need to keep your subscription active or listings/citation data will revert back to what it was pre-Yext implementation

Incentivized

Yext is pretty easy and straightforward to utilize out of the box. While I work for a digital marketing agency, and this is second nature to me at this point, I do believe the average SMB owner with zero digital marketing experience could be a proficient Yext user within 1 hour or so of usage. It's easy

Incentivized

I have never known it to be down during my use of it. All you require is an internet connection to log in and you can use it on multiple devices. Adding ease of accessibility, there are simple ways to log in. I've also never known a Shorthand story to go down once live on our site.

Incentivized

Due to the integration with our content management software, there is a short delay on our site while it loads, which may cause some readers to drift away. However, I've seen other sites where it instantly loads articles, so I believe this to be down to the content management software behind our site more than Shorthand itself. Once that brief initial period is over, it doesn't require additional loading time.

Incentivized

Have been very impressed with the support we receive from Yext. I always feel I am listened to and if I have any problems or concerns they are quickly addressed. I have multiple ways to obtain support, either technical or strategic support, and they are responsive. I couldn't ask for more.

Incentivized

We initially chose Yext because it provided the greatest control for our multiple listings. Plus, it had access to the most publishers. However, when evaluating Synup we were very impressed. You would not go wrong to choose either!

Incentivized

As a web-based service, it is easy for users to log into from anywhere. Content can easily be shared, as you can set up teams that enable access to each other's work as required. And content can be reviewed by others before publication using the sharing function. You can also view how an article will look on different devices.

Incentivized

• Helped us create one of our top 10 most-read and most-shared stories in the last year
• Enabled us to elevate key pieces of content, boosting dwell time on our site
• But can also be time-consuming to adopt for some stories, meaning you need to choose well what stories really deserve the investment in time
• Boosted collaboration between teams via its ability to share, including offering the chance for others to preview content prior to publication

Incentivized

• Consistency in business listing management - without Yext, we would surely have more inconsistencies with our business address across the web. This can lead to poor communication to our customers, and potentially lost business if we lose trust as a reputable business.
• Yext saves me hours of legwork to manage numerous web listing platforms individually.

Incentivized