The New Age of Social Media: Beyond Likes and Shares

Social media has evolved far beyond a marketing channel, into a powerful engine for discovery, customer care, and competitive advantage.

For multi-location brands, it's no longer just a place to promote — it's where trust is built, loyalty is earned, and conversations drive purchases.

Today, social is how your brand gets discovered, how relationships are built, and how reputations are shaped — often long before someone visits your website. And increasingly, it's also a source of training data for AI tools — which means what you publish on social doesn't just influence your audience. It influences how AI platforms perceive and surface your brand.

In this new environment, the ability to scale social engagement across every location isn't just a competitive edge — it's foundational. And it's exactly why Yext has been named a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Social Marketing Software for Large Enterprises.

We're proud to share that Yext has been named a Major Player in The IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Social Marketing Software, which assesses the state of social marketing solutions for large enterprises (1,000+ employees).

As IDC notes, today's top solutions are evolving beyond basic publishing. They now support end-to-end content creation, engagement, governance, and performance optimization. AI and automation are becoming table stakes, as is the ability to personalize content while staying on-brand and compliant.

"Social media is critical to scaling brand presence and personalizing customer experiences. Scale is important for optimizing brand exposure to LLMs and other AI tools buyers will increasingly use to support product discovery, consideration, and purchase. Personalization is critical to sustaining customer satisfaction across touchpoints, so customers feel the brand is always acting as one regardless of which department or system handles their next interaction. Modern social marketing solutions deliver on both fronts," said Gerry Murray, research director, Enterprise Marketing Technology Practice, IDC.

Social media isn't just where customers interact with brands. It's where they discover them – and increasingly, where AI models learn about them, too. That means brands need to deliver personalized, local content that resonates — while maintaining consistency and control at the enterprise level.

Here's what that really takes:

• Consistent brand messaging: Making sure every location reflects the brand's voice, values, and visual identity, so local teams can then amplify that message.

• Localized engagement: Delivering content that speaks to local audiences with contextual relevance and tone.

• Workflow coordination: Empowering local teams while centralizing approvals, compliance, and campaign management.

• Platform consolidation: Replacing redundant tools with one streamlined, scalable solution.

• Governance and compliance: Especially critical for regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and insurance.

With Yext, brands can create once, personalize at scale, publish everywhere, and measure impact in a matter of minutes, not hours — all from a single platform. That's why IDC recognized Yext as a Major Player in social marketing software.

In the age of decentralized influence and AI-powered search, relevance beats reach. Customers trust peers over promotions and content from local teams over faceless brand accounts. For multi-location brands, social lives in the hands of agents, franchisees, and store managers — and in the real-time, hyper-local content they create. It's this content that increasingly shapes how AI platforms perceive and recommend your brand.

We're seeing AI search tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity factor in social signals when recommending brands. That includes:

• Mentions in local blogs or roundup articles

• Posts that match search intent (e.g. "Where should I eat after hiking Quarry Rock?")

• Engagement from verified, active, location-tagged accounts

• UGC that connects your brand to high-interest moments or trends

That's why local social content matters — for customer engagement and discoverability across search and AI-driven experiences.

Yext's unified platform helps brands:

• Empower local teams to publish on-brand, localized content

• Schedule and manage posts across networks and locations

• Respond to customer DMs and comments at scale

• Maintain compliance with industry and brand standards

• Create a feedback loop between corporate marketing and local performance

"Yext has been an invaluable tool for managing hundreds of our customers' social media accounts from a single platform. Its user-friendly interface and powerful features have made it incredibly easy to streamline our social media management process. One of the standout aspects of Yext is their responsiveness to feedback. They are consistently open to suggestions and have made several updates based on our input, further enhancing our experience."

— Social Media Manager; Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services Industry

As social media continues to evolve into a channel for discovery, conversation, and conversion, brands need a tool that can scale local efforts across hundreds of locations and consolidate in one platform.

With Yext, multi-location brands are ready to meet the challenges of the new age of social.

Ready to get hyper-local, boost performance, and level-up your social strategy? Learn more about how Yext can help.