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Revolutionary product helps businesses understand and take control of their reputation and presence across the Internet.

PHILDELPHIA, PA – Dream Local, Inc. has announced a partnership with Levittown, PA-based Calkins Media, which operates newspapers and ABC television affiliates in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida and Alabama. Calkins will be selling Dream Local’s RepShield product to its advertisers.

RepShield helps advertisers to understand their presence and reputation wherever their business may be found or mentioned on the Web. “The product is a potential game-changer for any local media sales team,” according to Carl Schindler, Dream Local’s SVP of Market Development. “Every media entity is striving to be their advertisers’ most ‘trusted advisor,’ but to be trusted more you have to know more. RepShield allows sales people to understand and help their advertisers as never before.”

The product monitors all data and mentions on the Internet for a particular business, and provides that information in an easily digestible report with recommended action items. Dream Local handles those action items behind the scenes and advertisers get to see how those steps are helping them to be found and patronized by customers.

According to Bob Kellagher, COO Interactive Media at Calkins Media, “There are an infinite number of ways that local businesses can be mentioned, criticized, or characterized on the Internet and other digital platforms.  Through this partnership we will now offer a way for business owners to keep track of all that activity in one place, and to optimize their presence on the Internet and their response to customer feedback.”

The RepShield report includes an overview of mentions at ratings and reviews websites. Advertisers are empowered by knowing what’s being said about them, and in having an opportunity to address customer comments.

RepShield also helps advertisers to ensure that they’re being found wherever prospects are looking, and to control or fix information about their business that appears. RepShield includes a Universal Business Profile that is completed once, and then will submit relevant business information to any site for indexing and profile creation. Previously a business would have to visit individual sites and spend time creating a profile for each.

“RepShield will be a great addition to help round out our product offering,” said Brian Schneck, Product Manager at Calkins Media. “With it our advertisers will have the proper tools necessary to track and manage their reputation online. Dream Local’s RepShield takes information from many sources, arranges it into an easy-to-read dashboard, and comes up with actionable items to increase awareness for the business.”

About Dream Local

Dream Local was started with a simple goal: to improve the quality and quantity of communication in the local marketplace. Inspired by the power of local search and social networking, we seek to bring the communication essential to the local community online. Dream Local builds brands and produces tangible results through a combination of meticulous research, comprehensive planning, forward-thinking design, leading technologies, sound management principals, and perpetual optimization. For more information contact Carl Schindler at (716) 812-5651 or carl.schindler@dreamlocal.com.

About Calkins Media

Calkins Media Incorporated is a privately held corporation.  The corporation owns three ABC-affiliate TV stations in Florida and Alabama, six daily newspapers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, two weekly newspapers in Pennsylvania and Florida, and a Philadelphia-based interactive media company.  In addition, Calkins Media operates consumer Web sites in each daily newspaper and television station market.  The corporate offices for Calkins Media are located in Levittown, PA.