After examining a couple months’ worth of comments and complaints from users like you, our greasy-tailed keyboard-monkeys have soldered and screwed together an update that makes StepRep even easier and more fun to use. Let’s go over the improvements:

1. Got a question about how to use StepRep? If it is a question that is asked frequently, perhaps it has been addressed in our new and imaginatively-titled Frequently Asked Questions section.

2. You know how the buttons on each story used to say Good, Bad, and Watch? Well, it turns out people found that kinda confusing. So we’ve changed the terminology to Positive, Negative, and Neutral. Hopefully that makes it a little clearer.

3. There are new filters to allow you to organize stories by date and by where the story originated – websites, images, Twitter, or news.

4. Are you a Twitter junkie? Now there’s a Tweet This link on each story so you can quickly share it with your followers.

5. We’ve added a new category called My Content which will automatically separate out blog posts and updates from URLs you designate. So if you’re a frequent blogger and you’re tired of seeing your own posts show up in your StepRep results, relief has arrived…

6. Now you can trust and endorse fellow StepRep users by clicking a link on their profile in the MyFrontSteps Directory. And, of course, they can trust and endorse you back!

7. There’s a new Executive Report that will show up in your email once  a week (or as often as you choose; you can change the frequency in your account settings). The report lets you know what’s going on with your StepRep account – how many new stories have been found, how many users have trusted or endorsed you…and so on.

8. You already know about the StepRep widget, which allows you to broadcast positive links to your website or blog. Well, now there are two new widgets – one to display your Trusted Services and another to display your Member Stats. In coming months, as the MyFrontSteps community grows, these widgets will be increasingly useful for connecting to your fellow service providers and bringing in new business through your StepRep account.

9. Speaking of the widget. If you’ve got a WordPress.com hosted blog – like me – then you might have noticed that the widget, consarnit, could not be added to your blog. WordPress does some hocus-pocus on its pages that erases the code that makes our widget work. Well, now there’s a WordPress.com workaround: You’ll create an RSS feed for the stories on your StepRep widget and paste that link into a blank RSS widget on your blog. We’ll have a detailed how-to up on the FAQ page pretty soon. In the meantime, if you’d like instructions get in touch with us.

9½: Oh, one more wee thing: there’s a new Spokesmonster video that talks about some features we’ll be adding in the near future to allow you to offer quotes and referral fees through your StepRep account.

We’ve been pretty busy, haven’t we? But if there’s some feature you think we’re still missing, don’t hesitate to let us know – post a comment here or on our Facebook group, tweet us, or just send us a message from the StepRep feedback page. We’re already hard at work on the next update…