Is your small business looking for a free and easy way to find local leads? Are you searching for ways to engage your client base and collect pertinent, first-hand information from your customers that can be used to better your business? Look no further than Yelp. Heavily used by the restaurant industry and their customers alike, Yelp allows users to interact, review, and aid in changing the face of local business for the better; the key is knowing how to use it.
Need help optimizing your Yelp page? Start off with the basics, such as searching for and correcting typos. Review the description of your company for accuracy and make sure the photos represent how you would like your business to be portrayed. Read reviews, respond to both the good and the bad, and use this knowledge to strategically plan your future goals. In addition, yelp has made some sizable changes since starting in 2004, incorporating both a Yelp Blog for Business Owners as well a complete overhaul on their metrics system.
Think Yelp has been replaced by fresh, new sites? Think again. According to an article on Social Media Examiner, 7 Ways to Use Yelp to Improve Your Local Business, “With over 60 million registered users and over 20 million reviews posted on the site, it’s fair to say Yelp is still the dominant force when it comes to social review sites.” With the addition of Yelp on the Go, a program that allows users to pull the site up on their mobile device, it’s now easier than ever to obtain a first-hand review of local companies before you visit.
Are you currently using Yelp as either a business or as a user? What have you found to be their strengths and weaknesses? In addition, what strategies would you suggest they put into place in order to continue growing as new sites join the race?
I’ve found that when it comes to businesses that are AT ALL location-sensitive, Yelp truly is still king, and I think it has as much to do with its perceived credibility as it has to do with its ubiquity. Unfortunately for us, because we have a super high-quality product (vs. competitors), products or services that are usually resold by others don’t get much public oversight. We’d LOVE for people to be able to see, through their more convenient channels, just how much our products our loved in comparison to our competitors’!.
For physical security integrators, however, I can see Yelp being a VERY powerful tool. Were you thinking of putting together a video intro to Yelp sometime? I think security integrators would really appreciate that!
Hope all is well.
David C.
Enable-IT: Ethernet Extension Experts