Yelp.com For Business Owners - What it is and Why its Important
As a business owner, it’s always nice to hear compliments. They leave me feeling good inside and out, and a good compliment can get me through an otherwise tough day. I also like compliments from satisfied clients because they can help me sell and build trust with prospective clients. That’s why most businesses can’t help but tell the world whenever they get a good compliment.
But like everything else, praise needs to be transparent to be truly effective. When someone says something nice to you on your birthday, do you wonder if the compliment was sincere? While the compliment might be genuine, it might also be someone being nice “because it’s your birthday.” For the same reasons, it’s hard to give testimonials on a company website a lot of weight. While they might be correct, how can we really trust a nice compliment we find on a company website? Yelp.com is a website that can help address this issue.
What Yelp.com is: Yelp.com is a website that allows users to search for and then rave, rate, and critique a business. The possibilities are endless. You can review your favorite bookstore, favorite restaurant, even your family doctor. But Yelp.com is more than a simple review website - it’s also a social networking site where people can make friends, compare favorites businesses, and more. While Yelp.com originally became well-known as a source of accurate restaurant reviews, it is becoming a haven for reviews on just about any type of consumer oriented company.
Why Yelp.com is important: Yelp is growing more popular with every second. QuantCast.com, which ranks website popularity, states that the site has almost doubled its traffic in the months between October 2008 and March 2009 (that’s 5.9 million visitors in March 2009 alone). Need I say more?
Why Yelp works: Yelp.com is successful because it’s more than just a review site, it’s a social network where you can evaluate both businesses AND reviewers. If I read a review on Yelp that I like, with one click I can see what the reviewer has had to say about other businesses too. I can read all of this person’s reviews and decide if they’re someone I want to trust. This feature is what separates Yelp from the pack.
How your business can benefit from Yelp.com: Believe it or not, Yelp gives you the chance to list your business for free. Since so many people are using Yelp.com to find businesses, this is a great source of free advertising. Not only that, but positive reviews about your business that are left on Yelp can send a lot of customers your way.
How Yelp.com can hurt you: Bad reviews, of course. Reviews aren’t moderated on Yelp, so if an unhappy customer leaves you a scathing review, you’ll have to deal with it. Yelp does give you a chance to respond to reviews, however, so make the most of it. Be honest if your business made a mistake, and do your best to fix the problem for the future. Take the high road no matter what you do when responding to a bad review.
Now that you know the low down on Yelp.com, it’s time to get started on your company’s Yelp profile.
