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The Businessperson's Guide to Yelp

Guest post by: Jason Lancaster

Article Overview: A basic overview of the website called Yelp - what it is, how it works, and why it's important.

The Businessperson's Guide to Yelp

We all like to be complimented for a job well done. It not only feels good, it also helps spur us on to continue performing. Best of all, compliments from satisfied customers are some of the best advertisements a business can hope for. What better way to let the world know how well the company is doing than by publicizing good compliments on our company website? 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 is a website that can help address this issue.

What Yelp is: A website where people can review any business under the sun, be it their doctor, their favorite coffee shop, or the local dry cleaner. Apart from that, however, Yelp is also a social network where individuals can meet, exchange messages, and even compare reviews.

Why Yelp is important: Yelp is growing more popular every day and dwarfing many other local search sites. QuantCast, 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).

Why Yelp will continue to grow: In my opinion, Yelp is going to grow because of the built-in social networking features. When people come to Yelp to find business reviews, they also have the opportunity to evaluate the reviewers themselves. Visitors can find out "Does the person who left this review seem like someone I would trust? Do they like the same things I do?" Yelp's strength is that visitors can evaluate both businesses AND the people who review them.

How Yelp can help your business: Many consmers are using Yelp to find places to do business, and you (as a business owner or manager) can add your business (including a link to your website) to Yelp's directory free of charge. Free advertising for your business is one thing, but if you manage to earn some positive reviews on Yelp you can likely expect some new customers that will try your company out because of your profile. Finally, you can link to your Yelp profile from your own website and show potential clients that you've earned some good reviews on an independent and reputable site.

How Yelp can hurt your business: Bad reviews. Yelp doesn't moderate any of the reviews they receive. If an upset customer(s) leaves a bad review for your business, you have to live with it. Yelp will allow you to respond to bad comments (which is better than not responding), but once the bad review is placed the damage is done. When you respond to a bad review, the best course of action is to "kill them with kindness" and freely admit any mistakes you or your company may have made.

In short, Yelp is important to business owners because it represents an opportunity to find new customers and gain some free advertising.

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