My family and I took a road trip in late spring and ended up Yelping our way from Sacramento to Santa Fe and back.
I downloaded the Yelp iPhone app prior to heading out. Each time we pulled into a town to eat, I would search for restaurants near my “current location”. Even in the smallest highway towns we would find multiple reviews for local restaurants and consistently ate much better food than the fast food found at the interstate intersections. Yelpers had been there before us and gave us a glimpse into the depth of each town, however small. You would be surprised how nice the restaurants are in Williams, Arizona.
It was during that trip that I became a Yelp enthusiast. I had in my hands information and, more importantly, insight on any service or entity around me (there are reviews on the Grand Canyon itself). The insight came from the reviews for the businesses – previous visitors took the time to give an impression of their experience. Most times, the reviews reflected our experience as well.
My friends are probably getting tired of me going on about Yelp: the 25 million people who visited the site in August alone, 80% yearly growth and being one of Time’s top 50 websites for 2009. Applications for iPhone, Palm Pre and Blackberry make mobile search a snap. If you’ve not browsed over there, do yourself a favor and look up restaurants in your town. Odds are you might find some hidden gems you don’t know about. You can also review the businesses you like and dislike – your two cents in the web 2.0 sphere.
For Business:
Yelp isn’t just about restaurant reviews – it’s about reviews of everything around you, including your business. If you are a business owner and want to increase your web presence, it would behoove you to take ownership of your business on Yelp. The business is probably listed already and, if not, you can add it easily. After you take ownership (a simple email confirmation), complete the listing by populating as much information about your business as possible. Remember, people using Yelp are targeting, no, pinpointing their search, both locally and for type of business – you can’t get a better potential customer. Make it easy for them to get information about your business. Since Bing incorporates Yelp into it’s search results, you are also helping your Bing search results as well.
Reviews:
Businesses can learn a lot about themselves via Yelp reviews – both positive and negative. People won’t typically walk up and tell an owner what they found unappealing about their business but those people WILL write it in a Yelp review. This gives the business owner multiple opportunities. The first is to gain insight on possible areas of improvement. The second is to engage in a dialogue with the reviewer via Yelp. Many times reviewers have updated their review, provided more positive feedback and even become regular customers when the business reaches out to reviewers. It’s this transparency and customer-oriented social marketing that help businesses (and Yelp) really shine.
Yelp also provides for business to business reviews. If you do business with local businesses, by all means, provide reviews. This type of social capital is gold for both you and the other business owner. Really, all chambers of commerce nationwide should be pushing this “all boats will rise” initiative.
Getting reviews from consumers is a different affair. Soliciting reviews in return for discounts or freebies is frowned upon and will typically backfire in that you will get a negative “pandering” review. The best way to garner reviews (besides providing awesome service and products) is to leverage unsolicited compliments. By responding with “Thanks so much, it would be really helpful for my business to see that kind of review on Yelp” you might just get a good review posted.
Keep in mind that Yelp typically removes reviews by “one-timers”: people who post one review on Yelp then never access their account again. So, the only reviews that stick are ones by relatively active Yelpers.
Google:
The recent release of Place Pages by the many-tentacled Google will give Yelp something to think about (I’m sure the release isn’t new news to them). It will be interesting to see how Yelp responds to this development.
