Reputation management is trending more than it ever has before. How do you get more 5-Star Yelp reviews anyway? Why does reputation management intrigue so many people? Online marketing must be doing something right if it has so many people concerned about their reputation. When your business is viewed for the first time by your future prospect, what is the most important thing you have to implement to get them in the door? The experience online! Part of the experience online includes review websites such as Yelp. From experience this is the most utilized website of the review sites. We are going to teach you how you can dominate your listing on this site. Are you ready for it?
We love looking at food pictures on Yelp don’t we? That is one of the great features on Yelp. You are able to bring your loyal customers online and have them share photos, events and of course reviews! We love using this service because our clients receive a lot of tourists to their businesses. When tourists see the great events and photos we have going on they are excited to check us out! We have also used Yelp as a vehicle to drive volunteers for a cause we wanted to reach out too! The best thing about Yelp is that it is no cost at all to you.
The first thing you must do is create a profile. For privacy reasons don’t add your birthday because it might attract identity thieves. Then, claim your business page. After you have claimed your business page add some pictures to it. We had a client who added pictures of their venue and people called in to ask if they could have meetings at the spot. How nice would that be?
We advise our clients to get as personable with their customers as possible. The best way to implement this is through events. One of our clients has a restaurant so we set-up an event so they can get the chance to meet their prospects. For example we set-up an event called “Meet the Chef.” The great thing about this event was we took tons of photos and added them on Yelp. Everyone was jealous.
Next, we suggest you make your bio different from the rest; make it stand out! How do you do this? Think about what got you started in this business. Why are you doing it? What is rewarding about it? When that is filled out, you can now create a short and simple URL.
Now the question is how can you incentivize people to check out your business page on Yelp? The best way is to create discounts and offers, especially limited time offers. Make sure your call-to-action stands out! For example, Sprinkles Cupcakes have great incentives to use any of their social networks. They simply put a code on the site and the customers have to recite it to get a free cupcake, but it is only to the first 50 people.
The trust monitoring system on Yelp can get a bit complicated, so we suggest you review other businesses as well. Why wait for people to come to you? Go to other businesses and review or recommend them. See how it plays off when they see what you did. My grandma once told me “You don’t just get respect you have to earn it.” This is exactly what you would be doing when you review other businesses. When you do this you won’t get in trouble by Yelp for spam-like reviews.
Instead of asking the customer to write a review, we recommend you say something like “View our listing for the best discounts in town!” Or something similar that is not asking for a review.
What is next on the Yelp checklist? We want you to make sure all your responses are written publicly and not as a private message. Why? Well, when someone else has a problem they will see that you were able to acknowledge the feedback that was given to you and fix the problem instead of leaving it blank. This way the customer at least knows that you are open to improving things, which may mean another visit for them and another chance for your business!
The private messages are not a bad idea either if you are writing an apology letter to your customer and letting them know how you are going to fix the service the next time around. Also, what action are you going to take to make the customer happy and make it up to them? Private messages give customers the option to change the review they had originally written. This is how you can change a negative reaction to a positive one. Don’t worry about negative reactions because you can’t make everyone happy.
“Social Networks” that is the word on the streets! Everyone is talking about them but it seems like hardly anyone is posting reviews on them. Why? You can post Yelp reviews on: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even YouTube. So go for it! Then you get that audience over to help and take advantage of the special discounts and events you offer. Of course they write you a review as well!
This sums up the best uses of Yelp and how you get more 5-Star Yelp reviews from your very own customers. When you miss out on an opportunity to get 5-star Yelp reviews, you miss out on a golden business opportunity. Is it worth it?
