---

Everything You Need To Know About YELP

---

WHAT IS YELP? 

Yelp is the fun and easy way to review what's great - and not so great - in your local neighborhood and beyond. 
Yelp is an online urban city guide that helps people find cool places to eat, shop for stuff, drink, relax and play, based on the informed opinions of a vibrant  and active community of locals in the know. 

Yelp is the fun and  easy way to find, review and talk about what's great — and not so great — in your world. 

As of June 2011, more than 53 million people visited Yelp in the past 30 days. Yelpers have written over 20 million local reviews, 83% of them rating a business 3 stars or higher. You can access Yelp via iPhone, Android, Blackberry and more.

How Yelp's Business Works

Yelp has grown by getting users to write reviews of businesses, engaging them through social networking features, and piggybacking on search engine traffic.

Yelp users can not only search for and review businesses, but they can create a profile, ‘friend’ other users, chat in online forums, and even go to offline meet-ups. 

Yelp uses Facebook to find and connect with your friends as soon as you sign up
Yelp has ~ 66 million monthly unique visitors, is used on more than 5.7 million mobile devices, and has collected a total of 25 million reviews since its inception in 2004 (see breakdown of reviews by business segment in the chart above). 

But how exactly does it make money?

Yelp generates almost all of its revenue from advertising—91.4 percent for 2011. It's primarily two kinds of advertising:

• Local advertising from businesses that want to be featured on Yelp, which is 76.8 percent of total ad revenue.
• Brand advertising, i.e. display and text ads on Yelp.com, which gets lots of traffic from search engines.

Here's what it looks like:

7 Ways to use Yelp for Small Business Marketing
by Bridget Ayers    

Yelp is a review site that was started in 2004 to help people find information on local businesses, since its inception it has grown by leaps and bounds. In addition to being a business review site, Yelp has information on events, special offers, business lists and is moving into the social networking arena with the ability to add friends and talk with other Yelpers. According to Yelp and Compete.com Yelp has tens of million of visitors a month and Yelpers have written over 9 million local reviews, over 85% of them rating a business 3 stars or higher.

As a business owner, Yelp is great way to build exposure, monitor public opinion of your brand, and research what your local community wants from a business in your industry. Yelp is free to use and post your business on, the only thing you need is time and a little ingenuity.

Let’s look at some ways you can use Yelp for your business marketing needs:

1. Join Yelp & Write Reviews (yelp.com)

Just like Facebook it is important to have a personal profile, be active in the community, and then grow from there.

Create a profile and keep your branding consistent with the profiles you have on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Youtube, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc.
Use the interests area to link to your website, blog, and other social profiles
Start reviewing your favorite businesses, be honest and fair, your reviews should create value for the readers.
Review new businesses you come into contact with, be honest but try not to be too complimentary or too harsh – that could come back on you in a negative way.
Let businesses know when you review them, if they do not see it and respond to your review, then bring it to the business’ attention. If your target market is the other businesses this may open a door for you that was previously closed and help you gain more clients.

2. Put your Business Profile on Yelp (biz.yelp.com)

After you have your profile up then you should create a profile for your business. It is best to have your business profile attached to an active Yelp profile, this shows visitors that you are an active participant on Yelp and that you will be there to see their review.

• Keep track of your reviews
  
• Respond back to the reviewers
  
• Add recommendations of other businesses to your clients
  

3. Post Discounts and Announcements

Yelp sends out a weekly email news blast to their users, by posting a company announcement, great discount, and/or an event you have an opportunity of being included in their newsletter and/or on the Yelp site itself. Your discounts may pop up on the users profile pages if they are in your area.

• Discounts should be significant, unique, and specifically targeted at Yelpers.
  
• Post announcements for company anniversaries, press releases, media pieces, expansion, etc.
  
• If you are hosting an event or attending an event Yelp gives you 140 characters to announce it. Give it a catchy title, a little grabber sentence and shortened url to get more information.
  

4. Ask for Reviews from your Clients

In February 2010, according to Compete.com Yelp had 24.4 million unique visitors and 47.4 million visitors overall. When you get a  review on Yelp this gives your business a nice front page link on the search engines.

•  Add your Yelp business listing to your email signature.
  
•  Ask for reviews from your email database in your email newsletter.
  
• Ask for reviews from your clients (best time to get a good review is during the transaction!).
  
• Let people in your online communities know that you have a business profile on Yelp that will encourage them to connect and possibly give you a review.
  
• Put your Yelp business profile on your website and blog.
  

4. Build a Network on Yelp

Yelp is a review site but is also a social community and you can build a large influential community on Yelp that will help grow your brand and get exposure for your business.

• Look at who is reviewing local businesses and ask them to become a “friend”.
  
• Look in the talk area to find the most active Yelpers near you, talk to and friend them.
  
• Send a compliment when you see a great review. At the bottom of the reviewer’s review there is a button that will let you send a variety of compliment messages.
  

5. Create Events on Yelp (yelp.com/events)

Yelp has an events section that will give a full page to an event that you post from your personal profile. This is not available in all cities but it is growing and will hopefully be everywhere soon.

• Add events you are hosting
  
• Add events you are sponsoring, contributing to, speaking at, and/or exhibiting at
  
• Add events that you are attending
  

6. Use the updated iPhone/Android Apps to Check-In

Yelp has updated their iPhone app to allow you to check in like the users of Foursquare, Gowalla, and Whrrl. Yelp is hoping to capitalize on the popularity of these location based services/communities with their own check-in feature. It is surprising that they did not do this sooner but at least they are getting up to speed now. They just need to make this available through their mobile site and Droid app.

Check-in to your business to bring exposure to it
Check-in when you are out and about, it only takes a minute but will build ongoing and far reaching exposure within the Yelp community

7. Link Your Yelps with your Twitter and Facebook Profiles

Yelp will now let you tweet and update Facebook when you post a Yelp review, this will get you more visibility on and off Yelp. You probably have some Yelpers in your online communities – the trick is finding them, so let people know you are there and active.

With these seven steps you will be able to get some great visibility for your brand and business.

How It YELP Works

How Yelp Works For Your Local Business

by John Fuller 

When you go to a new restaurant and have a good experience, it's likely that you won't keep the place a secret. Aft_er all, when people enjoy a great meal, exceptional service or a pleasant atmosphere, they typically make an effort to tell other people about it. Many of us, particularly city dwellers, are naturally curious about what's new, popular or just plain good around town, and sharing with others is one of the easier and more reliable ways of establishing the best locations. The same goes for many other types of businesses or services -- drivers often recommend a good mechanic to people looking for affordable, honest work on a car, while someone in need of a new doctor might ask around for recommendations.

But it can work the opposite way, too. If you go to a restaurant and have a terrible time -- maybe the food is unappetizing, or the service is poor -- you want to warn others about it. Instead of allowing your friends to suffer through an expensive meal that most likely won't satisfy, maybe you recommend they think twice about their choice of restaurant and suggest somewhere else to enjoy a night out.

Businesses live and die by this kind of communication, and now the Internet has made it even easier for word to spread quickly about the quality of all kinds of services. One of the more popular social networking sites that focuses on reviewing businesses and sharing information about them is Yelp.com. Founded in 2004 in San Francisco, Calif., the Web site is like a large online bulletin board featuring user-generated content, all geared toward personal reviews based on experiences at local businesses. Yelp takes a Web 2.0 approach to their sites, where members run the show as far as sharing, reviewing and communicating is concerned. Although the company is based out of San Francisco, its set up online communities in every major city in the United States and can be found in several other countries, too. Yelp has recently expanded its reach to Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

So how does Yelp work?  

by John Fuller  

So how does Yelp work? 

How do members use it, and what benefits does the site offer?

Using Yelp

Anyone with an Internet connection can browse the Yelp Web site. It's easy to look through business reviews and ratings and read about other people's experiences. When you open up Yelp's home page, chances are the site will recognize the nearest major city or town to which you live and display popular locations and highlighted reviews. For instance, if you're accessing Yelp from New York City, you'll probably open up yelp.com/nyc when you type in the regular address.

But you can't write your own reviews or follow other Yelp users if you don't first sign up for, and manage, a personal account. Signing up for a Yelp account is basically like signing up for most other social networking Web sites -- to create a profile, the site needs your first and last name, your e-mail address, a password for logging in and, if you live in the United States, your ZIP code, too. If you live in Canada, you'll be asked for your postal code, in Ireland, your city/town and in the United Kingdom, you'll need to provide your postcode. Your gender and age are optional. Once you're signed in, you're officially a yelper, the common nickname for Yelp users.

Now you can review practically any establishment in your community. To write a review, users simply click on the "Write a Review" button near the top of the page. From there you can search for the establishment you'd like to review by typing in the business name and the city and ZIP code in which it's located. Once you select the business from the search results, you can click on the "Write a Review" button next to it. At the top of the review you can give the business a star rating from one to five, with one meaning "Eek! Methinks not!" (poor) and five meaning "Woohoo! As good as it gets!" (great). A text box where you can type your review is directly below, and there are optional selections that are either objective or subjective. You can give an average price range, for instance, or you can note whether or not they accept credit cards or have outdoor seating.

Benefits of Yelp 

by John Fuller  

Benefits of Yelp
_
The major benefit and main point of Yelp is the ease of communication most yelpers experience -- the site is like word-of-mouth for the digital world, and with Yelp communities popping up in most American cities and other places around the globe, it gets easier to find hot places to go to and see what other people think.

But Yelp isn't just reviews: There are also events, event reminders and special offers from businesses and you can even make friends with other yelpers, just like Facebook or MySpace. This allows you to send messages to other users or even "follow" them, which allows you to see a specific reviewer's posts before any others when you're looking at a business. If you want to post your personal reviews on Facebook, you can import them directly from your Facebook profile -- by logging in and clicking on the settings link below the status update field, you can select "automatically import activity" to upload your most recent content and inform an even wider audience on your good taste.

And with the perception of the Internet and social networking as a place where some people go simply to troll around and start flame wars, Yelp appears to be a place where users go to give a balanced opinion about their personal experiences. For the most part, the site isn't a destination for Web surfers to rant wildly about their least favorite restaurant -- in fact, out of all of Yelp's reviews, 85 percent of them have ratings that are three stars or higher, meaning many people come to talk about their positive experiences rather than the negative ones.

And although there are "Sponsored Results," which show up when you search for a company that has paid to include advertisements on the site, the Yelp team does its best to treat every business in a fair manner and keep an eye on any suspicious posts. Yelp also won't remove bad reviews from a sponsored businesses page, and they try to make sure employees aren't posting good reviews for the company at which they work or negative ones for competitors.

How 4 Companies Used Yelp To Woo Customers

---

TJ McCue Owner, TechBizTalk.com

Life for retailers used to be simpler. That was the life without customer review sites, whereas now, every citizen can poke holes in your customer service efforts. This post looks at successful approaches business owners can use to make Yelp into a marketing and sales tool, as opposed to letting it work against them.

Restaurant reviews seem to be the most popular on Yelp, but the service covers many other categories. It used to be that a restaurant or local business would only get an official newspaper review every so often, but with mobile applications and social media, restaurants are under a constant deluge of “citizen reviewers.” In fact, nearly every business faces this same sort of scrutiny and opportunity.

Some will scoff when told it is an opportunity to be reviewed. In every customer interaction, there is a lesson and a chance to shine. Review sites up the game, for sure, but if you provide honest, good service, you can thrive online and in real life.

Here are four success stories to learn from:

Bagelheads

Bagelheads, located in Tallahassee, Florida, has 14 reviews. When the owner, Ben Giles, wasn’t as active online in 2009, there were a few not so favorable remarks. He told me that he likes those reviews, learns from them, and believes that customers can see his progression. Now that is a great attitude.

He likes that you can respond to posts directly and get a chance to give a personal feel to the customer. It shows that you care, and is useful in addressing problem areas. His advice is to use some sort of checkin reward that is visible to the customer when they see you on Yelp. They also created a scannable QR code for the website to give customers more info on their social media efforts, which include Yelp.

Findwell

Findwell is a real estate brokerage in Seattle. CEO Kevin Lisota told me that it is important to hit the basics on these sites: Make sure that your business is not only listed, but that the information is accurate and completely filled out. Consumer trust increases when they can find a photo, website, e-mail address and sometimes special discount offers, rather than just a generic listing.

Their reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Lisota said that negative reviews can be more beneficial than a great review. It teaches him and his staff new lessons and shows consumers how his business behaves when things go wrong, which is super important today.

In a Pickle

In a Pickle is a small restaurant in Waltham, Massachusetts that credits a ton of their business success to their activity and outreach to customers and fans on social media. With 173 reviews and a 4.5 star rating, owner Tim Burke is doing something right. He estimates that 30-40 percent of new business is generated through Yelp. Out of all of his activity on social media channels, he has made it a priority to make sure they have a high rating on the site. He openly says how not having a high rating on Yelp would be disastrous to his business.

Tim knows that customers who are already following him on social media are fans of his food—they wouldn't have liked his Facebook page or followed his Twitter handle if they weren't—so he leverages all of his social channels to encourage customers to review the restaurant themselves. He even sent me this tweet, where he thanked a customer.

Castle Ink

Castle Ink is in the printer ink cartridge business, which is a pretty competitive industry. Bill Elward, president of the company, said that review sites like Yelp are a blessing in the industry. Yelp and similar sites help consumers weigh their options by providing honest feedback on quality. They are active on Yelp, Google, City Search and now credit 10 percent of all orders placed as having originated at one of these review sites.

Yelp is not just for restaurant owners. Most businesses can grow their sales and online presence with review sites like Yelp. 

From almost every business owner I heard this one bit of advice--

" recognize that you are going to get reviewed whether you want it or not. Online tools such as Yelp will continue to grow in prevalence, and it pays to embrace them and participate in the active online discussion with your past, current and future customers".