Social Media Marketing: Yelp for Your Business

A few days ago, Tory Johnson, Founder/CEO of Women for Hire, and George Stephanopoulos discussed Yelp’s Business Owner Tools on Good Morning America. Johnson says that aside from recommendations from family and friends, consumers rely heavily on user-generated reviews. She further explains that Yelp is a free social media marketing (SMM) tool for business owners to register their business and provide information, photos, and promotions. In addition, Yelp can be used to respond to reviews (either publicly or privately).

This local restaurant utilized Yelp to include current promotions, photos, and a business owner profile.

Since Yelp is largely based on a wide demographic of consumer reviews, they highly discourage solicited reviews. Such reviews may actually be seen as spam and redirect potential customers elsewhere. Yelp also has an automated review filter that can remove such solicited reviews from business pages.

Below are three strategies to attract potential consumers to your Yelp page without seeming solicitous:

· A good strategy, related to a previous post, is to include a link to your Yelp page in your e-mail marketing signature.

· Yelp’s Flickr page offers Yelp badges for business to print and co-branding online.

· If you offer free WiFi at your business, configure your router to show your Yelp page as the home page when customers connect.

Although people may have generally used search engines like Google or Craigslist to find job listings, Johnson makes a point that some businesses have used Yelp’s Offers & Announcements tool as a means for hiring.

Yelp, and other social media marketing (SMM) sites, are free resources that can be utilized to promote, advertise, and even list job openings. However, be careful of strategies you may employ to attract customers. Tactics that may seem helpful, such as asking users to write a 5 star review, can actually be harmful.


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Written by Chris C.