Is Your Business Using Yelp Wrong?

Yelp is a business owner’s best friend. Until it isn't

I noticed a business on a social site complaining that their Yelp reviews were being hidden. No surprise. I’m betting that business asked their happy customers to review them and the customers obliged to be helpful. I’m also betting that those customers left their one review and then never logged in to Yelp again. Yelp accurately assumes these people were solicited reviewers and hides them.

Why? Because Yelp is a social community of people helping other people find good businesses to patronize. What Yelp isn't is a place for your customers to leave reviews of your business if they aren't going to be participants in the Yelp community. Yelp is looking for people who participate socially and like to help others.  When a new user creates a single review and then stops participating, it looks fishy, and it should.

Fake reviews, solicited reviews, and paid reviews are a persistent problem for Yelp and their algorithm is set to detect those and remove them from public view. I was reading an anti-yelp site yesterday with lots of business owners complaining that their few negative reviews were showing and the positive “5 star reviews” were being hidden.

I’ll tell you exactly why that happened. Regular Yelpers reviewed that business unfavorably. Then the business owner solicited friends and regulars to create positive reviews, but those people created a Yelp account, never filled out a profile and never participated in the community beyond that one review. So, the solicited reviews are hidden and the negative reviews from trusted Yelpers are visible. This is the way it should be. I can also tell from the way some of those business owners were expressing themselves that their negative reviews were probably spot on.

Yelp can double your business or destroy it - that’s the reality.

How does a business shine on Yelp?

The answer is to let customers know you are on Yelp but not to solicit reviews from people who aren't going to become regular participants. Yelp will see a bunch of 1 time reviews and begin to view your account with suspicion of review buying. Let your Yelp reviews happen organically because you do a great job with customer service and delivering value. Never forget that Yelp is a community of people who like to share and help other people. Do a great job for every customer, whether they are a Yelper or not, and word gets out.

It is also inevitable that you’ll get a negative review, no business keeps 100% of its customers happy and one day a sourpuss will let the world know about his horrible experience at your business. It is imperative that you, the business owner, respond to those negative reviews in a professional manner. Respond with an apology that the reviewer had an unpleasant experience and mention why that might have happened (don’t blame the reviewer if you can possibly avoid it), then list the steps you are taking to eliminate the problem. Owners who come off as argumentative or arrogant will do twice as much damage as a negative review by reinforcing the negativity and convincing future readers that Mr. Sourpuss might just be right. Don’t offer to “make it right.” Doing so looks suspiciously like you are attempting to buy off the reviewer to get them to change their review.

A negative review or two isn't a business killer, but a lot of negative reviews can be when they start creating a pattern. Most people who read reviews are smart enough to know that there’s always going to be a negative or two. What a Yelp reader is looking for is a consistent pattern in the reviews. Think for a moment about how you've checked out reviews on Amazon for books or other products. Nobody has 5 stars on every review, there are always a few cranks and competitors down in 1 star territory. But a pattern of low rankings that overwhelm those 5 star reviews stands out and makes you think twice about the product. So it is with Yelp reviews.

Where should those great reviews go? Google Places (which I covered here). The bottom line in both is the same:

Provide exemplary customer service and the negatives just become noise from cranks. 

Are You Getting Local Search Marketing Wrong?

Want more local business? Who doesn’t. But what’s your strategy for getting “top of mind” name recognition within your own community?

There are two primary strategies to make your business stand out locally, the first of which I’m going to cover in this post: Local Search Marketing.

What is Local Search Marketing? It’s making sure that when someone in your area is searching for a product or service you offer, your business lands highly in the search results ranking. I’m not talking about your website or SEO, I’m talking about local search. Most search engines have been weighting their results for local. Google Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp, and Bing Local are the major players in getting your local business found. If you aren't cultivating your listings with these 4 then you might be missing out on finding new customers.

Of the big 4 players, I’m going to mostly focus on the top 2; Google Places and Yelp. These are two different demographics and not every business will benefit from Yelp since its user base tends to skew age 35 and younger. If your core clientele is age 40 and up you likely won’t see as much benefit from Yelp, but you should still make sure you are listed there. You always want to be where a potential customer might be searching for you.

Google Places

This is the 800lb gorilla of local search marketing. You need to be there and you need to stay on top of Google Places as a marketing channel. If you've been in business for a while, it’s likely that you are already listed. Your next step is to claim your listing with Google and start managing it. Make sure your location data is correct - address, phone, business hours, etc.  Upload at least 3 pictures, one showing your building front and two or more interior shots. Pictures showing your friendly and helpful staff are always good as well. Make sure your offerings are keyworded so that your business shows up in searches for those products/services.

Google Places allows reviews and you might even have a few already. If you don’t, ask your customers to review you on Google and Yelp. Reviews help you climb to the top of search placement rankings. Always respond to your reviews if possible and especially if they are negative. A negative review is not the end of the world and every business will acquire at least one at some point. Respond to the review by apologizing to the customer for their bad experience and make every attempt to right things (even if the customer was at fault.) Your obvious attention to your customers will score you big points with searchers looking for good companies to do business with.

When you claim your business in Google Places you’ll be prompted to set up a Google+ account for the business at the same time. Do it and use it. While Facebook gets all the press and attention, it isn't going to help you rank higher on Google, but Google+ will. Use Google+ as a content marketing channel. Post your specials, post news about your business, post relevant content that keywords back to your offerings. For example, if you are a hair salon, you want to post tips on hair care (always make sure you keyword “hair” and “salon” into your post.) If you have skin care offerings, post content on those as well. All those pieces of content using keywords to services you offer help push you to the top of Google’s search rankings. Google likes two things: relevancy and freshness. Make your posts on Google+ relevant to your business and post at least twice a week.

Yelp

If Google Places is the 800lb gorilla, Yelp is his 600lb cousin. Yelp is very popular with people who've grown up in a digital world. Just like with Google Places, you might already be listed. Claim your business listing, get the correct info up there, post pictures, respond to reviews. Offer deals through Yelp if applicable to your business model. Businesses that master Yelp are thriving. It’s the only place I shop for restaurants and home improvement contractors today. I actually had an electrician turn down a job recently because he has so much business coming in due to his glowing reviews on Yelp that he can’t keep up. Yelp is a very, very powerful tool for certain types of businesses.

Once you've gotten your listings on Google Places and Yelp shining like marketing stars, do the same for Yahoo Local and Bing Local. You should also create a weekly marketing strategy and carve out 30 minutes twice a week to post fresh content, respond to reviews, and generally keep your marketing tight and tidy.

Get out there and use the tools to engage with your potential customers. Marketing isn't just running a few ads anymore, it’s a constant effort that pays big rewards when done well.

Coca-Cola & Social Media Marketing

There was a great article on Linkedin the other day that discussed Coca-Cola and their social media strategy. I was dismayed by some of the comments suggesting a lot of people don’t think that social media marketing works for smaller businesses or less “glamorous” ones.

Yes, it can.

How you make social work is by providing value to people. One commenter suggested that social media wouldn't work for a copy machine company and I disagree. For demonstration, here’s how I would do a social media campaign for a copy machine company - let's call them MemoX.

The people who've chosen to become fans of MemoX are most likely already owners of MemoX products, so what we're doing is brand building to keep MemoX in the market leader position. The social strategy for MemoX is all about customer service and creating a sense of value around the MemoX brand. Their Facebook page should include a once or twice weekly post that focuses on the many great product features and how they can help customers work more efficiently.

Each product feature post should lead off with how that feature saves the customer time and helps them deliver a superior quality product to the stakeholders on their end. You can pull an entire year's worth of Facebook posts out of the product user manual that 90% of MemoX customers never read.

I would also encourage MemoX to run specials on supplies that are only available to Facebook fans, maybe once a quarter.

On a regular basis, their social guru should toss out a request for questions or issues that they can help solve, this shows their fans that MemoX is listening and cares about their customers. They also should post the occasional copy-related joke to keep things fun and informal. The key point is MemoX needs to be front and center with offering their customers valuable tips (sprinkled with the occasional giggle) that improve their work and lives. Always go back to how you can deliver more value to the customer via social media.

Lastly, nobody wants to socialize with a brand. They want to socialize with human beings that represent the brand. They aren't interested in mission statements and they really aren't interested in carefully crafted, focus-group-tested, advertising agency spin cluttering up their social newsfeed.

Social is easy. Deliver value. That's it.

Small Business Branding with LinkedIn

A lot of small business owners are hesitant to jump into social business networking via LinkedIn and consequently they are missing a vital opportunity for branding and building their businesses.

Today we want to cover some basic concepts of using LinkedIn to brand your small business with a focus on creating your starting network. We are not going to go over details on the LinkedIn platform elements, as there are tons of great tutorials on this topic already.  

For purposes of this post, we are going to assume that you’ve created a LinkedIn account and are unsure of your next steps forward to start branding yourself and your business.  We are also going to assume you probably already have an existing network of clients, customers, and other professionals that you currently do business with via email. We want to turn this group of people into an audience for you to brand yourself to.

Create your starting network:

•  Follow the LinkedIn directions for finding contacts. Export your email address book from Outlook or whatever mail program you are using (I found that LinkedIn seems to prefer .txt files over .csv files.)  Import your contact list into LinkedIn.
•  LinkedIn will then match up your contact list with people who are already on LinkedIn and will offer to send out “Connect” invites.  You can select people individually or just go all-in and hit your entire email list with an invite.
• Sit back and watch who connects with you and how fast.

Task:  Make a list of the people who responded to your invite in the first 48 hours.  Those people who responded within 48 hours are your active business network on LinkedIn. Those are the people who are truly paying attention to the LinkedIn platform and using it. They are the audience you are branding yourself to.

Most people who are in your active network are either logging in daily to glance at their news feed, accept invitations, send out invitations, etc.  Or they are at least following what’s going on in their network via the Weekly Digest email. This means that your name is going to be appearing in front of these people (your active network) on a regular basis. 

The way to use LinkedIn most effectively as a business owner is for branding. Associating your name with an idea or ideas.

True story. There’s a guy in my network named Mike. I somehow worked with him somewhere long ago, don’t really remember. Mike used to post these slideshow presentations on business topics as a self-promotion tactic. I thought it pretty smart what he was doing and made a mental note. Then he stopped posting those great presentations....Time passes and he drops off the radar. Until about a year ago, when he joined a LinkedIn group that talks about small airplane selling. Now, for the past year, every time I see Mike’s name in my LinkedIn news feed or on a Weekly Digest update, it is in relation to a post he made in a group on airplane sales.  So, in my mind…Mike is an airplane broker. I associate his name with airplane sales because that’s what I see his name most often in relation to.  If airplane sales are not his main revenue stream, then he’s totally botched his branding because that’s what I associate him with now. 

See what I mean?  You become what you share.

To borrow a concept from Guy Kawasaki: "You should post about what you want your followers to know you for." 

Your active network is going to see every move you make on LinkedIn. And you want them to, because you are branding yourself. Everything you do will be to associate your name with key words and key ideas.

You can put ideas out in front of an enormous range of professionals with elegance and subtlety. Instead of following the ideas around, you become someone who influences the ideas in your network.

But we are not going to go into influence and ideas just yet, baby steps. First you build up an audience to play to and get comfortable with the LinkedIn Platform. You want to make your “new guy” mistakes with 20 followers, not 500. You’ll aim for adding 10 new connections a week. You want your network to grow – the larger your network, the more people you are influencing.

We will talk about sharing engaging and relevant content that builds your brand in a future post, be sure to bookmark us or add us to your RSS feed so you don’t miss it!

Small Business Video Marking - Kevin Allocca on Why videos go viral

I just watched this and was intrigued. Very intrigued. Kevin Allocca is YouTube's trends manager, and thus knows a thing or two about not only what works on YouTube but what goes viral and why.

Video marketing has been creating a lot of buzz in the business community, and with great reason. Done right, video can help you dramatically expand your reach and create a portfolio of shareable content -- who doesn't want that?

The number one thing that I take away from this video was the idea that "we don't just enjoy media now, we participate." This is an important concept for small businesses marketing via the internet and social media. Don't just broadcast; you need to participate and engage.

Via TED talks.

3 Ways to use Pinterest for Special Event Marketing

Pinterest is the rage in the social media and special events marketing world - and for good reason. It's a visually rich platform built on images, so it has lots of potential for any events that generate a lot of great images or video content. It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words and all those pictures your event generates tell a story - that story is an integral part of your special events marketing strategy.

Special Events can use Pinterest for marketing in all three marketing phases:

1) Pre-event marketing - pin images and video from previous events or images that will draw the right audience. For example, if you have an art show, start a collection of great art imagery that all links back from Pinterest to your website and/or blog. Encourage participation by announcing to your mailing list that you have a board on Pinterest for lovers of art and start your audience participating in curating the collection. Run contests around art images and showcase outstanding images curated that week on your event Facebook page.

If you have previous images from last year's event, put those up - encourage event participants to share their pictures from last year. Done correctly, you end up creating a community built around the sharing of images relating to your event. We will come back to that word: community, in future posts. Social media is all about community.

2) During event - be posting pictures and video constantly from the event, encourage your participants to do the same. Create contests and build community. The more you interact with your social participants, the more they share your content and help you build your brand/event. If you can bring them back to an email sign up page and collect addresses for future marketing, even better.

Pinterest

3) Post event marketing - it's the day after your event and you've got hundreds of photos and videos sitting around not helping you start your marketing for next year. Pin 'em up! Put them out slowly over time so that you can use this month's collection of pictures as a reason to reach out and touch your email list or Facebook fans, encourage participants to share and repin. You did hire a professional photographer, didn't you? User pictures are wonderful, but you need your own professionally shot photos for promotion. This is such a small budget item in the grand scheme of things; and any event is pound foolish to be cutting this expense to save a few pennies.

Just like any other form of social media, there are dozens of ways to build community through participation and sharing. The only limit is your own creativity and willingness to spend the time to participate yourself and cultivate the relationship.

My boards in Pinterest are here. Follow me if you like gorgeous images of architecture and art!

Marketing Your Business: The Neighborhood Approach

A Fresh Outlook to Alleviate the Confusion of Search Engine Marketing & Search Engine Optimization

Introduction

We have several websites that we maintain for ourselves and clients, so we are barraged with emergency notices from vendors that this website or that one is in need of SEO. And from their perspective, yes, they could use some; however, we think about more than the search result ranking when it comes to our sites. Result Ranking is highly weighted as one of the more important desired outcomes, which is why SEM & SEO are the current trends in strategic marketing. We prize their value as well, but we use these techniques as tactical tools, not strategically.

Strategic & Tactical Marketing Considerations

When you design and implement your marketing plan, the first thing you must decide is what you are selling. Most of us are selling goods, services, or both. This is critical to ascertain, especially with regards to the idea of Search Engine Results Rankings and clicks on your website. Just a mere “click” on a website can become a  product if you can cause an enormous number of clicks to happen in a short period of time, monetizing it through basing your Revenue Stream on traditional Advertising Models, certain number of impressions (=clicks) equals a particular cost to the advertiser. In this Advertising Model, as with a magazine’s circulation, what economically matters is the number-of-eyeballs on an ad. Here your objectives are to get any click on your page from anyone, stay for a certain amount of time, and that is it. This subordinates your content to bait-on-a-hook status where you do not care what your content is or what it says, just as long as it relevant enough to get a click.

Relevant enough? For what? Enough for the search engines to determine whether or not to put it at the top of the Organic Results for any reason and for anyone. Huffington Post is a good example of this. They create little of their own source content, but they are master curators of others’ content. To them, it does not matter that someone with or without cancer clicks on an abstract of a currently circulating article/subject on, say, some new research and product that helps. They delivered their value proposition to their customer segment when the page was clicked-on or a sponsored ad was clicked-through. This is SEM & SEO on steroids, and a business model in and of itself.

Wrap-up

The following posts will not be about the strategic seo gaming, although some of it is necessary and helpful. We will explore the business owners’ opportunities to seize control of their own business marketing and have the marketing investment dollar return ten-fold in new access to the targeted customer segments.

In simple terms, if you are a Locksmith with a shop in Long Beach and take great pride in your 24-7 Emergency Services within a 25-mile radius. Unless you have invented a new bullet-proof locking mechanism that you want to sell to anyone, your primary revenue streams lie within your 25-miles service area. You only deliver your value proposition when you make that service call or counter sale at the shop. So do not pay for advertising, marketing and promotions dollar for anything outside your territory. If you are good and authoritative, you will earn that fame just by being dynamite in your own market.

So next time, we will talk about drilling down to what it is that you do or what your product does and your strategic marketing plan. We will start by clearly identifying what you do that directly benefits your customer segment(s).

Be sure to bookmark us or add us to your RSS feed for more installments of this post and other good stuff.