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. 

Social Media is About Connection

There’s a whole lot of sharing going on, but are we really connecting?

One thing that I'm finding fascinating watching people interact through social media is how much more important face-to-face has become even though we have up-to-the-second information sharing with the people in our lives. 

I think there is a distinction between the sharing of information through social media (pictures, links, videos, random political rants, etc..) and true relationships that involve trust and bonding. As businesses, we might use online search and social media to narrow down candidates for a job, but I doubt any of us would hire sight unseen. There's too much non-verbal communication that you miss without the face-to-face. When you need to build a true relationship with someone, digital communication doesn't fill that need.

I watched recently as a distant connection lost a child. The outpouring of support and sympathy came from all corners of this person’s life through social media. But then the pictures came - pictures of friends who went beyond social media and spent time face-to-face to console and grieve with their loss. Lesson: you can say you’re sorry over the Internet, but it sure doesn't take the place of an honest moment in person.

You can’t replace eye contact. You can’t replace a smile. You can’t replace the warmth of being with another person. And you really can’t replace the all the non-verbal communication that takes place where words are simply not enough. A hug says more than a thousand Facebook posts. 

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!

Social Media Marketing for Special Events

One of the topics near and dear to our hearts here at Tenth Muse Creative is Social Media Marketing for Special Events.  Our next series on this blog is on why social media marketing is important and how it can help you stretch your event marketing dollars.

Events are a shared spectacle, a form of social entertainment - a group of people comes together to experience a unique social opportunity. Using social media within this social setting is almost a no-brainer!  Because understanding how powerful social media can be is so important, we really want to focus on sharing and what makes social media social.

The actual origins of the Internet was as a space for users to exchange information, and that is still true today. The Internet is more than just a place to prop up your online brochure (website), it is where your event attendees socialize and exchange information.  The point of using social media for event marketing is for event producers to participate in the exchange – before the event – during the event - and after the event.

Social media for event marketing is NOT about blasting out a link to your website and reminding people about your event date. Social media marketing is about engaging your audience and making them a part of your marketing efforts through User Generated Content and information sharing.  When you use social media correctly, your event fans become a part of your marketing strategy, not just a digital audience who is already awash in marketing messages, most of which they are ignoring in favor of user generated social marketing.

People who engage in social media are going to drive the “conversation” about your event, they are going to blog it, tweet it, post it, and share their impressions with other social media users. Social media users are the PR department you didn’t know that you had! If you work with your social users and engage them, they will deliver your messaging far more effectively and to more people than traditional advertising. When you engage social users, you are joining in the dialog, you are providing them with content that can be shared with other users and you are building relationships with people who like to share – and there are no better relationships to build than those.

 Our next series of posts is going to look at social media platforms and how to engage your event attendees to create dynamic pre-event social interaction and during-event social opportunities that will vastly increase your event attendee enthusiasm and create a long tail marketing buzz.

Don’t forget to bookmark us as we dive into the pool of social media marketing for your special event!