Posts Tagged ‘yelp marketing’

EveryBlock Spreads Your Small Business Yelp Reviews through Your City

Monday, March 1st, 2010

EveryBlock is a new online tool that allows you to track and discuss what’s new in your neighborhood. EveryBlock answers one simple question, “What’s happening in my neighborhood?” The New York Times calls EveryBlock, “One of the most ambitious hyperlocal sites”. Residents who live in and around 15 major U.S. cities can find out information about crime, news coverage, neighbor announcements, real estate transactions and more. The biggest benefit for small business owners is that EveryBlock is connected to Yelp.

Yelp is a great online tool for small business owners. We’ve written about it a few times here on this blog. The first step you must take is to learn how to claim your small business on Yelp. Yelp allows customers to rate their experience with your business, as well as, leave customer feedback for other potential customers of your business.

Normally, the only time someone would see those reviews is if they found your small business profile on Yelp. Positive Yelp reviews are a great way to drive new customers to your small business. Now, through EveryBlock, your Yelp reviews are being pushed out via email to EveryBlock subscribers with a zip code within a certain radius of your business.

Philadelphia businesses on EveryBlock

Here’s how EveryBlock works…The image above was taken from an email I receive daily from EveryBlock. I signed up with the zip code 19127, which is Manayunk, PA – Philadelphia. Each day I receive an EveryBlock email and within that email are new Yelp reviews from businesses located in and around Manayunk. The email image above shows 2 new business reviews, one for Chinese Tai Chi Center and another for Green Leaf. These businesses were recently rated as 5 stars and 4 stars respectively on Yelp. EveryBlock syncs with Yelp to collect all new business reviews within the area of 19127 and then pushes those reviews out to all EveryBlock subscribers for that geographic region. This means your small business is getting in front of highly qualified prospective customers, as they live in and around your area. Pretty cool, huh?

Currently, the following 15 cities are listed on EveryBlock. As the site grows, so too will the number of cities.

  • Atlanta
  • Boston
  • Charlotte
  • Chicago
  • Dallas
  • Detroit
  • Houston
  • Los Angeles
  • Miami
  • New York
  • Philadelphia
  • San Francisco
  • San Jose
  • Seattle
  • Washington, DC

Manayunk Restaurants EveryBlock YelpThe key takeaway from this post should be that you need to start using Yelp to promote your small business because not only will Yelp users see your Yelp business listing (and hopefully positive customer reviews/ratings), but so too will local EveryBlock subscribers. Basically, for no money at all, you can attract new prospects to your business from two different online tools, Yelp & EveryBlock.

EveryBlock even has an iPhone application to allow consumers to connect while on the go. This means that your Yelp reviews are getting in front of very qualified prospective customers, as they are hanging out around your community. This is really powerful stuff if used properly. Be sure that you’re using Yelp to promote your small business and that customers are writing reviews on your Yelp profile. This way those reviews will be aggregated on EveryBlock and sent out to subscribers within your geographic area.

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Posted in Online Marketing, Small Business | 1 Comment »

Claim Your Small Business on Yelp

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Do you own a small business? If not, do you know someone who does? If so, then Yelp is a tool that needs to be used. What is Yelp? Straight from the Yelp website, “Yelp allows consumers to share the experiences they’ve had with local businesses and lets business owners share information about their business with their customers. Simply put, it’s word of mouth– amplified.” We wrote about Yelp a few weeks back, check out our article on Running a Yelp Campaign for more Yelp-related information.

If you’re looking for ways to get the word out about your business while not spending a ton of money on traditional advertising that doesn’t work…You know what I’m talking about. Those radio spots and print ads that you’ve been paying for that haven’t returned any positive sales growth for who knows how long. Follow the steps below and unlock your business profile on Yelp today.

  1. Navigate to biz.yelp.com and perform a search for your small business
  2. Setup your free business profile
  3. Check out what people are saying about your business
  4. Respond to any customer reviews
  5. Check out your stats by clicking the “My Businesses” tab
  6. Add images and more detail to your profile to make it stand out
  7. Use Yelp to promote specials, coupons, and events
  8. Stay active on Yelp to get the most out of the social tool

That’s it. You’re all setup. You can now log into Yelp as much as you want. Employees at Yelp created a great video that goes into more detail on the steps above. Check it out when you have some time.

Thousands of consumers share opinions about local businesses every single day on Yelp. Be sure that you are a part of that conversation. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, it can benefit your small business. If customers share negative reviews about your small business, and you have unlocked Yelp, you have the ability to respond to that review, both publicly and privately. Another benefit of a negative review is that you can learn about what you should be doing differently to satisfy other customers. If customers share positive reviews about your small business then you’ll capitalize on that positive word-of-mouth marketing when other interested prospects see that positive review and decide to give your product or service a try. Either way, being active on Yelp gives your small business a huge advantage over your competitors.

One thing to note is not to solicit positive reviews. First, it’s unethical and Yelp has a way to filter out reviews that seem overly positive and second, prospects become suspicious if there are nothing but positive reviews on your Yelp profile. True feedback is the best feedback.

Click the image below to check out the Business Owner’s Guide and learn more about what’s available to you on Yelp. If you want to get on Yelp, but just don’t have the time, give us a call about our Localize’it solution. Catalyst Marketers can help get you setup on Yelp and manage your account for you.

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Posted in location marketing | 1 Comment »

Run a Yelp Campaign to Promote Your Small Business

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Yelp is a great online tool that all businesses should be taking advantage of. If you’ve never heard of it until now, that’s fine, keep reading…Yelp claims that it is a “fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great – and not so great – in your area”. Yelp is a tool that allows people to rate & review their favorite, and not-so-favorite, local businesses.

So what exactly does this mean for your business? Well, it means that you can use Yelp as a way to generate positive customer feedback about your business. Then, when other potential customers are searching for products and services within your industry on Yelp, you have a better chance of driving those customers to your store or website. Yelp amplifies the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

Another thing that you want to consider about Yelp is that your business is most likely already in their system. It’s an open network and people can review any business, which means people in your area are reviewing your business already, whether you like it or not. Since people may already be talking about your business on Yelp, it makes sense that you join that conversation. Here are a few reasons why being on Yelp makes sense for your business:

  • Answer any negative reviews that have been made
  • Customize your profile with valuable information
  • Run campaigns to move you to the top of Yelp lists
  • Encourage customers to write positive reviews about your business

If you’re still a non-believer in the power of this tool, check out the 10 things you should know about Yelp. You’ll discover facts like, as of August 2009, more than 25 million people visited Yelp in the past 30 days and that since it’s inception in 2004 Yelpers have written over 7 million local reviews. More and more people are going to Yelp to write reviews and even more than that are going there to read those reviews prior to making purchasing decisions.

How do I get started using Yelp?

The first step is to create a profile on Yelp. After that, you can search for your business in order to “unlock” it and begin customizing it to fit your needs. Check out their video on how to unlock your business on Yelp.

After you get your business setup on Yelp the way you want, start promoting it in your store. Offer incentives to customers for writing reviews on Yelp. Try not to coax them into positive reviews only. You want to know their honest feedback. That feedback can be used to improve things that aren’t working so well, and continue doing things that customers like. The more people who bookmark and review your business on Yelp, the further it moves up the rankings within your category. If you can get listed on “What’s hot on Yelp”, that’s going to drive more traffic to your store. Be creative in the ways that you promote Yelp to your customers. Be sure to offer them something of value for writing the review or bookmarking your profile, such as, receive 10% off your next purchase for reviewing us on Yelp. Before supplying customers with their incentive, be sure they show you (perhaps on their phone) that they wrote the review and/or bookmarked your profile.

Here are some great ways people are using Yelp to find out information on businesses in and around their area:

  • Browse by business category
  • Browse by neighborhood
  • Find popular events near you
  • See what’s hot on Yelp based on bookmarks

If you want some help with getting set up on Yelp or coming up with Yelp marketing campaigns, definitely contact Catalyst Marketers for more information.

Remember to connect with us, other social media experts, and other business owners by signing up for the Catalyst Marketers Facebook Fan Page – A place where business owners and social media experts can converge to exchange ideas around using social tools to grow their business.

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Posted in Small Business | 5 Comments »