Webinar: Help with Yelp - Managing your Business Reputation on Yelp

[Kpay]

How many of you use Yelp to decide where to eat your next meal? Or where to get your haircut? Or how to choose the best dentist?

Millions of people turn to Yelp (well, about 142 million monthly visitors to be exact) to help them make these decisions. What customers see on your Yelp page is often the deciding factor for whether or not they choose your business over one of your competitors.

So how can you make sure your Yelp page reflects you accurately? How can you use Yelp as a tool to grow your business?

We worked with Main Street Hub to offer some tips that can help you improve your business reputation on Yelp. New Year: New Yelp!

🙌  On January 23, 2018 from 11am - 12pm PT we hosted a webinar with Emma Vaughn, a social media expert, who has trained thousands of businesses on how to use Yelp to their advantage.

Check out the recording here: 

In the webinar you’ll learn:

• Why Yelp is important
• Why you should respond to your reviews
• How to respond to all reviews (both positive and negative)
• How to get more reviews
• And you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions!

If you'd like to continue the conversation, feel free to post your questions here and we'll get them answered! 

[pessosices]

Is it really best to respond to all reviews? We're doing pretty well - had 200+ reviews, 4.5 average stars - and I really only privately respond to negative reviews that have something actionable I can do to fix them. Would responding to all of them actually help me?

Thanks!

[Kpay]

Thanks for the question, @pessosices - we can get our expert to respond to this in the webinar! Also congrats on the positive reviews so far!  🙌

[Kpay · Accepted solution]

Hey, @pessosices and anyone else with the same question - this was covered in the webinar! 🙌   I'll try to summarize Emma's points, but feel free to watch the recap once I get it posted. 😎

Responding to all reviews is one good way to show everyone how much you care about your customers. Public responses aren't just for the person who left the review - most people on Yelp aren't writing reviews, they're just reading reviews right before they decide where to spend their money. By responding publicly you're showing potential new customers what great customer service you have and how much you care about what your customers have to say, which could make the difference on where people choose to go. 

A best practice is to write a couple sentences specific to their review so they know you're really listening to what they're saying - good or bad! 😉   You can also use responding to reviews as a way to build relationships with your customers so they're more likely to recommend you and so that when they come back in, you've already initiated a conversation with them.

Tips for responding to positive reviews:

• Address people directly - use their name
• Be personable/friendly/funny
• Keep the line of communication open - "let us know if you have any idea for potential menu items!" or "looking forward to seeing you back soon!"

Tips for responding to negative reviews:

• Identify the core issue - what's the biggest pain point? Address their main issue and no need to address every single thing if they mention lots of smaller issues
• Take ownership
• Defend and/or Apologize - be genuine and ask them to give you another try (if appropriate) and defend your business if something untrue has been said (though always be polite!)

• Keep these tips in mind for responding to reviews

  Emma from Main Street Hub had a ton of other awesome tips as well, I recommend everyone watch the recap video if you're interested in engaging with your customers on review sites like Yelp.👌

[Jchrisl]

200+ reviews?!

how is that possible. Almost every one of my reviews gets yanked by yelp!’s review filter.

do you pay for featured listing?

do you ask for or incentivize reviews?

Seriously. 

Thank you. 

[pessosices]

@Jchrisl 

Sorry to hear a lot of your reviews are getting filtered out!

Getting to 200+ took a lot of time. We've been open for 14 years, and only in the last few years have we gotten more reviews.

Most of it is just word of mouth. We do not ask people to leave reviews, or incentivize them - it's actually not allowed by Yelp to do that - and is a big reason why reviews get filtered out.

What I've found is that Yelp Users who have very little activity (just 1-4 reviews and no "friends") are usually filtered out. So it's a matter of appealing to active Yelp users.

I usually don't pay anything to Yelp - but sometimes it can definitely help to do a little ad campaign on Yelp to get the word out that you exist. 

Making sure you yelp profile is up to date, filled with amazing images, descriptions, and more, can definitely make your Yelp Page more appealing and make it enticing for active Yelpers to find you and then leave reviews.

You can also team up with your local Yelp Elite group (run by Yelp community folks) and put on a little event at your place. It doesn't guarantee reviews, but if they have a good time, they'll end up coming back and most likely leaving reviews! It worked wonders for us when we did one 2 years ago.

Just keep doing what you're doing, provide an amazing customer experience, work on your social media game, and spread the word, and you'll get there!