<\/p>\n

If you are unfamiliar with\u00a0Yelp.com<\/a>, as I imagine many people are, given the percentage of times I tell someone I am an Elite Yelper and they say, \u201cWhat\u2019s that?,\u201d it is time to get familiar.<\/p>\n

On March 2, 2012,\u00a0Yelp hosted their IPO<\/a>\u00a0with shares closing at $15 a share, 64% higher than anticipated.\u00a0 Nearly 6 million people use Yelp\u2019s mobile app to find businesses near to them and 66 million unique users visit the website per month.\u00a0 Some of the top Yelp communities in America are in San Francisco SEO<\/font><\/a> (where it was founded), L.A., New York, and Austin (of course!).<\/p>\n

Why is this important to you?\u00a0 If you are a small business owner, Yelp can be used to add value to your business by leveraging social strategies to increase visibility of your business in your community.\u00a0 That is, unless you have poor customer service or are peddling a poor product, then Yelp can be your worst enemy.\u00a0\u00a0 Let\u2019s assume you have a nice small business, be it a restaurant or food trailer, day spa, clothing store, salon, day care, gym, or what-have-you.<\/p>\n

Why Yelp is Good for Your Awesome Small Business:<\/p>\n

1. Yelp is Mobile<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both dedicated and casual Yelpers look up businesses on the mobile app.\u00a0 I found it especially useful when traveling since the app allows you to look for places meeting your criteria within a certain distance (2 blocks, 6 blocks, etc).\u00a0 One author called this \u201cenabling hyper local neighborhood searches\u201d and this is the reason that many people prefer Yelp for local business searches to Google.\u00a0 Yelp\u2019s directions to your business are also superior to any I have seen on the web or on apps.\u00a0 In New York, it even told me which subway to take since I was on foot.\u00a0 That\u2019s pretty cool.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Yelp is Trusted<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

66 million users per month and growing 80% per year.\u00a0 Mm-hmm, people trust Yelp.<\/p>\n

3. Yelp is Social<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are all familiar with \u201cdigital strategies\u201d that businesses can employ to communicate with customers.\u00a0 These include your website or emails you send out, even your tweets.\u00a0 Anything you do that is basically one-way communication from the business to your current or potential customers.\u00a0 \u201cSocial strategies\u201d are when a business encourages interaction with itself and the customers and interaction among the customers.\u00a0 This is becoming a much more powerful strategy to implement to help grow your business.<\/p>\n

Yelp\u2019s business model incorporates both digital strategies and social strategies.\u00a0\u00a0 Yelp is not only an on-line review website, there are also on-line and in-person social aspects to it that most people don\u2019t realize.\u00a0 Users (\u201cYelpers\u201d) can set up their own profiles and tell the world what their favorite movie is or what their last meal on earth would be, they can have Yelp friends, or follow people on Yelp (becoming their Yelp fan), users can post events to Yelp, or topics in the Talk threads, they can give each other compliments, and send private messages.\u00a0 In active communities, there are Yelp parties, and Community Manager Yelp Events (CMYEs), Yelpers can host their own \u201cunofficial\u201d Yelp events (UYEs).\u00a0 And there is a tier of Yelpers known as Elite, but that is a whole different blog entry\u2026<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for Part II of this article, where we tell you exactly how to harness the power of Yelp to add value to your business!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you are unfamiliar with\u00a0Yelp.com, as I imagine many people are, given the percentage of times I tell someone I am an Elite Yelper and they say, \u201cWhat\u2019s that?,\u201d it is time to get familiar. On March 2, 2012,\u00a0Yelp hosted their IPO\u00a0with shares closing at $15 a share, 64% higher than anticipated.\u00a0 Nearly 6 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[884],"tags":[908,879,880,909],"class_list":["post-2078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-media","tag-local-listing","tag-seo","tag-social-media","tag-yelp"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n