By Deanna Rose
Are you using Yelp to help grow your small business? You should be! Yelp is the popular online review website that helps people find great local businesses — from mechanics to restaurants to dentists — by allowing people to leave good (and not-so-good) reviews about places they’ve been.
Referrals by word-of-mouth have always been the best way for small businesses to gain new customers, and that rings true even more so now with the instant-feedback world of social media. You can help grow your small business by making sure you’re using all the social media tools to your advantage — including Yelp.
Here are a few ways we see Yelp working for our small business clients everyday.
YELP ISN’T JUST FOR RESTAURANTS.
You may have heard about friends reading restaurant reviews on Yelp, but people leave reviews about all kinds of small businesses! Anyone can find out where the best hairstylist, dentist, pediatrician, catering company, doctor or sushi restaurant is (among other businesses) from real people. Thanks to social media, we can rely on others’ experiences to help guide our choices in every category of business.
Not sure Yelp works? Check out this example of a fantastic Yelp review a patient left on one of our dental client’s Yelp page (and notice how the great reviews led this patient there — and now the practice is treating an entire family as a result!):
YELP IS IDEAL FOR MOBILE BROWSING.
Yelp listings have an advantage over Google listings for small businesses: Since Apple and Google are both fighting for top honors in mobile technology, Google listings may not show up as quickly on an iPhone…but Yelp listings will!
Plus, instead of searching for (or Googling or asking Siri) where the best senior living community is and having to filter through a bunch of website listings, users can head straight to Yelp and read reviews all in one place — which means the chances of your business being noticed are much greater.
And there’s always the Yelp mobile app — one more way people can find your small business when they’re asking the social media world where the best of the best is.
YELP LISTINGS DRIVE TRAFFIC THAT CAN END BACK UP ON YOUR WEBSITE.
Another reason why it’s important for brick-and-mortar small businesses to maintain their Yelp listings, is because it can increase your website views. Yelp makes it easy to see how much of an impact the social media platform has on your website traffic: Via the Yelp dashboard, you can see the number of visits your Yelp page gets (and you can refer to your site’s Google Analytics to understand referring traffic sources, too).
A medical practice client of ours with multiple locations was receiving significant traffic on their Yelp listings — which led to increased clicks back to their website. Which increases the likeliness of bringing in new patients/customers!
If your small business is in need of “Yelp help,” please let us know!
What questions do you have about social media for your small business? Thanks for reading!
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Emily A. Hay
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How can you register a business on Yelp? I went to register and only an individual format came up. Thanks.
Hi Peter, happy to help! You’ll want to start here: https://biz.yelp.com and click on “Create your free account.” Follow the prompts and you’ll be on your way to setting up your free business page. If you can already see a business page for your business, you will want to click on “Work Here? Unlock This Business Page!” which will take you through the necessary steps. Claiming a business page is quite simple but the claiming process does require a phone call to the physical location for verification. Please let us know if you get stumped along the way. Thanks for your question!
~Emily A. Hay