5 easy ways Yelp can Help

Yelp has become a well recognized platform for social interaction and reputation management for your business. Regardless of whether you are new to Yelp or if you have been active in the past, this article will help you to make the best of your Yelp listing. Linking to your Yelp listing from your businesses website can add an important social media dynamic to your online presence. Here are 5 ways you can maximize the potential of your Yelp listing for your local business.

Why Yelp?
With so many choices in social media, such as Facebook, Pinterest, or LinkedIn, you might be wondering what Yelp has to offer. Yelp is unique because it offers a rich toolset for reputation management. Reviews have become a large part of the shopping, buying, and decision making process of the Internet savvy consumer. Yelp is by far the largest site when it comes to social reviews.

How to get started with Yelp.
There are a few items to cover before you get down to setting up your Yelp listing. First off, you may already have a Yelp listing that has been created for you, by a customer. You’ll want to search for your business name and see if you can claim an existing listing.

It’s always a good idea to claim your business listing, even if you don’t plan on utilizing it in the near future. Yelp is very popular, and someone else may claim it for you. Yelp.com has a section dedicated to Yelp for Business Owners, if you need more information on claiming your listing. Once you claim your listing, you are ready to take it to the next level.

#1 Check out the competition.
The first thing you should do is look at your competitor’s listings. This can give you valuable insight into which listings look the best, and how you can make yours stand out. Yelp has a system of stars for reviews where a 5 star rating is prestigious. Do you see any patterns in the listings of 4 star or higher businesses? Is their website linked, and does it look impressive? Do they have nice photos of the business location or menu? Make a short list of what you found appealing, and use it to spruce up your own listing.

#2 Get started on your business’s Yelp profile.
Your Yelp profile has several essential areas that you’ll want to configure. Having all of these elements present will maximize your Yelp presence.

• Name and Category – Make sure your business name is spelled correctly, and that you are in the correct category for your businesses service.
• Address and Phone Number – Include your street address, and any helpful information such as cross streets, or landmarks.
• A Link to your website – Yelp has a place for your website’s link. This is important because it allows customers to instantly go to your website for further information. A Yelp profile can only contain a portion of the information your website has.
• A nice set of photos – Photos are important to convey an impression of your store to customers. This is especially important for mobile customers, the photos are featured prominently on Yelps mobile website, and can be a strong factor in a buying decision.
• OpenTable.com – Does your restaurant take reservations via OpenTable?
• Detailed business information – Hours of operation, pricing, seating, parking, etc. Give the customer some basic information about your location and offerings.
• About This Business – Place any additional information you would like your customers to know about your store here. If you have a weekly special or event that you would like customers to know about, make sure to add it.

#3 Photo Galleries are a great way to convey your message.
Yelp’s website and mobile website will both prominently display any images your upload, offering customers a quick view of your storefront and products. This is an excellent way to share menu items, merchandise, and services.

#4 Customer reviews are a big part of Yelp.
As customers enjoy your products and services, they may review you on Yelp. Social reviews like Yelp have become an important part of the Internet landscape. If your business is not participating in this conversation, you could be missing a great opportunity to influence customers when it matters most, when they are ready to buy. Furthermore, you can positively reinforce customers that review you, with the “Add owner comment” ability. Being present in the conversation and engaging your customers socially is a great way to build brand awareness and generate some buzz in the community.

The flip side can happen if you get a negative review. We all hope this doesn’t happen, but if it does be sure to take a moment and decide how you want to respond. Is it a legitimate complaint? Can you offer a resolution in your response that shows you want to resolve the issue? Yelp has a few helpful hints when deciding how to respond to reviews.

#5 Yelp listings show up in search engine results
Yelp’s popularity and sheer volume of links makes for great search result ranking and search engine optimization. Your business website may rank at the top of searches, but you may be competing with other businesses for those very same customers. Filling out your Yelp listing can place another “virtual sign post” on the internet pointing to your business. Even businesses without a website can show up in searches due to their Yelp listing. Make sure you are utilizing Yelp to your competitive advantage.

These are just a few of the ways that Yelp can help the online presence of your local business. Feel free to share any other experiences you’ve had with Yelp with us!

Here at the PD Media Lab, we’re proud to serve the community and partner with businesses to grow their digital presence.   A recent article on the INMA ideas blog talks about what we’ve accomplished in our first year, and what we’re looking forward to in 2013.

PD Media Lab Gains 70 Local Business Clients

The PD Media Lab is a full service digital/web agency that focuses on helping businesses design and implement their digital strategy.

In the Bing vs. Google power struggle, the Christmas holiday is providing a fresh opening line of attack.

Seizing onto Google Shopping’s policy that merchants are paying for results in the product listings and that those who don’t pay are excluded, Bing has used that as a campaign against the search giant.

They’re calling it, “Have You Been Scroogled?”, which may or may not be amusing to you. Here’s their video clip of the effects on Joe and Jane Consumer. (Note that it’s posted on YouTube, which happens to be a Google site. Wonder whether it’ll stay up there during the holiday season?

At least in Bing’s perspective, this is an issue. From the way Google often treats these kinds of attacks, it’s chatter from the peanut gallery.

And Bing’s own shopping site has this policy: “Paid offers will be highlighted throughout Bing Shopping, including search result and product pages.”

We were shocked, shocked (well, no, we weren’t shocked at all) that some of our best web design clients did so well in the 2012 Reader’s Choice Best of Sonoma County contest. Winners were announced recently and they include:

- Best Optician or Optical Business – Sonoma Eyeworks

- Best Place to Buy Wine – Bottle Barn

- Best Waiter/Waitress – Whitney Moore at Doc Holliday’s Saloon

- Best park, dog park, playground, hike

- All various Santa Rosa locations that are promoted heavily by the Santa Rosa Convention and Visitors Bureau

Congrats to all the winners in the contest. They will be honored at an event on Thursday, Sept 27, at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek in Santa Rosa. Click here for details on that event or to see a complete list of
winners.

Is it any wonder that the best businesses in Sonoma county use the best web design and best SEO firm in the county? No surprise really. The best businesses deserve the best web design.

The best optician, Sonoma Eyeworks, deserves the best web design.

If you love wine as much as we do, you know why Bottle Barn was chosen as the best place to buy wine in Sonoma County. Go in and ask Jason why he chose the best web design firm in Santa Rosa to design his website.

Do you want to market better, improve your problem solving abilities and save the world?

Go play a game!

Perhaps when you were younger and you had an important project to complete, the adults in your life told you to stop playing games and get to work.

Well, guess what? A new look at game playing by marketers, business consultants and experts is showing us just how important game playing is.

Gamificationis “using game mechanics to increase customer loyalty and engagement.”

Games are fun. People want to have fun and letting users have fun will make you more memorable. Being memorable is what attracts and retains customers.

Marty Smith, in the “Gamification White Paper” writes:

We live in a world of games. Did you open your frequent flyer statement today? How close are you to a free coffee at Starbucks? These common games are marketers using game theory to increase and appreciate customer loyalty. Gamification is HOT because it works.

And gamification is also hot because Internet marketers have a new appreciation for loyal customers.

Another part of the attraction of games is the competition. People love contests because they love comparing themselves to others. Active Trainer, one of several online training websites, is one of the top 1,000 sites in the United States.

Games are good for problem solving for or both individuals and groups.

In his book “Gamestorming”, the well-known management consultant Dave Gray tells us:

Playing games can help us “gamestorm” solutions to challenging problems.

Gamestorming is using game play to “make apparent a variety of possible paths towards the fuzzy goal.”

How does gamestorming help solve challenging problems? Gamestorming brings out your passion and helps you avoid boring business as usual.

Jane McGonigal, a leading game developer tells us that “Gaming can make a better world”.

But isn’t gaming bad for you? Isn’t it warping the minds of our youth? Not according to Steven Johnson, who writes in Everything Bad Is Good For Youthat gaming is teaching us the skills we need to function and problem solve in a connected world.

In fact, it is gaming that is helping to connect that world. According to Gamification Facts & Figures145,000,000 people in the United States play games. By the way, those folks who love to play games are your prospective and current customers.

So do you want to make your marketing more effective, improve your problem solving abilities and save the world?

Then go play a game. Maybe you’ll experience your own epic win.

We keep hearing great things about G&G Market in Santa Rosa, one of our web design and SEO clients. Recent quotes seen on the web include:

“The BEST Chinese roasted duck in the USA.”

and

“The best place in Sonoma County to buy Dungeness Crab”

Check them out.

Brad Frost at Smashing Magazine tells us why making a good mobile website is hard.

“If there’s one lesson to learn from analyzing these websites and techniques, it’s that this stuff is genuinely hard. A lot goes into making a great mobile Web experience, and I’m personally thrilled that the candidates have taken the important first steps toward making their websites mobile-friendly. Viewing the mobile web as a wonderful journey and not as a destination is absolutely essential. As we step into the deep end of multi-device Web design, we must strive to continually improve our websites and services in order to better serve our users — wherever they may be.”

Separate Mobile Website Vs. Responsive Website | Smashing Mobile
http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2012/08/22/separate-mobile-responsive-website-presidential-smackdown/

A recent study from Barracuda Labs shows that a surprising number of Facebook profiles are fakes.

Read this infographic to learn how to spot them:

Barracuda Labs Social Networking Analysis: Facebook User Profiles – Real People vs. Fake Profiles

http://barracudalabs.com/fbinfographic/

Sitelogic offers a simple explanation of the different types of web hosting available.

What type of hosting does your business need? – SiteLogic
http://www.sitelogicmarketing.com/blog/06-what-type-of-hosting-does-your-business-need

Great idea – turning payphones into hotspots!

NYC Turning Payphones Into Wi-Fi Hotspots