The Truth About Yelp And How It Helps (Or Hurts) Your Restaurant
I’ve been talking about social media—Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.—as means of establishing presence on the internet. Do you own a small restaurant business? There’s no better way to spread that piece of good news than to create a fan page on Facebook or get fans to follow you on Twitter.
I’ve also worked with a few clients whom I asked the question, “So what’s your take on Yelp?” only to get this look on their face as response.
If you don’t know Yelp by now, then you need some catching up to do.
To make a long story short, Yelp is an online review website for bars, restaurants, retail stores and other commercial establishments. Customers sign in and post reviews and tell this and that thing about your restaurant.
In other words, Yelp could be helping or hurting your business right this minute, and the scary thing is you just found out about it.
Here is the thing. Yelp’s review system makes it possible for your competitors to put out a bad word about you by posting “fake” reviews of your restaurant. You can suppress these bad reviews by “sponsoring” Yelp at $150 a month minimum, which is another way of saying “corporate blackmail.”
This “sponsorship” system is Yelp’s primary source of income. But even so, more or less only 1% of businesses on Yelp became site sponsors, which has more to do, I believe, with the owners being unaware of Yelp as a review website than not wanting to shell out the money.
Look at eBay, Amazon, Epinions.com. Online reviews are here and they could burn your restaurant right down to its foundations if you continue to pretend they won’t affect you and your business. As a restaurant owner, it’s important to know what’s being said about your establishment online, and address these praises, issues and complaints appropriately.
Why not conduct an in-house survey? Ask customers if Yelp had anything to do with their being in your restaurant. If it turns out the majority found you on Yelp, then maybe you should consider sponsoring the website.
The younger your target market niche, the more likely they found out about you first on Yelp.
So what’s your take on Yelp? Tell me your experiences with Yelp by leaving a comment below.