How have reviews shaped your opinion on a local coffee shop or car repair service center? Yelp influences potential customers opinions & decisions about businesses based on profiles and customer feedback. Whether you’re a restaurant, a service-based business or a retailer - finding the best way to shape your Yelp profile is important in managing your business’ reputation. Here are 3 different types of optimizations to maximize your Yelp profile.

Creating and Optimizing your Business Profile:

Claim your business Yelp page (if you haven’t already done so). It creates a business account to open up their suite of tools to make edits and changes to all of the information that they provide to users and more. How do you know if your page is claimed? Go to Yelp (through your computer, phone or tablet) and enter your business name. If you haven’t claimed it, Yelp will ask you, “Is This Your Business” 

Verify address and contact information  It’s important to provide current contact information so customers reach out to the appropriate method for booking an appointment or asking questions for additional information. Insider tip: Yelp can sometimes put their own phone number that routes to your business number so don’t be alarmed if you see a number that isn’t your own.

Check and Update Yelp Profile Photo - Positive photos and videos profiles increase the level of engagement of your profile and increase brand awareness.

Update your Photos Gallery  - Similar to updating the Yelp profile photo, updating photos adds color and personality to your business. Pro tip: Include photos that show yourself, your employees and replicate what customers can experience. 

Update Hours - Yelp allows businesses to update business hours for both regular and holiday hours and even closures for vacations, etc. The other importance of utilizing business hours is for users searching for businesses that are currently open. Pro tip: During pandemic times, business hours could have been affected so be sure to change them back as conditions in your area may have changed.

Add a complete description of your business - Yelp Profiles can include mission statements, provide customer competitive advantages, and any other value added information.

Select Categories that your business falls into -  Filling out the products and services also helps categorize the business with the Yelp search engine as well as Google and Bing. 

Customer Engagement

Set up Yelp Messenger  - this feature allows users to send direct messages to your Yelp Profile. The benefit is enabling a communication flow for setting up estimates, asking for additional information, and messaging for inability to service. Pro tip: This requires having a device set up to handle these messages (phone, tablet, laptop). If you need assistance with this, feel free to reach out to us to walk you through it.

Read and respond to Yelp Reviews - get notifications when reviews hit your profile. It’s important to respond to reviews that get posted to your site to show gratitude for positive reviews and constructive feedback on negative reviews. This is key tool for reputation management and where responses can have a direct impact on customer experience with your brand. Reviews are opportunities to drive word of mouth recommendations and provide users with the level of customer service and experience they can expect as a current and future customer. 

Share positive reviews across different social media platforms - Add credibility and transparency for branding using positive reviews across other social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Angi, Instagram, etc.,. Reviews provide context to your business that includes products, services, customer experience, and anything that comes out top of mind for any given review.

Gain New Customers

Set up Yelp Deals and Check in Offers - a Yelp Business account allows access to creating promotions by having users Check In on their mobile app.It’s a win-win opportunity for the customer to get a deal while the business gets attention. It’s analogous to a restaurant having a line outside the door which draws interest by the crowd. 

Track and use metrics in your Yelp dashboard - one of the accretive benefits to a business Yelp account is getting analytics on how customers interact and engage with your profile. This includes measuring lead generation activity like how many users visit the page and how many leads drive users to your business through getting directions, writing an e-mail, and making phone calls.

Claiming your Yelp page and optimizing your businesses profile is an effective tool in managing your brand and engaging your customers. The reputation management that businesses can do to stay on top of your business changes and manage customer feedback is critical for sustainable business growth. When Yelp users see that a business is customer-centric, it helps with increasing loyalty and word of mouth marketing that bring customers back again and again.