Spend five minutes on the internet and there’s a good chance you’ll run into Google’s new local search result module, which Mike Blumenthal dubbed the “Local Stack”. If you have any issues with the new stack, you’re in good company. Critics have complained that the stack makes it harder for up and coming… Read More »4 Reasons the New Google Local Stack Sucks (that you probably didn’t think of)
Here’s a scary loophole to Yelp’s content guidelines: what if someone has an interaction with your business, but doesn’t actually do business with you? Here’s a review that someone left for a plumber in Redwood City: Her chief complaint is that she was not a customer, so is this still a legitimate… Read More »Do you have to be a customer to leave a Yelp review? Nope!
It’s happened to the best of us. A customer goes on Yelp to leave a review, ends up writing a 5 star masterpiece longer than most Hemmingway novels, and Yelp filters it out. Not only is your business deprived of an awesome review – chances are that your formerly satisfied customer is a little ticked off, too. So what do you do about it?Read More »What To Do About a Filtered Yelp Review
You may not think that a book written about the internet in 1999 would have much to offer us in the realm of web marketing today, but think again. Here’s a snippet of The Cluetrain Manifesto that was dead-on about the fundamentals:
“…Markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.”
—The Cluetrain Manifesto
There are so many marketers who go through great pains to try and fake the human voice, and sometimes it even works—kind of. But the point is not just to sound like you’re interested in talking to your customers. You have to have an honest desire to do it (at least for the business’s sake). Maybe you’re a business owner who wants to give your brand a presence on social media platforms—but odds are you’d prefer not to play the role of reaching out to the masses yourself. Time to hire it out.Read More »Can We Talk? Why Your Company’s Social Media Needs to Sound Human
If I had a dime for every time a business owner tore into Yelp, I’d already be retired.
It turns out that the internet’s most popular business review site, at over 100 million registered users, still isn’t popular with everyone. Many business owners, users, and bipeds in general tend to hate Yelp’s lack of transparency, aggressive sales staff, and the amount of power that they give to relatively anonymous users. If you don’t believe me, just check out Yelp-Sucks.com, a few recent horror stories from small businesses, or Yelp’s laughable 3/5 star rating on their own website.
Today, we’ll talk about how much Yelp can suck, we’ll take a look at some of the biggest complaints about Yelp, and then we’ll see what we can do about them.Read More »Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Yelp?