Now that phone books have officially died the internet is the place to get your message to your clients. Social media weighs heavily into your online presence with reviews.

Yelp, in particular, is an entity each business must address.  If your Yelp listing has 5 star reviews you are content, but one bad review sticks around for a long time.  The complaint businesses have with Yelp is their inconsistency.  With fairness in mind Yelp has a filtering system.  Unfortunately many of us have watched that filter system hide a legitimate review.  Businesses have purchased Yelp’s advertising programs in hopes these filtered reviews would resurface to the front page.  For some it worked; then wide spread reports of businesses ending the advertising only to watch their reviews disappear.

To combat Yelp multiple online companies solicit businesses–offering to post fake reviews on Yelp under the guise of helping to clean up their reviews.

No matter how frustrated you are with Yelp buying reviews will come back to haunt you.  I continue to recommend just putting Yelp off, be polite when they call.  They are here to stay.

The single action you can control is to respond to the reviews (all online reviews) and turn the negative into a positive message about your business.

A negative review isn’t a reason to panic.  Visitors to your Yelp listing recognize not everyone is happy.  The way you respond tells them volumes about your business practice and customer service.  Use this as a forum. Trust visitors read between the lines.

Yelp has been around a long time, and they are trying to capitilize on a platform that showed little return for a long time.  They are vested in making this work.

Here’s more reading.