So…apparently people trust Yelp. Like, a lot.
A new study published on WebProNews shows that consumers that use Yelp believe that Yelp reviews are VERY valuable. In fact, 73% of respondents say they trust Yelp reviews as much as their own friends.
That’s incredible to me.
It shows, clearly, that online reviews are growing in importance and power. This is a shift.
For years businesses have believed that referral customers are the BEST customers. Friends referring friends is the best.
Now, Yelp is the best. Or, at least, it is as good.
This means one thing: every business needs to proactively manage their online reviews.
Reputation Management and Negative Reviews
We hosted a webinar about reputation management recently with Michael Fleischner. He is an SEO and reputation management expert. Listen to the entire webinar on LogMyCalls.com/webinar. You don’t have to fill out a form or anything to listen to the webinar.
Here are few key takeaways:
1) Take online reviews seriously – If the statistic in this post doesn’t scare you into action, then nothing will. Your customers will call you or visit you–or not–based almost exclusively on your online reviews.
2) Proactively fix problems – Bad reviews are opportunities. When you get a bad review, fix the problem and then ask the reviewer to post that you fixed it.
3) Get your customers to write positive reviews – Ask your customers, the happy ones, to visit Yelp to write something positive. I can honestly say that I’ve NEVER been asked by a business to do this. Ever. Not. One.
Why aren’t businesses asking their clients to write Yelp reviews for them.
If you want a full treatment of how to guard against negative reviews, listen to Michael Fleischner’s webinar on the subject. Because, again, 73% of people trust a Yelp review as much as they trust their friends.
