How to make money with Yelp (and other local sites)

Yelp and Foursquare are huge for Local - they work great on Mobile and their results often appear higher in Google than your own website.  In the ideal world you'd have claimed your business on both networks, added some great photos, updated the business information and of course have loads of positive reviews, check-ins and tips left by happy customers.

Big Caveat - Don't Ask For Reviews on Yelp

Yelp (in particular) are really picky about how you generate reviews.  You can't ask for them outright and if you suddenly get a load of random positive reviews, their algorithm will probably squash them.  So what do you do?

File under "Duh!" but:

As part of the sales process, have a conversation with them about technology, about smart phones, about how everything is changing:

• Ask them what kind of phone they have
• Ask them if they use social networks
• Ask them if they have Yelp and Foursquare on their phone
• Ask them if they've ever "checked in" somewhere before
• Ask them what they think about all this
• Share your own experiences with the networks

"Win, Win, Win"

The point here is to put the idea of Yelp and Foursquare into the customer's mind when they're interacting with your business.  If you are enthusiastic about these services then they'll be more inclined to check them out, and if they're already a user, to interact with you online. Yelp wins, the customer wins and in the long run, you do too!

You have to change your mindset

I know to most people working directly with the customer this doesn't make sense, but think of it like any sales training and just implement it in your business.  It might feel a little uncomfortable to start with but if you make it an habitual part of your interaction with customers your traffic will go up and you will make more money.

If you want to chat about this and see how it can be implemented in your business, email me here or call me on 310 980 2499

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Written while listening to: God Knows Violas - music2work2

Image Credit: Picture Unrelated by Amadeus Varadi  on Flickr (just 'cos it totally cracked me up!)

My SEO is crap but I'm busier than ever

That's what the local San Fernando Valley artisan laughed as I gave him my money. 

I was looking for a local skilled professional and knew that if I used Google I'd just get sponsored results and the big chains.  So I used Yelp and searched around my zip code and read the reviews.

This behavior is going to become more and more common - and yes - there are pros and cons of the whole review thing and no you shouldn't stop adding content and improving your website's search engine visibility, but...

Getting customers to help you

The most powerful thing a customer can do for you - aside from give you money - is to write positively about you on the internet - and the most dominant place for that is Yelp with Foursquare making a strong play for second place.

Make it part of your plan

As part of your marketing plan for 2014 (you are writing one of those yes?,)  you might want to allocate more time to those two networks. 

If you've got no idea where to start or would just like to be efficient and not waste time making rookie mistakes, email me or give me a call on 310 980 2499 and we'll have a chat.

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Image Credit: SEO by Sean McEntee on Flickr

Written while listening to "God Knows" - published next week on music2work2

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And we're back...

I hope you all had a good break over the holiday season and got a chance to reflect on the year.  I know that for many of us the second half of 2013 was a lot better than the beginning and it seems that 2014 is continuing the trend - this is good.

Before we get back into the nuts and bolts of digital marketing: Google+, Yelp, authorship, YouTube, Facebook ads, Web design, blah, blah, blah - here's the big takeaway from last year.

No matter how good your website, your newsletter or your content - if you don't have a successful core business, you're wasting time and money.

Andrew's advice for 2014

Halve the amount of time you spend on "online" activities and use that time to grow and improve real world systems.

This might seem rather odd advice from someone selling digital marketing services but the truth is, you're so much easier to market if you're good and your customers and clients love you.

The bare minimum

If you have already worked with me this is what you should have:

• Nice modern looking website that scales to accommodate mobile
• The ability to add content and make changes yourself
• An integrated mailing list and regular newsletter
• Some kind of social media presence that you're working with
• Key Performance Indicators

What you should be thinking about this year is how you can use that infrastructure to show and tell just how amazing your business is.  Easy!

Well - almost...

There are lots of working pieces and balls to juggle, so it's best to have a plan to manage it all.

I call that plan a content strategy and if you don't have one, you might want to consider giving me a call.

Oh, and if you don't have the bare minimum yet, the number's 310 980 2499.

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Image Credit: /doh by striatic on Flickr (one of my favorite images ever!)

Written while listening to an unpublished piece of music2work2 - here's an earlier version.

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