These legions of “elite” Yelp reviewers even get together in the real world for meetups and sponsor events with local businesses. The once anonymous souls who posted, oftentimes, bizarre screeds on review forums have come out in to the light. They are now your neighbors, real customers and potential customers. And if they feel aggrieved, they feel empowered to yelp at the top of their lungs.

The Birth of Yelp

Yelp was launched in 2004 by a couple of former PayPal founders. The San Francisco based company now operates internationally in Canada, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and France, providing millions of user reviews of restaurants, shopping, entertainment venues and services. The company earns the bulk of its revenue from display and search ads. Yelp is growing exponentially. It boasts 17 million total reviews, and adds 700,000 new reviews every month.

Yelp Spurning Google

Yelp’s growth and success caught the eye of the search engine Google, as a potential suitor. But in the end, Yelp spurned Google’s advances that offered to buy the company for $550 million. Since then, Google has retooled its slow performing, dull user review site Hotpot and rolled it into Google Places. The site is now taking a page out of Yelp’s book, by encouraging reviewer interaction, promoting a reviewer community and integrating social networking concepts to drive user reviews and traffic to Google Places.

However, Yelp is still the leader in profiting from the innate yearning we all have to make a difference, have a say in the world and to belong. The company promotes and pays its most prodigious “elite” reviewers as “community managers,” to go out in to the local community and stage social events to attract additional reviewers.

Yelp and Social Networking

The website Search Engine Land reported on a recent study authored by Zhongmin Wang, an economics professor at Northeastern University, examining the social networking aspect of user review sites entitled “Anonymity, Social Image, and the Competition for Volunteers: A Case Study of the Online Market for Reviews.” Wang found that Yelp’s reliance on social networking is successful, because ordinary people gain prestige and a “positive social image.”

Yelp and Questionable Reviews

Yelp is not without its critics. Last year two law firms filed a class action lawsuit against Yelp, accusing the company of engaging in extortion by bombarding businesses with high-pressure sales tactics. Yelp sales people promised the removal of negative reviews in exchange for forking over $300 a month for a paid subscription, according to the lawsuit. Yelp denied the charges, but since then, the company has become more transparent in how, and why it may remove some reviews.

Still, there is always the sense that some of the reviews are not based on first-hand knowledge. And someone with an ax to grind, or a business competitor can always post a scorching negative review. The subject of the negative review can always ask for it to be removed, if the business believes it’s fraudulent and defamatory.

But the best strategy is for a business to become proactive in the local reviewing community of yelpers. Embrace the “elite” Yelp reviewers and “community managers” who rack up dozens of reviews each month.

The post The Pitfalls of Ignoring Yelp and Yelpers appeared first on Smedio.

Though the battle for being the supreme business-friendly location-based social network has been a two-horse race (Foursquare and Gowalla) till now, it’s refreshing to see Yelp step in with an offering of it’s own, right before the holiday season.

Yelp Check-In Offers

The newly-launched “Check-In Offers” feature on Yelp empowers businesses to offer discounts to store visitors. It is a great opportunity for businesses to promote repeat check-ins and bring brand loyalty. Yelp lets businesses create three kinds of promotional offers – percent off, free or fixed price offers.

Yelp provides one-click access to “Check-In Offers” through its business dashboard, which lets business owners activate the rewards feature by creating a special coupon that will entitle returning customers to a percent discount, a fixed price discount, or a free item. When Yelp users visits your store, they can avail the offer at “check-in” time using their iPhone or Android phone.

Business Friendliness

It’s fair to say that the new Yelp feature is all about being more business-friendly. Pitching discounts, freebies and promotions to customers is now easier than ever. Along with the “Check-In Offers”, Yelp has simplified the user interface and introduced a new navigation scheme which makes it easy to manage multiple business listings and view detailed statistical and analytical reports on various offers.

How does your business benefit from “Check-In Offers?”

If you are in the retail business, you better not miss a golden opportunity like this. There are plenty of ways in which your business can leverage the Yelp “Check-In Offers” feature. Some examples would be a restaurant offering a free starter dish to users after three check-ins. Similarly, businesses can offer cash cards and/or Happy Hours discounts in order to lure more customers to visit their stores.

Yelp vs. Foursquare vs. Gowalla vs. Facebook

Though Foursquare and Gowalla offer similar location-based services, Yelp is the big daddy in the business world as it’s heavily used by users for “recommendations”. I have no doubt that Yelp Check-In Offers will give Foursquare and Gowalla a run for their money in the business world.

Yelp’s Check-in Offers has a striking resemblance to the recently-launched Facebook Deals feature. Interestingly, Facebook Deals uses the same concept to let businesses promote their offerings through rewards and discounts to users who check-in using Facebook Places.

Amongst all these location-based services, I believe Yelp has an upper hand as it has a strong user community and is already accepted by businesses as well as customers as a reliable recommendation service/ customer service avenue.

Do you plan to use Yelp “Check-In Offers” to promote your business? Are you already using any other location-based services to boost your business? Please share your social media experience by leaving a comment below this post.

The post How to Use Yelp’s “Check-In Offers” to Boost Your Business appeared first on Smedio.