OUR BLOG

Featuring marketing tips, tech news, digital wonders, some personal things and everything in between . . .

Category: YELP

Nine Tips for Managing a Business Facebook Page


Friday May 7, 2010

Reading Time: 7 minutes
9 tips managing business facebook
Judy Helfand’s Facebook Avatar

Do you have a personal Facebook page? Do you own a business? Have you created a Facebook page for your business? If so, here are nine tips for managing a business Facebook page.

So many of us have a personal Facebook page. Like anything else, it starts out fun and interesting and before you know it you are consumed with reading, posting, etc. Some of our clients have business Facebook pages and often they will ask for advice about how to manage their page, so today I thought I would give you some pointers I have learned. Maybe you know of some other ideas.

Again, I do not profess to be an expert, but I do try to read as much as possible regarding Facebook, as it relates to promoting a business.
1. Be Social: Facebook because it is a SOCIAL Networking site encourages people to get involved. Unlike your personal page, anyone can now find your business page by simply searching your business name. They are “free” to say they “like” you and they can then post good news and bad news. This means you must monitor what is happening on your Facebook page. Think of it like Trip Advisor, YELP, or other social sites. Here is an article that addresses this issue of Facebook reviews. So remember with a business page anyone can find you and “like” you, then they can post to your wall and write reviews!
2. Photo Album Tips: Creating photo albums can be time consuming. What concerns me here is I do not know what ramifications there are to posting photos on Facebook. If you own a business I would take precautions to get permission from any of your employees, guests, customers, actors, etc before putting a photo on your page or in an album. Instead of creating separate photo albums on Facebook, push the people back to the page on your site that deals with photos. It might be a tour of your restaurant, your theatre, your inn, etc.
3. Drive Traffic: With a business Facebook page you should always want to drive the traffic back to your business website. So for example, if your business is a restaurant, don’t just put your menu up on Facebook, instead talk about your menu and put a link to your website’s menu page so that people will get to your site, not just your Facebook page. You will notice when you put in the link you can choose one image to display. The whole idea is to get people back to your site.
4. Status Updates: When you update your status try to include a link to a page on your website or a news story. Every time you update your status your followers will learn about it.
5 Respond: You need to be ready to respond to people when they post something on your page. Remember when you sign in, look at this view: Your Business Name + Others so you can see what the Others are saying. If they ask a question or say something, then respond to them. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with your followers.
6. Share Articles: When there is an article about your business in the local newspaper or a magazine you should make it a point to mention it and link to it.
7. Main Domain: Always when you are referring to your website use your main domain (if you own more than one). If you use different ones, even though they redirect to your main domain, this can be confusing to people.
8. Social Media Buttons Help: Add links to your Facebook page using a social media buttons. Make it easy for people to follow you on the social networks.
9. Stay Informed: Follow the news about Facebook. For example here is a headline from May 7, 2010:  Understanding Facebook Privacy and the latest news on May 24, 2010, Facebook Privacy Tweaks Coming.
These are my nine tips. Can you think of more? Share them here.

Reading Time: 4 minutes
google places pin
Is Your Business Listed on Google Places?

It is funny how you happen across important marketing news on the Internet. For the past year or so, I have tried to follow YELP in the news and I have talked about the importance of side streets when it comes to marketing you and your business. The reason I have followed YELP in the news is that recently two class action suits were initiated against YELP. But imagine my surprise when I “GOOGLED” YELP in the news and I discovered this headline: “Google couldn’t buy Yelp—So It’s Going to War Instead”. What I learned is that Google’s Local Business Center is now called Google Places. I encourage you to read about Google Local Business Center becoming Google Places.

I have written about Google Local Business Center before and some of the frustrations I have encountered when trying to help our clients. According to Google’s Google Maps, Earth, and Local VP John Hanke, “One out of five searches on Google are related to location, and we want to make sure that businesses are able to be found and put their best foot forward.”

There is a lot of chatter or tweeting about this change, but what I find remarkable is that it does not seem that GOOGLE took the time to notify current business owners of these changes. I am speaking of those business owners who have previously claimed their Google Local Business Center listings. Google has their email addresses. Certainly they could have done this. Did you get notified? We didn’t.

Here is what I have decided to do going forward, and I have urged my other team members to do the same: Read about Google Places and SUBSCRIBE TO THE OFFICIAL GOOGLE BLOG. Don’t be left in the dust while everyone else is exploring new PLACES!

Watch Google’s Training Video

And you can learn more here:

USA Today Technology Live

Information Week

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Most of us have used the opinions of strangers to guide us. Maybe we crossed a movie off a list because we saw a bad review on television or went to a new restaurant based on a review we read in the newspaper. The Internet lets us all be reviewers and almost anything can be reviewed. You can rate books on amazon.com, local businesses on yelp.com and DUI attorneys at gotdui.com. And you can use those sites, and countless others to help you chose a book, a restaurant, or a lawyer.

Of course, any review is subjective. For example, The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s latest book, has over 1400 reviews, almost 500 of which are positive and about 650 are negative. Also, the quality of service at any business can vary. So before trusting a review, read carefully.

If you own a business, you need to understand that your next customer might review his or her experience on the Internet. Just as bad reviews in the New York press can doom a Broadway show, then a bad report can seriously hurt a business.

How do you combat the bad reviews? The first thing to do is to try to not get them. Be on top of game as much as possible. If you see that a customer is dissatisfied, try to find out why and do something to satisfy them. Be honest in your advertising so that customers don’t expect one thing and get another.

The second thing is to try to get good reviews. Encourage your satisfied customers. Publicize your good reviews and their sources.

Here are ten other things you should consider.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

On April 24, 2009, Darin McClure sent me a link to an article about YELP. The title of the article was “Yelp Allows Business Owners to Talk Back On Site”. I read the article that day and I really thought it should be a subject for a blog post, but until today I have not had time to talk about it here. The more research I did about YELP, the more I realized I didn’t know or understand a lot about this particular social networking site. Is your business listed on YELP?

I would like your input. Maybe you can answer some of my questions:

  1. Do you have a personal YELP account?
  2. Do you often write business reviews on YELP?
  3. Do you rely on the YELP reviews?
  4. Can you explain how the “search” program works in the back end?

Regarding #4: If I go to YELP and search for Mexican Restaurant in the specific zip code of 85705, then how can there be 160 results with the first result listed located in the zip code 85719? There is no rhyme or reason to the listings, they are not in alphabetical order, review frequency order, etc. Or am I missing something?
Now if I do the same search on Google Maps there are many more results, but they are listed in zip code relevancy order. In other words, Google lists first those restaurants actually located in 85705. Makes sense to me.
I hope that someone out there in YELP land can explain this phenomena to me.