How To Sign Arizona Banking Presentation

How to industry sign banking arizona presentation easy

everybody thank you for joining the aca small business boot camp and resource collective for this tuesday january 26th uh we're excited to have everybody here i'm robert thiel the small business ombudsman and vice president of small business services here at the commerce authority and we want to first start by thanking all of our community partners these boot camp sessions could not be done without all the community partners their expertise their time their effort we appreciate them very much the small business bootcamp and resource collective is designed to help small businesses work through the covid crisis and return stronger than ever it's a statewide initiative supported by those community partners of ours and it is a boot camp webinar and a resource collective which we have on our website our website is a great uh tool full of amazing resources first now you went to the website to register for this session you can see the upcoming sessions on our on this website as well as all the archive sessions all the previous sessions we've done uh can be found at the bottom of the webpage under archive and it's listed by a week you can go back and review any of the sessions that you may have missed or want to re-watch or review or share with somebody so they can review it it's a great tool all the the webinars include the materials from that session as well so if you want to go back and just download the slide deck that was used at that option too additionally on there you'll find the link to the resource collective and the resource collective is a web page set up with the tools and resources provided by our community partners we have lots of great links on there to help support small businesses working through this time and find some of the guides and and resources to help support them now this is just a list of some of those guides and resources that you'll find on the resource collective uh you've got unemployment insurance safe retail professional beauty association construction manufacturing preparing buildings for re-entry for cleaning and so forth a lot of great resources available on the resource collected with that i also want to share some quick updates uh many of you may know the ppp program is open for all lenders um both the ppp first draw and second draw loans if you have a lender you want to use or you want to change lenders this link is for the ppp arizona lender list put together by the sba this list is as of january 8th from the information they have that time and they post it on their website as well additionally i want to share a couple of the programs that came from the stimulus bill signed at the end of 2020 the shuttered venue operator grant program you can follow this link to get information on it and as more information comes out from the sba on this program we will definitely share it and update it also the employee retention tax credit is a great resource for businesses to take advantage of their employee retention piece during 2020 and in 2021 and the sba debt relief program uh for those that have existing sba 7a micro loans etc there's some great information on what the sba is doing to help support businesses that have those types of loans additionally for additional information for small businesses throughout arizona we have our arizona business resources page uh cova 19 page you can find that at azcommerce.com forward slash cobit dash 19 and it contains guidance on operations financial support and other great information some of the programs that the aca has to help support small businesses during this time is our small business services and we as we said we host the boot camps we work with the sbdc and sba to help provide links and connections and resources for small businesses and we can help you navigate through those organizations uh local banking contacts etc our workforce division can provide support and when you're looking to hire employees or train your employees or upskill your employees and our manufacturing extension partnership can help with manufacturers with all their needs as they're working to maintain and grow their businesses additionally we have a lot of people that are looking to start side gigs or start full-time small businesses and our small business checklist is a great resource to help with that it's an interactive online guide it helps take a person through the licensing registration compliance requirements at the local state and federal levels it's a great tool you can find at azcommerce.com forward slash small biz z bic a quick reminder as well for the state's coven 19 and information resource page arizonatogether.org this is a great tool to help support uh citizens of arizona throughout this crisis so this week's sessions we've got a great session today talking about yelp communications and reputation management in 2021 we have emily washkovic from yelp to help us out with that and then on thursday at 9am we have a follow-up on updates on ppp program we're going to talk about loan forgiveness for those who are looking to get forgiveness from the first ppp uh do some q a on the current pbp program and talk about some of the other programs related to the stimulus bill so it's going to be a great session as well on thursday so with that i want to go ahead and turn the time over to emily and emily's our expert from yelp that's going to share some great tools with us today so emily it's all yours awesome thanks so much for having me robert and everyone else in the organization let me quickly get my slides up here are those looking good you guys can see everything yep okay fantastic so thank you guys so much for having me i'm going to hopefully provide some helpful context today not only about yelps free tools but just digital engagement and reputation management in general i'm a senior field marketing manager at yelp and i'm yelp small business expert i've been with the company since 2014 and in a pre-covered world i would be traveling around the country to speak at conferences trade shows conventions and then i would host large-scale events in big cities as well for business owners we actually used to have a counterpart of mine her name was sophie lapkin and she worked in the phoenix location some of you might have attended events of hers in the past um but now it's me i'm a one-woman show in covid and i essentially do all of these educations virtually so that's what we're going to do for you today feel free to jot down my email address or reach out to the easy economic development center if you need it they'll be able to provide it for you and i always say if you have a question and i'm not the right person to answer it i certainly will know who to connect you with at the company so if you are not wanting to ask questions today or maybe you have something very personalized that you want to talk to me about feel free to shoot me a note and we can figure it out today i'm going to start just by talking about what happened in 2020 and highlight some arizona-based businesses that have pivoted as well as how they've effectively communicated those pivots to their customers and i think something we saw throughout the whole year of 2020 that i'm sure you guys have seen in your community as well is just the fact that some of these unfortunate events like lockdowns or different regulations have allowed businesses to pivot harder and faster than they maybe would have if they hadn't been pushed or forced into this situation so we'll talk a little bit about some businesses in the area in a variety of industries but again these are just examples to kind of get the wheels turning and get you thinking about your particular industry your customers and how you can continue to serve them in 2021 so spa lamar is a business i've known for a long time they came out to some of our flagship events we used to have at headquarters for business owners and i wanted to show their yelp page first because we have so many things going on here one you'll see in the center of the page they have a personalized coven message here they're talking about some of the changes and a lot of the language that they're using is just addressing what your expectations might have been pre-covered and how they're changing you can also see updated services as well as health and safety measures here on their page we'll talk about some of these other biz uh buttons here on the right hand side and how you can use some of these free tools to begin dialogues with potential customers but the overall takeaway from looking at this first page that i want you to have is just on yelp all of the pertinent information that you can give a consumer right at the top of your page everything i talk about today is going to be a free tool and resource on yelp so i'll dig a little deeper into them but overall these messages that are prominent and first and foremost displayed on your page are also going to be key messages that you want to communicate across multiple platforms so we'll take a look at that as well let's transition here to pilates tempe they're a little bit different than spa lamar in that everything about what you expect has changed so in covid for pilates tempeh they are only offering virtual classes so there's no masked classes in person they're not doing outdoor classes right now and so their yelp page is very clearly telling you that and pointing you to another location the reason i show this is because whether you're a fitness business or maybe you're a service provider maybe you're a real estate agent a tax uh preparer a lawyer if you transition to virtual and now you're also open but you would still provide virtual offerings for people who are interested in that i think it's really important to effectively communicate the virtual offerings because what we're dealing with as we enter into 2021 is an entire consumer base that is divided on comfort level right so some people are ready to go back in person they feel safe with masks and social distancing and so they're ready for that but there's this huge population of people who aren't quite at that level and if you're offering virtual services but you're not indicating that those are available because it's not your primary method of connecting with consumers you might be losing some potential business so you're going to want to always let people know that virtual is an offering if it's something that you're providing let's take a look here at rainbow riders i love including businesses like this because i think we all have this idea in our head that certain industries have been completely eliminated and i think events and fun gatherings especially in the context of something like rainbow riders where you're in a little bit of a confined space would seem like something maybe you can't do during coven but the fact of the matter is a good chunk of their customers are people who are already in the same physical space maybe it's a romantic celebration for something and in that instance social distancing and that sort of thing are not as big of a concern except for between the service provider and the customer so showing on this page here in person visits are available the staff is going to be wearing masks as well as some of the other things that they're doing one in particular that stands out here is temperature checks so if you're operating if you're open but especially or particularly if you're in an industry where people might make assumptions that you are not it's really really valuable and important to communicate that message far and wide not just on your yelp page but other places as well and we'll dig a little deeper there last one i wanted to show is a food business and this could honestly go for restaurants as well but sweet republic happens to cover a lot of items here so i thought they were a great example you can see in your covet updates section they're telling me takeout and delivery times they're telling me a special offer 10 off if i place it on line with a certain code and then they're telling me what my options are for service so i have delivery take out our curbside they're also doing some health and safety measures and you'll notice over here we have an order button so for anyone who's on the line who's in a restaurant or a food based industry where you're allowing for delivery or takeout you can send people over to that site or if you're working with our preferred partner which is grubhub that button will automatically display on your page if you have your grubhub activated so again just wanted to show you some high level examples of different industries how they've pivoted and made adjustments and then how they're communicating that in the most prominent page or prominent area pardon me on their yelp page let's talk real quickly here about pivots in general so i know a lot of businesses they made changes really fast in march and april maybe over summer last year they redefined how they do business but if you didn't make changes then or if you're still looking for unique revenue streams i don't think that has to stop i think you know it's going to be quite a few months here before we have heard immunity of people who are vaccinated they say that herd immunity is about 70 or 80 of the population so we're pretty far from that which means getting creative about different revenue streams is still a viable option and the thing that i always talk about when i talk about creative and efficient revenue streams is the businesses seeing the most success in this area are the ones that aren't creating temporary solutions they're the ones coming up with solutions that are going to last then long term okay so maybe it's pushing gift cards or prepaid options maybe you have different technologies that you're leveraging for carryout or curbside and i don't even just mean for food businesses okay i have a retail business here where i live they have virtual shopping appointments so i can hop on zoom on my phone and walk around with a sales associate they'll show me what i'm looking for i can purchase it on line or over the phone with them and then they use power technology for me to text them when i show up and they bring that item out to my car for curbside pickup they're still open for in-person shopping people can wear masks they have a human limit for their business but having that technology option having that digital appointment option that creates opportunity for consumers who are just not going to come in person so if you haven't created alternative options yet it's not too late okay we're still gonna have populations of consumers who are not comfortable with in-person for quite some time selling larger volume items is really valuable and important as we approach some different holidays here we're going to be hitting some of those main holidays that were first impacted by covid right we're going to have st patrick's day we're going to have mother's day we're going to have memorial day so if there are ways that you can capture the attention of your audience and serve them up solutions for these big days that is a new and unique revenue stream maybe you haven't dipped into retail products yet and when i talk about retail products the reason these are so great to mention is because five years ago honestly even two years ago you might have had to order mass volumes of t-shirts for example in order to sell t-shirts for your business there are so many alternative solutions nowadays you can set up an entire site you can design your items whether it's t-shirts sweatshirts signs and then you can only charge or be charged when people order those items so you pay a little bit of a higher premium for production but you don't have to deal with any of the shipping you don't have to deal with any of the order management and you don't have to front a big chunk of money to get the product created so look into some of those alternatives that can help you stay connected to your customers all right let's see what we have next covid communication is so incredibly crucial and when i talk about cover communication i'm really talking about this tight and consistent message what are your operational hours do you have certain offerings for delivery carryout virtual and then how can you spread that same exact message across all of your platforms on your website on yelp on your social media accounts on yelp in particular we saw this in some of the pages we first looked at there is a covid 19 banner if you guys are yelp users and you've been on yelp before you might remember how we always used to have holiday banners they would display on all yelp pages the day of a holiday and just remind consumers to confirm operation was as normal now the coven 19 banner is there but it's completely modifiable by the business so we want you to put your most important information in this banner you might have noticed spa lamar when i showed you on that first page had a very personalized message whereas the business that was selling carry out food it was more direct we are open for carryout on these days you can get 10 off using this code so that banner is personalized customized and something that you want to modify to your most important information we also have the coronavirus safety measures so i always tell business owners when you log into your free account you'll see those coronavirus safety measures and when you're indicating and checking that information on your yelp page get a little notebook or a sticky note and write down what those items are that you're indicating and then spread that message other places so what i mean is when you're filling out your covet safety measures and you're indicating masks are required or you have limited capacity or you enforce social distancing how can you spread that same message on social can you upload a picture of your staff handing an item to a customer where everyone's masked can you show visually the stickers you have on the floor to keep people socially distanced use these information pieces that consumers care about and spread that message everywhere all right so let's take a look this is rainbow rider's website a few really important things at the very top you see they have a banner there please read our latest information regarding covet practices here there's going to be a lot of consumers that are just going to this website and that's going to be something they see right away and that's going to be great because it allows them to determine is this business offering safety protocol that makes me feel comfortable or do i need to find another provider now they don't just have this banner right i scrolled i think i just did one scroll down the website page and then i saw this huge call to action for rainbow riders coveted safe practices this is grabbing the attention of someone who maybe knows rainbow riders or they're set on doing a ride this is to tell them we have precautions in place okay we are taking those additional measures here is sweet republic social page so what i loved about this example is i'm not getting different content their social handle looks pretty consistent throughout the last year what they've chosen to do is use these enticing images that they've always taken but then talk about specific campaigns or promos so you can see on the right hand side this is a post where they're promoting the last week to order your three-course meal for two and i wanted to show this because you guys sweet republic a place where in a pre-covered world maybe i go and spend five seven eleven dollars to get an ice cream or a treat i'm now being promoted to for a 55 three-course meal for two from another restaurant so you see how they paired with this other brand they're bringing you a special and then you're getting that sweet republic dessert item and so i want you guys to think about how you can continue to convey messages in attractive ways as well as collaborating right this ice cream shop thought we're not going to be able to generate enough walk-in traffic like we normally do we need to partner we need to collaborate we need to come together with other brands that have a built-in audience and share those people i also love this screenshot because the ruth bader ginsburg post was a promotion for a new flavor that they had created in honor of her and so just doing fun things like that that are in tune with interesting things happening in the world can always get the attention of your audience as well so consider those options all right on yelp in particular we also have our covet related service offerings so when you log into that free account and you're filling out your covet information one of the pop-ups is going to be if you have any virtual offerings so this brings me back to that earlier points i mentioned where maybe in march and april of last year you were doing everything virtually and now you've moved back to in person whether it's socially distanced outdoors whatever the case may be if you are still open to virtual i want you to consider indicating that and promoting it because on yelp and on other platforms we still have a large group of consumers searching for virtual only okay so if i'm looking for a real estate agent or someone to prepare my taxes and i know i'm not going to go in person even though you are comfortable with in person if you're willing to take a zoom meeting with me then you want to show up as a viable option when i do a search if i search on yelp i might be drilling down and selecting those options for virtual only but if i'm on google for example i might also be searching tax preparer virtual appointment and if you have those virtual offerings indicated on yelp on your social media on your website you're going to appear in front of those consumers all right let's take it back to pilates tempeh these guys are virtual only right no indoor no in person just demand classes so in the left here you're gonna see their website a couple of things that caught my attention here on the website the very top toolbar has on-demand and they have it bolded an orange for me so when i landed on their website first my eyes were taken to that area and if i clicked on that that's where i see what you're seeing in front of you the on-demand option it gives you the price it's very transparent and then it gives you the link to get started for free this gives me all i need to become a customer in under five minutes but if i have questions if i'm unsure if i don't know and i want more information i have a phone number and an email address right in the upper left hand corner and in the upper right hand corner i have a lot of other areas that i can engage with this business now if you see the screenshot here of their instagram account i wanted to show you this as well because their about section of their instagram is very direct live stream personal training on demand there are no options for information a big area where business owners don't take full advantage of effective communication of important information is in a place like your instagram about section everyone's instagram about section should have operations if they're open if so when how do i get in touch with you as well as links or information that is going to help me convert faster during covid consumers need more information so getting that consistent concise and across all of your platforms is going to really help this is an example of a website for not your typical deli i don't know if you guys have heard of this place but it's really cool and when i was perusing not only their yelp but their instagram and their website it was all very simple very bare bones so this what you're looking at right now is their website there's only two things i can do on this website i can click for online ordering or i can click to order a gift card that's it no other options and the reason i show you guys this is because i think so many businesses have been trying to redesign their website and make all these different areas and maybe that's necessary especially if you're doing on demand and it's powered through your website for example but if you want people to call you or email you or fill out a form on your website keep it simple get those buttons right where they need them and don't clutter it with all this other information if you just have a landing page with a button to get in touch with you and that's all that you need you don't have to build out a further website you don't need to build out five or ten pages of website content okay just get people to that online ordering get people to that appointment portal all right so i showed you guys a bunch of places where you could communicate these things let's drill down and actually show you if there are people on the call who haven't claimed their free page or who haven't responded to their reviews how to do that so the reason this is important is because if you want to get connected to people who are looking for what you do whether that's a good or a service they need to be able to know right away if you offer what they're looking for and so getting really really intentional about that information is the best way to get in front of them so if you already have a yelp page you can claim it by going to business.yelp.com if you need to add your business to yelp you can do that by going to business.yelp.com it is free to have a yelp page and it's free to complete all of this information the only paid options on yelp are if you want to set a click budget to promote your business above number one or if you want to make some visual and feature changes to your page but everything i'm going to show you about profile completeness and effective coveted communications is free all right we also have a business owners app that is free as well and it's important to notate this because so many industries especially my service providers they're not sitting at a desktop for hours on end during the day and so maybe they set up their yelp page on the desktop but they're going to be managing updating and changing it through the app and if you're one of those people that's really on your smartphone all the time the app is great for you so just download that and you can feel the power of having that listing whether it's updating or responding to people in the palm of your hand all right so when you claim and log into your free business owners account on yelp this is what it's going to look like you're going to see this main screen that shows you activity we actually show you metrics for how often people have been looking at your page and other steps they take such as if they call you or click through to your website so all of this information is free to access once you're in you're going to navigate to the business information tab this is where you're going to see all of your basic information as it's currently listed and have the ability to update that information the most important features are at the bottom here your business name is your address accurate your phone number a link to your website and then categories on yelp you can be in up to three categories and what that means is indicate this umbrella category that you're in but if you're a service provider you can drill down even further beyond categories we'll get there in a moment but the reason i want to talk about a max of three categories is let's say you're a restaurant okay you're an italian restaurant but you also have a bar that has tvs and in a pre-covered world you would have the game on you would want to be listed as italian and sports bar those are two completely different consumers both people that you can serve in your business so another example if you're a real estate agent but you also do mortgage lending those would be two categories you'd want to have on your page hours are extremely important and the reason is a lot of users on yelp search for open now or open at a specific time let me give you an example when i moved a few times over the course of my years at yelp i needed a new dentist in these new cities i went to and for my first three years with the company i didn't have a flexible role so i couldn't really go to the dentist during the day so i would look for dentist offices that were open at 6 00 p.m and there actually are quite a few dentists that cater specifically to those hours they open around noon they're open at night they're open on the weekends and so if you are a business that has standard hours for a brick and mortar it's important to have them if you're a service provider i always encourage you to have typical office hours and you can always indicate as an attribute that you're open 24 hours or by appointment only so use the our fields as a guide unless you're a brick and mortar then they need to be pretty spot on and you have the ability to set special hours as far in the future as you'd like so you can go through this whole year and mark your holiday hours for every single holiday if you want and the week of your hours will be displayed correctly on the front of that yelp page all right this is one of the most important elements in your free listing having your specialties history and meet the owner or manager filled out and essentially what you have here is a little section to talk about who you are what you do and what sets you apart from the competition and all of the key words and phrases that you include here help you appear in search results so a great example i always give if my boyfriend and i are both looking for places to go for lunch and i search for mexican restaurants and he searches for fish tacos we're gonna see relatively similar results however his results are going to illustrate businesses that have review mentions or photo mentions or about the business information that is specific to fish tacos so what is your business's fish taco why does someone choose you what sets you apart that is what you want to include in specialties history and meet the owner all right photos are also an extremely important element to yelp i know you guys are probably on your smartphones all the time and all of us read far less than we used to we're very visual and so photos are going to propel your listing forward if you don't have any photos for example it doesn't matter how many reviews you have your business looks closed okay photos are our digital storefront and so we always tell people you need to upload a minimum of 10. we actually have data that shows business pages with 10 or more photos have five times as many customer leads so it's very important and if you're in an industry that isn't a restaurant or isn't you know so visually appealing maybe you don't know what kind of images to use home service providers are one of my favorite categories they're our second most reviewed category on yelp next to restaurants and they need to get creative they need to have photos of their team photos of them performing services even as simple as you know replacing a sump pump if that's what your business does that's what we need images of it doesn't have to be sexy you're an hvac provider you're a pool cleaner show me pictures of what you do when someone is searching for that on yelp that's what they're looking for so it doesn't need to be all of these great photos it is just photos of what you do and who provides those services if you are a service-based business that's where service areas and service offerings are going to come into play these are two free elements that if you fill them out are going to really drill down those leads so something i've heard from service providers for years and years and years is the category i'm in on yelp is too broad you guys put me in front of people who want something that i don't provide something that i don't offer well in 2019 about q4 and then all of 2020 we really really really worked on over 500 different categories to get these service offerings so now if you are an auto repair shop you can drill down on if you provide brake repair if you work on suspension if you work on you know damaged vehicles from accidents you can get that granular so in your account after you set your category you'll see the services offered that fall under those categories and then the service area is really important many of you in the service industry might not have a brick and mortar so for that reason it's extremely important you will set your address as a city and zip code and then you can name up to five cities or zip codes around where you work and it's going to create a blanket so the way i tell people to do it is how far north are you goin to go what suburb are you going to go to how far east west and south and that will blanket a service area on your page it will help to make sure that people looking outside that service area don't find you as well as if you have a brick and mortar in phoenix let's say but you're willing to go to tempe for service it will allow you to appear as a result for all of those users all right and essentially when you're looking for new businesses or sorry new clients for your business having multiple channels of communication is important and i will say consumer preferences vary some people want to hop on a call some people want a message so you'll notice some of those sites i showed you earlier had many options you also though can have a preferred method yesterday i was talking to a locksmith he doesn't really like our request a quote feature because for him it's giving way too many inbound without him being able to manage it but this is a free feature so turning on the ability to have a button on your page where people can reach out to you and request job information works great for some businesses if this isn't for you if you need to get people on the phone don't turn on this feature you will not have the button on the front end of your page and people will be driven to your website or driven to call you so if you haven't used this before and you want to turn it on i always suggest giving it a try it's really helpful if you have that mobile app but when you have requested quote turned on you will always get email notifications for those quote requests if you turn email notifications off the button will be removed from your page and the reason is if we have consumers messaging businesses we want to make sure those businesses are actively responding otherwise it's a really bad experience on both ends for the user as well as how they perceive your business okay so let's go back to some of these local examples so i can visually show you what i'm talking about here and also just as an fyi i'm rounding on my last five or so minutes here so if you have questions about anything i covered or something that i haven't yet gotten to feel free to put it in the q a uh section and i'll be sure to hit those all right spa lamar's website a couple things i want your eyes to go to at the very top we have one of those banners like we saw in our balloon company we have address phone number i really like that i think for a lot of consumers especially with an older demographic they're going to be grabbing that phone and dialing right away but front and center middle of the website is this request in appointment button and i love this too because those generations that want to go through message options expect fast results but they also want to find the feature really quickly so spot lamar i can message them through yelp as well but having this prominent button on their website really shows consumers hey you can get information this way we are prepared to connect with you through this button and i also like at the bottom of spa lamar here we have a lot of different areas where i can dig in as a consumer i can get more information for myself if i want so quick options to get in contact and talk to someone as well as ability to access information okay responding quickly is so so so important when it comes to having this digital reputation having this digital footprint and you have to have your notifications turned on whether it's you or whether you're grabbing other people on your team to fill this role having a process is important having an ideal turnaround time that you're shooting for is important let's go back to spa lamar really quickly here so we have this request an appointment button right we also have this have the business call you button which is pretty cool and then there's this package identification that they are paying for right here this free aromatherapy upgrade button is a free feature that they've paid for but they are giving multiple channels for their consumer to get in touch with and i just happen to know because i know heidi lamar the owner of this business that they have various processes for actually responding to these messages whether it's who's going to call them back or who's going to message it's management depending on what day of the week it is and who's running the actual spa as well as just having those notifications turned on all right transparency is so important answering questions proactively is so important so again let's bring it back to that coven message almost every consumer of yours is going to have questions about proven operations are you open is it the same as i remember before this whole coven business started or do you have certain operations that are specific to now that are going to convert me faster so information is of the utmost importance and then last but not least let's just talk about this reputation in general so you know you have always whether it was last year or five years ago relied on word of mouth as a channel of marketing for your business right and reviews whether they're on yelp google tripadvisor facebook those are word of mouth those are free marketing tactics and whenever i talk about reviews on yelp i always have to stop first and address the fact that in my six years at this company business owners have always told me i don't engage with online reviews because it's just negative people go to the internet to be negative it's just not true you guys on yelp nearly 80 percent of our reviews are positive we have more five star reviews than one two and three star reviews combined so no people don't go there just to be negative most of the time they're sharing great places that they love but negative reviews happen and nine times out of ten it is literally just a mix in expectation and reality so responding to those reviews is so powerful if it's a critical review i break it into three buckets legitimate stuff happens especially if you guys are large enough businesses to have staff you cannot control every customer engagement things go wrong we're human use that public comment to identify and address that issue inaccuracies and this is important especially during coven sometimes someone will leave you a positive review but maybe there's just some inaccuracy and information there public comments are great ways to address those and then rants are raves and you know on yelp in particular you can click on the user's name and see the entire breakdown of every review they've ever written if they skew negative let that go it's not worth it sometimes to get into a dialogue back and forth with those people but in general critical reviews when you're responding publicly are to reflect your customer service practices it's not a dialogue one-to-one with that customer you want to maybe thank them for their feedback address something they said but then take that conversation offline okay public responses to reviews are to show every other future customer who you are as a business and how you handle feedback positive reviews have value in public comments as well um any of the public comments that you make those keywords and phrases help you appear in search so you can be a little strategic there but if you're dealing with high volume or you don't have the time to personalize a message sending a direct message is great copying and pasting the same thank you message is totally fine you just don't want to do that on the front end of your account where it looks canned and when it comes to reviews don't just enjoy them on the platforms that you get them share them across other platforms rainbow riders has this section on their website that continues to roll like a carousel i took a screenshot when they highlighted the yelp review but they highlight tons of different reviews on their website and the reason this is valuable is because when other consumers see this they're more likely to share their experience as well here's pilates tempe sharing a review they got on their social media that's another huge thing that we see people doing and it really really is effective at getting more content for reviews for your business last thing i always have to mention before i wrap up and go to q a is that on yelp in particular we have a review recommendation software it works to provide the most reliable trustworthy content but it also works against reviews that are solicited or asked for so if you're sending big email campaigns asking people to write yelp reviews if you're putting a ipad in your business and asking people to give you reviews while they're physically in your business those are things that the algorithm does not like and it will not recommend those reviews so if you've been in this long standing battle with reviews going to the not recommended section ask yourself are we asking for or in any way soliciting these reviews that's normally the first area that you can identify and start to impact by just stopping the asking altogether okay last thing i wanted to shout out because there is an arizona feature is a brand new podcast that yelp launched with entrepreneur back in november it's a show with every episode about 15 to 20 minutes you hear conversations with reviewers as well as business owners all about that shared common experience that qr code you're seeing on the screen if you hover your camera on your phone over it it'll open up whatever podcast platform you use and the picture there is alex bradberry she's the owner of sparkle bar which is in scottsdale arizona and her episode was really fantastic it talked all about diversity equity and representation in her business so if you're looking for a new podcast you like that 15 to 20 minute range or you enjoy the type of stuff that entrepreneur produces this show might be for you all right time for questions i saw some rolling in so i can start to process those but again i'm going to just throw my email up there feel free to send me a note directly if i don't get to your question or if you have something you want to talk about more one-to-one all right let me go over here and see if i can process some of these questions coming in all right so laurel asks about if you are a virtual home based service provider how do you list your location so i mentioned that when i talked about service area you do not need to have a brick and mortar to be on yelp which means you do not need to list a personal address list the city and zip code and then indicate the service that you serve okay can i list current and past testimonials and reviews if the poster is not on yelp as a profile um laurel i'm not sure i understand that particular question um if the person doesn't have a yelp profile then their yelp review isn't going to be displayed anymore on yelp in general though if you want to share yelp reviews across other platforms we always say you can do that once they've posted their review it's public content but it is oftentimes helpful and valuable if you mention where the content is coming from so in that example we saw from pilates tempe they had indicated that it was a yelp review written by and then the customer's first name um if you want to send me an email laurel and and talk more about that particular question feel free i'm just not exactly sure what you mean about past testimonials if the poster is is not a yelp profile um janae is asking about how we send our yelp link to potential clients so let me just come out of view here and you guys can see me do a google search so if you don't know what your yelp page is you can just search for your business so let's say we want to look for sparkle bar in scottsdale and i want to see their yelp page it's going to be the first thing that pops up here and then this url right here is going to be how you send people to your yelp page you can copy this but again do not send emails or mass messages with a link to your yelp page asking for reviews they will be filtered by the algorithm to the not recommended section so do not do that okay all right put this back in present mode what would you recommend for higher education institutions as far as strategy goes our goal is to drive yelp users to our website and gain yelp reviews what can we do to increase attention on our yelp page great question megan so what you're going to want to do in any industry but especially in industries where maybe it's a little bit more um [Music] i need to be more detailed about what i provide maybe it's something that my potential customers don't always know about that's where the specialties history and meet the owner is so important so use those sections to talk about the services you provide you can also do a google search for what you think people search for so if it's sat prep for example do that search i think you'd be very shocked to see yelp is probably going to be one of the top three results which is why your free yelp profile completed in the correct categories is very important but again people who are searching are going to come across your yelp page naturally and when you're engaging with them if they know that you pay attention to reviews whether that's you sharing them on social or putting them on your website that's going to be what will make them more inclined to share that experience if they know that you're paying attention to and engaging with that digital presence um and actually megan there's a ton of higher education institutions on yelp so i would just do a search and look at some that you think are your competitors and see what they're doing i think you'd be surprised to see how many of those are actually on yelp um random question here from an anonymous attendee what is the health score and where how often is that information aggregated health scores are displayed on yelp pages sorted through by data that is given to the local health organizations so whenever you have an inspector come and give you that inspection and that score the database takes about two weeks normally to update but we don't pull that information it's all submitted through the local databases for every individual state and so it is attached to that score you're getting from your um state provider it's not something that yelp is pulling um so if you had a score and you got a new update it'd normally take about two weeks to effectively display if there's ever delay on that shoot me a note and we can reach out to our provider but again we're not pulling that data it's coming directly from the state and federal information all right how do you add two call of actions spa lamar had a request and they had the business call you good question dominica so you might have missed it but i was mentioning that the request a quote button is free anyone can turn that on the button that they had trying to get people to book that certain service that's on sale that's a paid feature it's called a call to action button it's included in our advertising bundle or you can buy it a la carte pay a nominal fee every single month and that call to action button can say whatever you want it to say and it can direct people wherever you want them to go whether it's a website a direct click to call um an ordering platform that paid function can take you to any place you want the free function is going to process as a quote request which means you have to have your email notifications turned on to get that all right another anonymous question best method of responding to reviews thanking everyone virtu versus only responding thoughtfully and respectfully respectfully to more critical ones thank all of them with the reply my personal um recommendation is to always reply publicly now the caveats to that are if you don't have the bandwidth to write a public response that is unique or new so restaurants for example if they're dealing with high volume they might not be able to respond publicly to all of the positive reviews because they want to say a similar message and it just looks canned if they're copying and pasting the same response every time so if you have the ability to customize it with a sentence or two do the public response for critical i think public is almost mandatory um it's just the best way to reflect who you are when you are approaching those situations so again i think when it comes to why you ould send a direct message as opposed to responding publicly that's simply because of bandwidth if you have the ability to customize and personalize them all public responses are great and to make it worth your time remember the keywords and phrases in your response help you appear in search results so if you can mention something you're offering a new special you have anything like that it's worth your time to craft that public response looks like robert hopped back on maybe we're ready to wrap questions so i'll stop there and hand it back to him yes emily thank you i know you have a hard stop so i didn't want you to lose track of that that stop and uh i appreciate you coming on this was a fantastic session a lot of great information not just about yelp but about websites and other areas that can help our small business owners with their online presence so thank you very much again emily had her information up there if you need to get a hold of her and you didn't get that written down this is being recorded and will be posted later today along with our slide deck so you can go back and review that uh we want to thank everybody for attending today with us and we want to invite everybody to join us on thursday morning 9 a.m for our ppp session so thank you for being here today thank you emily and we will see everybody soon thank you have a great day everyone