Today is 12/31/2018 and this is the last blog post of 2018. Yelp and its digital mafia policy destroys small businesses in the United States. San Leandro Chiropractic have been receiving numerous phone calls from Yelp’s rep to advertise on their platform. At the time when phone calls started I had over 50 – 5 stars reviews and about 20 filtered 5 stars reviews. My chiropractic practice is based on providing quality service to those who live or work withing 5 to 10 miles radius. I did not have any desire to advertise on a digital platform that was performing well Free of Charge for many years. Of course getting 70 – 5 stars reviews takes years to acquire. Building great digital reputation takes a lot of time, effort and many happy clients walking outside your door. Back in days the most powerful means of advertising was word of mouth, now it is just a small fraction of a 21st century small business model. Google local places, Yelp, Instagram, YouTube, Blog post like this one are all parts of a big engine that move small business forward.
Managing and understanding what drives Yelp reviews has become an important tactic for many local marketing professionals and important for every brand’s local marketing strategy. The majority of businesses stand to gain some level of benefit by engaging with Yelpers, even if the review is… less than perfect, or if the best reviews are regulated by Yelp’s automatic filter. While some businesses have gone as far as filing class-action lawsuits against Yelp, alleging that their filter is set up as a way to extort businesses into advertising, so far none of the lawsuits have succeeded; and one judge after another has dismissed a variety of allegations of a similar style. Our San Leandro Chiropractic practice is not planning to file anything and wasting time with Yelp. Instead we simply use our own digital platform like this blog and Google search results in order to show up on a first page of Google search results. Besides being a chiropractor with 18 years of experience I know a thing or two about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you read this post, feel free to share it with other small business owners.
