Businesses in the smallest of small towns are being reviewed online right now. Do you know what is being said about you? Here are two sites you need to take a look at.
Yelp – offers reviews of all kinds of local businesses. It also gives you the business owner some tools to maintain your listings.
TripAdvisor – focuses on tourism businesses, like motels and restaurants. The management response tool is pretty limited.
Found anything negative? Do two things:
1. Fix problems. It’s just possible you could stand to improve.
2. Encourage your loyal customer fans to respond on your behalf. They carry more credibility than you do, in this case.
What other review sites have you found relevant for your small town business?
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
- Need funding for the next step in your business? - July 17, 2019
- Youth business idea: phone clinics - July 8, 2019
- Chain link is everywhere in downtowns. Here’s how to dress it up. - June 30, 2019
- Stop using “3 legged stool” to describe any idea - June 24, 2019
- What are your challenges? Add your voice here - June 17, 2019
- How to publicize your biking trails before they’re finished - June 10, 2019
- How $5 and a bowl of soup can rebuild your community - June 3, 2019
- Getting people to mix at an event - May 27, 2019
- Crowdsourced ideas for coffee shops and other third places - May 20, 2019
- Post signs with your tourism hashtag where visitors will see them - May 13, 2019
Ari Herzog has written an excellent expansion on this idea, How Yelp and TripAdvisor Help Business Thrive. He offers much more info on this concept.
Those are great site, but they’re missing something. They don’t allow the business owner to join the conversation. Imagine when a customer had a bad experience at a restaurant. He or she could write a bad post on those review sites and point figures at how horrible the restaurant staff treated them, or that customer could leave a problem and have that owner reply to resolve that issue.
We currently developing a solution that will allow the customer to leave a feedback and the business owner can reply back on the same thread.
We allow both sides tell their story.
Nick, I’m looking forward to seeing Feedback Jar. Your idea sounds interesting. Small business owners will have to walk a very fine line to add the right kind of reply, without appearing defensive or negative!