What! Your great customer review on Yelp disappeared! So how do you get those “filtered” or “not recommended” reviews to show up from your happy customers?
According to a recent survey, Yelp is the most popular of online review websites and is probably the most challenging of review websites to master for a business. Yelp has this super secret formula for what reviews they will make public or not. For example, in my DJ company, we had 3 public reviews being shown and about 10 hidden ones. All of them were legitimate reviews of course, but the Yelp filter kept them hidden. Now I wish I had known about these strategies back when I still owned the company so I could have fixed that.
So how do we get those filtered or hidden reviews to show up? The best way to get “not recommended” reviews to show up publicly is to get your customer more involved in other Yelp reviews. As soon as you get a review on Yelp, respond to it by: friending the customer on Yelp, like the review and send them a message through Yelp asking them to review other businesses. The problem is Yelp is suspicious of reviewers that sign up, leave one review and never return to the site. Those reviews will likely be hidden. Hidden reviews can come back to life though, show up publicly and then disappear again! Yelp even has a policy against asking for reviews! They are the only review site that I know of that has that policy! Now that’s a “policy” that I say you need to bend.
Here is some sample text that you could use to message a customer on Yelp that has had their positive review hidden from public view:
“Thank you so much for your review of my business on Yelp. I’m so glad we exceeded your expectations. Just an FYI. Your review did get hidden from public view (which does happen on occasion). Could you help me to make sure your review gets listed publicly on Yelp by reviewing some additional businesses? The more active on Yelp that you are, the more your reviews will show up to help other customers to find us and the other businesses that you like. Thanks again for your support. I really appreciate it.”
Above all – Keep working at it. Yelp shows up very high in Google so you want as many Yelp reviews that you can get. For example, in our local DJ market, our Yelp listing made it to the bottom of page 1 in Google. Before we started with Yelp, the review website didn’t even show up in our category. In one study of Yelp by the Harvard Business School an increase of just one star for a restaurant lead to a 5 to 9% increase in revenue. Now you can’t argue with the importance of great reviews on Yelp after hearing that!
For a free quick start guide to leveraging the power of legitimate online reviews and 12 free email, letter and web page templates, download it here.
Want to learn more about leveraging your online reviews on Yelp, Google Plus, Facebook and more, check out my online course!