Shelley Dee Photography: The Importance of Yelp and Creating a Successful Business Page {Social Media} Marin, Napa, Sonoma County Lifestyle & Wedding Photographer...Shelley Hohe

As a photographer sharing your work on social media such as Facebook and Twitter are so important for reaching your community and attracting prospective clients. In the last few years of my business my husband Robert (and business partner) who also owns an auto detailing business had been telling me about Yelp over the last few years. Of course I thought it was all about Facebook and Twitter…he kept telling me that Yelp was the way to go.

After 15 years of owning his business Doctor Detail, in the last 2 years his business has grown exponentially and there are a few reasons behind this. 1. He seeks God first and prays everyday before heading out for work, 2. He serves his clients with excellence which shows in his work, 3. His yelp page is filled with 5 star reviews where clients are sharing their experience of having my husband work on their vehicles.

In the last 2 years he has mainly focused on his yelp page for social media and today he is busier than he has been in the last 15 years due to the fact he gets 90% of his business just from yelp alone. The reason he gets so much business from yelp is because google is the most important search engine and they hold yelp as a relevant source. Almost anything you search for on google, yelp will be there in the top position of google searches. Now to make things even better yahoo and bing are catching on to the importance and relevance of yelp just to keep up with google.

In my husbands opinion he feels that people are busy and might be getting burnt out on having to keep up with so many posts to have to read and follow on Facebook and Twitter. Where on Yelp prospective clients can looks up a business and see exactly what they need to see….your business info, photos, video and REVIEWS!

Now that we shared the importance of yelp, we are going to share how to create a successful yelp page for your business…

1) Make sure to fill out all relevant information about your business.

2) Add as much content as possible by adding photos. (once your yelp page starts to build you can add more such as slide shows and for paid accounts videos)

3)When customers leave a review ask them to add a photo with their review. This is so important as by doing this it gives these reviews more relevance and will less likely to be filtered.

4) Leave response on your customers reviews and thank them for their business. This is the time you can kindly ask them to keep you in mind if they hear of someone with needs for your type of business.

5) Add links or a yelp button to your website and blogs for your viewers to easily find your yelp page.

6) Just keep on adding content, Content, CONTENT!

Here are a few screen shots of my husbands business on yelp.

This first one you can see he shows up #1 in Marin County, San Francisco Bay Area