Below is live coverage of the Up Close With Yelp panel from the SMX West 2011 conference. This coverage is provided by Marty Weintraub of aimClear Blog.
Disclaimer: The coverage is brought to you in real time, using a custom live blogging tool. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments for inclusion into the live coverage. During the live event, live notes will auto-scroll with newest entries at top. After the session is complete the archive version will have the oldest entries at the top. We ask you to please excuse any typos, as these are live notes.
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Marty Weintraub:
10:45:46 am
Greetings from #SMX West, San Jose, 2011
Marty Weintraub:
10:46:21 am
My name is Marty (@aimClear) and I'll be covering the "Up Close With Yelp" session for SERT,
Marty Weintraub:
10:46:57 am
The Moderator and speakers are: Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence
Q&A Moderator: Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance
Speakers:
Ryan Fritzky, Director, Product Management, Marchex
Will Scott, President, Search Influence
Matt Siltala, President, Dream Systems Media
Dylan Swift, Director of Local Business Marketing, Yelp
Q&A Moderator: Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance
Speakers:
Ryan Fritzky, Director, Product Management, Marchex
Will Scott, President, Search Influence
Matt Siltala, President, Dream Systems Media
Dylan Swift, Director of Local Business Marketing, Yelp
Marty Weintraub:
10:47:12 am
Standing by for the session to start
Marty Weintraub:
10:51:11 am
Excited for this part to get started.
Marty Weintraub:
10:54:22 am
Stand bye, still here, waiting for the session to start #SMX :)
Marty Weintraub:
10:55:52 am
Dylan Swift, Director of Local Business Marketing, Yelp is up
Marty Weintraub:
10:56:31 am
Yelp has more than 16 million views. It's a sharp curve heading up to the right, starting in '05 and screaming up starting in 07
Marty Weintraub:
10:56:56 am
Vast majority of reviews are restaurants and shopping
Marty Weintraub:
10:57:05 am
45 million monthlly unique visitors
Marty Weintraub:
10:57:33 am
Take a market by market approach internationally. Each country is a different cultural challange
Marty Weintraub:
10:57:58 am
Mobile: Launched "Check In Offers" to "Close the last mile from Yelp to the businesses front door."
Marty Weintraub:
10:58:14 am
Open table reservations on the Yelp Website and a Yelp iPad app'
Marty Weintraub:
10:59:37 am
3.2 million unique users per month, photo every 30 seconds, 1/3 of all searches come from mobile, every other second a consumer generates direction or calls a local business from Yelp.
Marty Weintraub:
11:00:18 am
Dylan Swift, Director of Local Business Marketing, Yelp is showing a Steve Jobs clip saying the mobile users go to Yelp, instead of searching. Advertising opportunities are in the apps
Marty Weintraub:
11:00:41 am
Dylan is hawking Yelp advertising products :). I mean overviewing.
Marty Weintraub:
11:01:21 am
The method is enhanced listing and mobile check in offers. There is a 30% conversion rate, after click.
Marty Weintraub:
11:02:57 am
He is showing a case study highlighting advertising, 7% conversion on 100K pageviews per month, over 477K impressions, 10,2333 reviews written for 24 hour fitness.
Marty Weintraub:
11:04:11 am
New products, Yelp is in the daily deals business, like Groupon, TownHog, HomeRun, LivingSocial, SFGate Daily Deals, etc...
Marty Weintraub:
11:04:23 am
...a very crowded space.
Marty Weintraub:
11:04:45 am
We're looking at the business centers' analytics dashboard.
Marty Weintraub:
11:06:57 am
Showing the Yelp Flavor of discount coupons. Yelp is different because of the review content correlated to the deal purchasers and checkins
Marty Weintraub:
11:08:03 am
Getting the converted users' sentiment by way of reviews, yields a lot of insight in the business tuning process.
Marty Weintraub:
11:09:29 am
Greg Sterling takes the podium, asks Dylan if deal takers come back or not.
Marty Weintraub:
11:10:11 am
Dylan says that business want to work with YELP over other "typical" coupon sites. The "folks that have signed up for Yelp have not signed up for a coupon or a deal. They want to connect with local businesses."
Marty Weintraub:
11:12:58 am
@MoCR521 is also covering #SMX for aimClear, check her out and friend that lady! :) She's an uber smart PR dude.
Marty Weintraub:
11:13:11 am
Next up is Matt Siltala, President, Dream Systems Media
Marty Weintraub:
11:14:04 am
Matt is a very smart marketer and friend."Reviews and citations coming in from sites like Yelp are powerful, the ways that sites get found, period.
Marty Weintraub:
11:15:00 am
Matt's going to talk about how to get reviews, @WillScot is driving the slide show.
Marty Weintraub:
11:15:51 am
He's showing what NOT to do, business owners that fake their stellar review, Matt says just don't. They fake reviews don't fool enginews
Marty Weintraub:
11:17:17 am
Will says that this story is not atypical of merchants. They find out that reviews are important part of the "corpus of data around their business"
Marty Weintraub:
11:18:21 am
Matt asks his clients if they've ever written reviews for themselves. Businesses just don't know.
Marty Weintraub:
11:19:41 am
He's showing the lock busters reviews on Yelp
Marty Weintraub:
11:21:02 am
Suggestion: Start talking about his customers about Yelp. Not about the business, but asking about "Indian Food," sharing the culture. Let people know that you're on Yelp without asking for a review. Be in the culture.
Marty Weintraub:
11:21:45 am
There are hundreds of different ways to do this. Look at what customers are using. If they are emailing you from a Yahoo or Gmail account, reply to them from your business listing on those services.
Marty Weintraub:
11:24:41 am
Will Scott promises to be fairly snarky. In a market where Yelp has a robust presence, there is a body of reviews that the impart a perception of trust.
Marty Weintraub:
11:25:27 am
@willscott tells the Yelp guy that paid deals from YELP are "hypocritical"
Marty Weintraub:
11:26:27 am
Wow, @willscott tells the Yelp guy that paid deals from YELP are "hypocritical" #SMX GRR "incents positive review behavior #SMX
Marty Weintraub:
11:27:48 am
To spam Yelp, add a photo to your profile, add friends to your profile, write a bunch of reviews about other business before "inserting your spam review in YELP."
Marty Weintraub:
11:29:17 am
I think @willscott woke up and ate ground glass and toast for breakfast RT @mike_bunnell: @aimclear @willscott he's just warming up... It's just bullshit he says.
Marty Weintraub:
11:32:45 am
Ryan Fritzky, Director, Product Management, Marchex is up next, heads up the SMB reputation management product
Marty Weintraub:
11:33:37 am
"Reviews as we know them are evolving."
Marty Weintraub:
11:34:04 am
he calls them the public comments card and it's evolved to what you can "vote" w your 2 thumbs
Marty Weintraub:
11:35:03 am
He shows a list of social media platforms and says that it's more important to be out there in social platforms, and not just your own site.
Marty Weintraub:
11:35:34 am
Take the time to have FB pages, answer reviews, positive and negative reviews.Make WOM work for you.
Marty Weintraub:
11:36:20 am
He thinks of things in a the "say," "think," "do," "feel" quadrent.
Marty Weintraub:
11:38:02 am
Sorry, I'm not really sure what he's talking about.
Marty Weintraub:
11:38:29 am
Greg Sterling asks what big reviews trends are coming
Marty Weintraub:
11:39:16 am
I'm going to sign off now. This has been "Up Close and Personal With Yelp"
Marty Weintraub:
11:39:19 am
The Moderator and speakers are: Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence
Q&A Moderator: Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance
Speakers:
Ryan Fritzky, Director, Product Management, Marchex
Will Scott, President, Search Influence
Matt Siltala, President, Dream Systems Media
Dylan Swift, Director of Local Business Marketing, Yelp
Q&A Moderator: Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance
Speakers:
Ryan Fritzky, Director, Product Management, Marchex
Will Scott, President, Search Influence
Matt Siltala, President, Dream Systems Media
Dylan Swift, Director of Local Business Marketing, Yelp
Marty Weintraub:
11:39:46 am
Thank you for following the coverage. That was Stand by for the NEXT SERT session to start after lunch. Cheers and THANK YOU.
