Yelp – or Not!

Many nail businesses are called or go to Yelp to “claim” their account. Yelp is a social media company that accepts and posts comments from the public about businesses, both positive and negative. After you claim your account, they immediately try to sell you an “upgrade” to the account which has “benefits”, mostly to them in dollars per month to them. Your account suffers if you do not. If you do not upgrade, you will be passively punished, subscribers say.

Before going on in this Blog, understand this: This is a personal-opinion blog (mine) derived from what many salons and other business owners have said to me about their experience with Yelp specifically – most of their comments have not been positive – so I am basically telling you why NOT to claim your account. (NCA has never claimed the account and will not.) My opinion? Stay off Yelp, and the following is a list of reasons why.

If you already have a Yelp account, you must actively and often NURTURE the positive comments to overshadow negative ones.

Complaints have more weight than accolades in public opinion, sadly. They stick out like the proverbial “sore thumb” among comments.

Your competition may put up complaints against you if they are unethical. They are there FOREVER.

Yelp will NOT take down complaints, no matter your proof they are false.

Answering complaints is very difficult and cannot outweigh the negative message, no matter your proof.

No business, service or otherwise, will make everyone happy. You WILL have complaints on Yelp.

A few clients are out there that will threaten to put up complaints to get you to give them their money back/get a freebie. No Yelp? No public comments controlled by a third party? No threat.

Negatives, no matter how few there are, market against your business, no matter how good you are.

Get this: Yelp will NOT allow you to take down your account once you have “accepted” it.

In my view, YELP is a negative. Don’t do it!

JMHO, of course.

JanMc