Thursday, June 6, 2013

Yelp Helps Small Businesses Expand in More Ways Than One

As consumers, we all know how awesome and useful Yelp is, especially for things like restaurant reviews. It's invaluable when traveling to new cities and you're looking for a good bite to eat!

For a business, especially a small one, great reviews on Yelp definitely helps drive customer acquisition. That's a no brainer.

Recently I was talking to a friend who runs a successful wine bar that he started a few years ago. And he made me realize there is another important benefit of maintaining those strong positive reviews on Yelp as a small business looking to expand.

My friend is shopping for another location to grow his business, and he said that prospective landlords who may not know much about his business actually go on Yelp to learn more about it. It's an interesting use of Yelp -- helping landlords vet tenants!

Not only do great reviews help, but beautiful photos of the place of business (and not just food shots) do too. It gives the landlord a real sense of how nice and fancy schmancy the business is.

Speaking of photos, even Google Maps comes into play. Prospective landlords can not only see where your current location is, but also get a Street View of your business for its "curb appeal."

Come to think of it, lenders probably do the same thing...

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