Yelp is a type of website that can either make or break your business if launched at the wrong time. Social marketing reviews are great and very powerful but if you launch one and your business has a less than stellar reputation you could easily dig yourself a hole that will be difficult to get out of.

Yelp was founded in 2004 and was designed to bring the community together so that they can share voices and opinions on certain local businesses. Yelp is now one of the largest online review websites in the world. If you are performing some link building activities for your business and you finally decide to launch a Yelp profile you must be careful that you do not have angry customers or disgruntled employees. Is your brand followed by many or hated? I know it is difficult to answer this question but if you open the doors for others to write what they want about either yourself or your business then you must be ready to take in the bad and the good. Once someone leaves a negative comment on your profile there is no way to remove it. How ever if you have a business that is flourishing with lots of happy customers than this Yelp profile could help you generate even more business!

Customers are more willing to come visit your store or use as a vendor when they have been able to read what others have said about your business. The more positive information you have the better it looks for your business, obviously. So if you are confident about your business don’t hesitate and sign up for your Yelp business account today.

Social media marketing should not be looked at mystical chanted forest that should not be approached at night or by yourself. Look at it as a giant playground of customers and you can literally walk up to them, introduce yourself and be instantly visible. the longer you wait and procrastinate about your entering this space the more painful it will be down the road to actually catch and gain traction on your competition. Social marketing is a strange place for many businesses large and small, you just have to close your eyes and dive in head first. Here are some tips for when you get there.

1. Develop a thick Skin: one thing you have to realize is that you can never please everyone no matter what you do. You will get some individuals that either just don’t like you or your company and there is nothing you can do about it. Social media marketing allows those to voice their opinions about your organization or yourself. Your goal is not worry about those but get all the people that do enjoy your brand or yourself to over shadow any negativity and bury it.

2. Pick One or Two: Don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of social space online. Pick one or two platforms for now and develop good traction in those. You don’t have to learn every website inside and out by the end of the week. Just get into a few of them and have fun. When done correctly social media marketing can be very enjoyable.

3. Interact: Building a company profile and not using it is better than not building it at all but remember that you need to trigger some sort of interaction between people. Leaning up against the bar and putting out the vibe just isn’t going to cut it. You have to knock on people’s doors and ask them how they are doing.

Social marketing and social media networking is a very strange place for many companies. Many companies still look at it like a deer in headlights. Social media marketing is not clear cut by any means. if you go to a networking event it is a little difficult to gauge anything before you get there. You don’t really know how people will respond to your conversation or you as a person.

Online social media marketing is very similar in the sense that you can’t predict how your interaction will go. You should how ever have some sort of strategy and plan of attack when diving into the social networking landscape. How do you plan on interacting? Are you going to stand behind your company logo? or are you going to use your personal name to interact? Many “experts” have theories on how you should approach this but at the end of the day you really don’t know until you try it. if you are a consultant that it probably wouldn’t make sense to just use your logo. If you are Pepsi than just setting up a profile for the business might be enough.

Either way you want to carve out a strategy. Each social marketing platform is going to require a different approach. Each one takes a certain skill and approach to achieve the desired results you are looking for. The approach you take on Myspace will not work on Facebook and so on. What will work will take some time on your part to test out. Each company is different and will differently.

Social media marketing and social marketing is something that many are still learning and trying to figure out exactly how to apply to their business. There is no outline on how you should do but you should do something on there even if it is just launching a profile online. I have seen the approach of some companies who decide to launch a profile and just spam with business ads in every spot possible.

This is not the way to approach the social marketing sites. Although there are many companies looking for business on all the various social sites there is a much more tasteful approach to tackling these communication giants. You must provide a value to your communication. If you are a consultant on a particular field you can try connecting to companies that might be interested in your services. This doesn’t mean you have to continuously hit that company with advertisements to get their business. trying to reach out to communicates good but this must be done tastefully. The best approach is to be active. You have to look at it as a networking event. The only way you are going to drum up business is by being sociable and interacting with other businesses. If you have strong brand recognition you might be able to channel others through your profile over to your website but you must have a strong brand in order to do this correctly.

Social media marketing is a very new concept, and a concept that is not easily understood by many companies. So many sites and so many ways to approach social marketing. How do you know which is the right way for you? how do you know if it works? For a company that might have not had the most saviness of approaches when it came to online marketing might be even more frightened to venture in to the social space. How do you explain the social landscape to a marketing manager that still thinks pop ups are the big thing? I think there some typical misconceptions about the social space that should be first tackled and explained. In order to use these websites correctly you must be open to outside the box thinking. There is no formula to follow. You will not receive X amount of sales for X amount of time spent. It doesn’t work that way.

1. You have to be everywhere! There are many many social platforms out there. Some have become the staples of the industry and others are kind of looming in the shadows. Don’t feel like you have to be everywhere. if you are new to this area and you try to learn how to apply each site to your business in one week you will most likely pull all your hair out. Pick one or two and set up really nice optimized profiles and start slowly using them. Send out some friend requests and try engaging in some conversations with people. That is why you are there.

2. ROI is easy to Calculate: It has become terribly difficult to calculate ROI in this area of marketing. How can you put ROI on branding power and online conversations? You really can’t. Social media is the power of communicating to a large group. You can track website traffic that make it over to your website from clicking a link in your profile but what if they type in your url a week later from seeing your company in MySpace?

3. Take the same approach as everyone else: This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is perfectly fine to analyze the approach of a competitor online I would not recommend copying anyone’s approach. After spending some time using your social platforms your business will figure out how it molds into their business model. Through learning and mistakes you will find the approach that works best for you. Whether creating personas for your business, using an internal employee to be an ambassador or just using your business name you will find one that works best.