Should Yelp be part of your coworking space marketing?
Maybe.
Yelp can be a valuable tool to generate membership leads, meeting room rentals, day passes and office rentals. Or, it may not be right for your space and town. Determine whether you’re in a market that relies on Yelp for reviews and searches. If so, it’s worthwhile to fill out your Yelp business profile, at the very least.
If you have the budget and market for it, you can make Yelp part of your marketing plan. Dig into your cost per acquisition and align that with the cost per click of a Yelp ad campaign.
Start small, measure results, test, adjust and grow your ad campaign.
If you don’t have the budget for Yelp ads, there are several things you can do to have a presence on the platform and increase the chance of people finding your space. Here are seven quick wins to get started.
1. Fill Out Your Yelp Profile
First things first, fill out your profile. The more detailed the better.
The Yelp algorithm is sophisticated and it’s not going to serve up results to a half-baked profile with no helpful information. The platform exists to help people find quality products and services. Make it clear that you’ve taken the steps to help users—and the Yelp algorithm—understand you and your workspace offerings.
2. Include Photos and Update Them Regularly
Make sure you include photos of your space, community, and different products and services in your profile. Then update those photos regularly. Photos are one of the most popular features of Yelp listings, so give searchers and Yelp fresh images of your space, your community, your events, your offices and your team.
Pro tip: Use keywords to name your images, rather than some generic image file name like IMG_2345.png.
3. Show The Humans
This point deserves reiterating. In your photos, be sure to show Yelp users who is in your space. Meeting rooms all start to look the same—no matter how nice they are.
The thing that differentiates you from the other workspaces in your area is your community. Make sure your photos and description reflect the humans in your space.
4. Encourage Reviews
Customer reviews are an important aspect of building your brand. Encourage satisfied users of your space to leave a Yelp review about their experience.
Yelp is strict about not aggressively soliciting reviews. However, we’ve all seen those signs on counters and front windows encouraging people to find the establishment on Yelp.
This goes hand-in-hand with encouraging day passers, members, day office users and virtual mail members to leave a positive review when they have a positive experience.
5. Use Target Keywords
Use target keyword phrases throughout your Yelp profile and descriptions.
When writing the copy for your space, get your target keywords front and center— Yelp looks at the first 8-10 words used in the specialties section as keywords. If you have private offices, or meeting room space available in San Diego, make sure that “office rental in San Diego” and “meeting room rental in San Diego” are at the beginning of your description.
Pro tip: Target keywords should be top-of-mind across all of your content. If you’re marketing online, and you’re not being strategic about how you use keywords, you’re missing a huge opportunity to boost your results on Google, YouTube, Yelp and everything else.
6. Respond to Comments and Reviews – Especially Negative Ones
Responding to a negative review is an incredible opportunity to turn someone from a dissatisfied user into a brand advocate.
Find a way, when possible and reasonable, to make things right with them. This not only shows a dedication to members and people in your space, it reflects your brand values for anyone who reads the review today and down the road.
7. Let the Yelp Team Help
Yelp representatives have a reputation for being very persistent in trying to sell you ads. Whether or not you decide to run ads on the platform, let the representative help you optimize your description and profile. They know all the ins and outs of the platform and can help you make the most of it. Also be sure to leverage the Yelp Support Center for Business Owners that also contains a wealth of helpful information.
Do you use Yelp to market your workspace? What are your best tips? We’d love to hear from you. Contact the team and let us know.
Looking for more resources related to social media? On October 16th, CloudVO Marketing Director Karina Patel is co-hosting, along with Coworking Content founder Cat Johnson, an Advanced Instagram Training to market your coworking space. Register here.
Cat Johnson is a coworking storyteller and content strategist. She blogs about the coworking movement, the workspace industry, community and content marketing at catjohnson.co
