54: The Yelp Effect

Misguided Misinformation

Understanding Awakened

While exploring new places I often find myself looking up the reviews just to decide a place whether that is to shop, eat, or experience. At times, the reviews especially on apps like YELP influence if I am willing to try something. I used to be pretty happy I was making the best decision but it wasn’t until I was taking a social media analytics class during my masters I learned about the so-called Yelp effect.

It’s the idea to push businesses to inspire their customers to promote the business. In this day and age, reviews hold a huge influence on our behaviors. It has become to the point where customer service isn’t the most important aspect. The new focus is on the customer experience and comes back to reading reviews or worth of mouth influencing the general public.

Don't focus on customer service. Focus on customer experience.

Solutions discovered

There are some things you can do though to ensure you’re taking the best action possible.

• Make sure the reviews you weigh are recent

A common but hidden method is to use fake reviews and these are pretty much everywhere.

• Read the reviews to verify if they sound like an actual person would right them instead of having just small short sentences

Another very easy way which a lot of people don’t often use nowadays is just asking people. It’s easy to do if they’re your friends but there are so many people we follow on all these platforms and a lot of them we never interact with. These interactions can be goldmines but sadly it’s all quiet in them.

• See some experience but don’t know if it’s worth it? Just introduce yourself and just ask. You never know it could turn out well.

There are probably some other methods out there as well which I hope to add to the toolkit over time. If you have a way that you use then I would love to know.

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• This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan - Completed

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• The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck

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