Education
WEBINAR
YELP ME, YELP YOU
T
he Professional Beauty Association (PBA)
held another webinar (online seminar) last
October on the topic “YELP Me, YELP You
| Learning To Embrace the Power of YELP”
with PassionSquared founder, Nina Kovner. PassionSquared’s aim is to empower their clients, specifically
small business owners, with online and offline marketing, strategy, brand development, and personal development. It has become Kovner’s passion to educate her
clients to “create their own kind of
awesome and fall madly in love with
themselves. To see people’s lights go
on, that aha moment, is everything to
me.”
Kovner starts off the webinar by
making it clear to everyone that “I
don’t love Yelp because of Yelp,
why I love Yelp is how Yelp empowers businesses” said Kovner, “I
don’t work for Yelp, they don’t give
me money. The only reason why I
love the platform is because I love
what the platform can do for salons.”
Yelp is a website that was founded
in 2004 to help people find local
businesses. It allows consumers/clients to give reviews and share their
experiences with any business establishment. Business owners basically
set up their account and post photos
of their store and services; they can
also message their customers regarding inquiries and concerns.
According to Kovner, “Awesome
offline experiences create awesome
online reviews.” She explains it is
important to remember that nothing
will ever replace the experiences
you’re delivering every single day at
the salon, so it’s important to deliver
awesome experiences everyday. We
all understand “word of mouth,” but
as Kovner explains, that “if we want
to grow, if we want to stay relevant,
this word of mouth has moved online. So now we don’t just have our
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COSMOBIZ SALON DECEMBER 2015
clients walking down the street and someone saying ‘oh
my God I love your hair’; now we have clients giving
shout outs, sharing experiences, delivering reviews,
and posting on Instagram and selfies and mentions and
hashtags, and apps. This now happening guys, and the
challenge for us small businesses is how are we going to jump in? Are we going to take advantage of the
change in shift and behavior that is already happening?
We can’t stop it, it’s already happening.”
The process of Search
+ Discovery.
So how do you make yourself discoverable? Kovner proceeded to explain the power of using hashtags,
searching on Google, and getting
reviews from your clients. These
factors are important because search
engines like Google or Yahoo prioritize relevant and fresh content; examples of these would be an active
blog and an active Facebook page:
“The reason why Yelp ranks so high
in search is because it’s so content
rich, because it is constantly getting
reviews, it is constantly relevant, it
is constantly updated,” says Kovner.
Clients are talking.
Do you want to be part of the conversation? So why would you want
to be on Yelp? “Clients are talking
on Instagram, they’re talking on
Yelp, they’re talking on Facebook,
they’re talking on Twitter. This is
exciting stuff! I want to know what
they’re talking about as a business.
I, as a business, one of my biggest
jobs is to listen and to problem
solve. That is what business is,
right? Offering problems, offering
solutions to problems. The choice
you have to make is do you want to
be a part of that conversation? And
if you do, Yelp is a killer place to