Want to talk to the Top Dog at Yelp, Well now you can

Todays rave is all about Review Sites. They are here to stay, like them or not and even our beloved hide under the rock until it goes away multifamily space will no longer escape them. 

Apartment operators, there is no longer anywhere to hide, and it is time to pull your head out of the sand.

Most apartment operators have more questions than answers about the Rating and Review Sites, and are scared stiff about "allowing" ratings on their web sites. As with many things that are not filly understood, or new, that fear is overrated. According to Yelp, “Yelpers have written over 8 million local reviews, over 85% of them rating a business 3 stars or higher” 

Seeking Validation  

Rental Prospects are actively seeking the validation they feel from reading Ratings and Reviews. Prospects are retrieving this information with or without your help.  Making them run around to get it does not make sense. Yelp, in particular, does a good job of screening out the bogus reviews so that the review content is particularly useful. They can catch a competitor trying to seed bad sentiment and delete those posts. They can catch businesses that write “pretend’ reviews, promoting themselves. 

Time to Embrace  

Because of all of that, ApartmentFinder.com has recently launched a new cool social media integration feature where any of their advertisers can have their Yelp reviews displayed on their property details pages. 

Talk Directly to the Top Gun at Yelp 

In an effort to dispel some of the fears Geoff Donaker, the COO at Yelp, has agreed to participate in a joint webinar with NCI on February 5th  for anyone to hear directly from Geoff and the team at Yelp about how their product works and their understanding of how rental prospects use their site

This webinar is FREE, and you can sign up here, Don't miss this one friends. We are expecting a big turnout for the event and most importantly to see what kind of questions our industry has for the guys at Yelp.