If you have an iPhone 4s or greater, you’ve probably spent a great deal of time playing around with Siri. Designed to be a voice activated personal assistant, Siri helps you send messages, schedule meetings, and much more. One heavily utilized feature on Siri is helping iPhone users find the nearest restaurant, gas station, store, or other nearby place.
This feature is critical for service industry marketers to be aware of. You can simply talk to Siri and find local businesses around you. Have you searched for your business yet on Siri, and if so, do you show up? If your business isn’t showing up in the results Siri gives to users, there’s a chance you’re missing out on new customers.
If you’re not showing up, it’s probably because you haven’t yet taken the time to set up your Yelp Business Page. It’s free to do, and in my opinion, well worth the 15 to 30 minutes it will take you to claim your business on their site.
Click here to claim your business page. In addition to helping you be found on Siri, claiming your business page also allows you to:
• Track and respond to reviews of your business
• Add photos and information about your business
• Monitor views of your business page on Yelp
Once your business page is set-up, it’s time to start getting reviews. Just keep in mind that unless the patients reviewing you on Yelp regularly review other business on Yelp, too, their positive reviews of your business may be hidden from the public, as Yelp filters out reviews they deem unreliable.
Should you find your reviews are being filtered out, contact the people who wrote the reviews. Send them an e-mail saying the hard work they put into their review is being hidden by Yelp. Offer to help them complete their profiles and encourage them to review other businesses, too.
Additionally, you can add each person who reviews your business as a friend on Yelp! The more friends a user has, the more credibility Yelp tends to give them when they review a business. Also consider sending each reviewer a compliment and vote their review as useful, funny, or cool depending on the context of what they wrote.
If you’re Siri-ous about wanting to be found by iPhone’s personal assistant, take time this week to set-up your Yelp business page.