Yelp is an online urban city guide that helps users find places to eat, drink, shop and play based on the informed opinions of an active community of locals in-the-know. Yelp is a great web site to find, review and discuss what’s great – and not so great – in a user’s community.

Yelp has listings for businesses throughout the United States and Canada and accepts user-written reviews of any business or service. These listings vary widely in nature, including listings for storefronts such as restaurants and shops; service businesses such as doctors, hotels, and cultural venues, as well as non-business locations such as schools, museums, parks, and churches.

As of January 2010, over 25 million people access Yelp’s web site each month, putting it in the top 100 of U.S. Internet web sites.

How can you take advantage of Yelp?

Yelp is a great tool to use to gain insight into what users are saying about you and your business. Whether you are a local grocery store or a nationwide home builder, you can look up your local listing on the Yelp web site and see if there are any comments or reviews of your products or services. Yelp then allows business owners to reach out to the users that have reviewed their business and has created a feature that allows business owners to privately message these individuals.

Yelp also allows business owners the ability to publicly comment on a review.

Why should you take part in Yelp?

People are taking about your business, your brand, your products and your services. In the social-driven Internet World that we are experiencing today, ignorance is not bliss. It is important that you know how consumers are reviewing your brand and their overall satisfaction with your products or services.

Should someone post a negative review, you should address the problem, whether you contact the consumer through a private message or post your response publicly. This shows that your business truly cares about their consumers and takes their needs and overall satisfaction consideration. Offer to amend the situation. Both of these things will help to take the focus off of the negative reviews and make your brand appear caring and accessible.

You can also take the comments and use them better your product and brand. What better way to learn how your consumers feel about product than to read their candid reviews?

Let’s face it, no company is perfect. And although you might not be able to directly control exactly how people feel about your brand, reaching out to your consumers through experience review sites such as Yelp, or other social media platforms, can help to improve your reputation tenfold.