Media Emerging

Yelp, the popular review site with a social twist, recently hired Nicole Warshauer as its community manager for Charlotte.

I recently talked with the self-confessed “shopportunist” about Yelp’s plans for the Charlotte market, the Yelp Elite Squad, and upcoming Yelp events. Check out what Nicole’s cooking up:

(Full disclosure: I represent several restaurants who do business with Yelp.)

SH: Hey, welcome to Yelp! Tell us about your new gig.

NW: Hey there! Thanks for the warm welcome! I’m so excited to take on the reins as Yelp’s first community manager in Charlotte. I’ll be cultivating the site as a whole, planning awesome Elite events, managing the marketing and social media, and taking Charlotte Yelp to an amazing place for all looking to connect with local businesses!

SH: You were a pretty active “Yelper” before you joined their team — what’s the draw for you?

NW: I suppose the main draw for me is that I respect the site and the idea so much. We typically tell our family, friends and colleagues about amazing restaurants, spas, dog walkers etc. but Yelp amplifies that to a whole new level. It’s such a fun and helpful resource to learn more about your own community, and I love discovering new places.

SH: Yelp has some exciting things planned for Charlotte. Can you tell us what we can expect?

NW: Pure awesomeness across the board. Expect the Yelp Charlotte community to grow exponentially and hopefully, in turn, local businesses can flourish because of it. Undoubtedly you’ll start to see Yelp integrating in the community more and more every day.

SH: Let’s talk mobile: What does Yelp’s mobile app mean for restaurant owners and other marketers?

NW: Yelp’s product development team is just incredible. Personally, I use my Yelp iPhone app everywhere. Since it looks like smart phones aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, great, integrated apps like Yelp’s are so vital for business engagement. These mobile apps can make good marketing great and give business owners really rich, timely data. Business owners of any kind can head to Yelp for Business Owners to unlock their business page and get access to a whole suite of tools to supplement their own business listing on Yelp.

SH: What is the Yelp Elite Squad?

NW: The Yelp Elite Squad is an amazing group of highly engaged yelpers in the Charlotte community. These Elites contribute tons of useful, funny and cool content on a daily basis and are revered as the movers and shakers in the city. The little red Elite badge is highly coveted in the world of Yelp, and these Elites are very deserving of that honor!

SH: So, beyond reviews…can you tell us about other opportunities Yelp offers to engage with customers?

NW: As I mentioned previously, I highly recommend that all businesses take a few minutes and unlock their business page. It’s free and incredibly helpful. Plus, I recommend anyone (business owner and potential yelper alike) just check out Yelp.com, I guarantee they’ll learn about incredible local businesses in their own backyard that they never even knew about. The talk threads, reviews and event page are meant for sharing the best info with your community! Sharing is caring, folks!

If you asked a counselor for advice on coping with divorce, but were still stressed a month later, you wouldn’t ask for a refund.

If your lawyer spent an hour with reviewing business formation options with you, but you tanked in 90 days, you wouldn’t get your money back.

So if you picked a PR or social media consultant’s brain for an hour, shouldn’t you pay him or her in full?

If you’ve ever considered hiring a PR, marketing, or social media consultant, check out Jason Falls’s post. The premise is this: Why can’t I compensate a PR or social media consultant on a pay-for-performance basis?

Or, put another way, if your ideas, recommendations, insights and strategic guidance don’t make me money, why should I pay you in full?

Jason does a good job explaining that when you hire a consultant, you’re buying time and knowledge. Information ain’t cheap, and it takes a lot of research, experience, trial and error, investment time to get as smart as Jason Falls.

Gini Dietrich chimed in with a few ways you can glean wisdom from her for free. Some of these options require more work or patience on your part, but if you want the Cadillac, you gotta pay for it.

The bigger theme in Jason’s and Gini’s posts is “How do I get something for nothing almost nothing?”, but I want to elaborate on three reasons why a “pay-for-performance” consulting model doesn’t work for PR or social media:

1) Social Media Takes Time to Pay Off

Whether we’re talking about building a blog, creating an online customer community, or manning a Twitter account, it can take months or longer to reach “full speed.”

Think of it as planting an orchard. If you plan to harvest fruit and turn a profit in year one, forget it. The time spent building a solid foundation, while not likely to produce immediate profits, is the most important part of the process.

In year one, your social media consultant is advising you on how to design your orchard and planting the trees, so to speak. A results-based payment that doesn’t reflect the foundation-building phase will leave your social media without a paycheck and you without a knowledgeable advisor.

2) Success is Often Poorly Defined

Too often, the only metric companies look at is sales. And, yes, a social media program that ignores the bottom line is trouble. But there’s more to profitability than sales – which is why social media shouldn’t be run by your marketing department.

What if the best use of social media for your company is customer service? How does your social media program stabilize or improve customer satisfaction? How many customers were retained because we were attentive online? How many would have been lost if you hadn’t been attentive online? How many negative comments did we prevent by engaging with customers?

If you and your consultant aren’t clear about what metrics matter most, you’ll be tempted ex post facto to pull out a measuring stick that lets you negotiate a lower fee from the consultant. Clarify upfront preserves a fair and honest relationship.

3) The Path to a Conversion is Fuzzy

If sales increased 40% last quarter, but website traffic decreased, did social media fail? Not necessarily. Maybe traffic to the website is a poor metric. Maybe site traffic decreased because more customers found answers on your Facebook page.

Last Click Syndrome – where credit for a conversion is given to the site visited immediately before ours – is a flaw in web analytics.

Classic example: I browse through an article about your company sent to me by a Twitter friend. Later, I see your TV ad. I Google your company, then click thru to your website and buy a widget. Who gets credit? Google? My Twitter friend? Your Twitter account? Your PR guy who got the article placed? Your ad guy?

In reality, you’ll mistakenly give credit to your SEM guy who created the Google AdWords campaign.

Paying a consultant for results only works if you can accurately attribute results. While web metrics are getting better, they’re still not perfect. And metrics are only as good as those interpreting them. If a poor understanding of web analytics leads you to false conclusions about your social media program’s effectiveness, expect your consultant to push back.

3 Reasons Incentive-Based Pricing Could Work?

I hope to offer a counterargument soon…if I can find time to write it. In the meantime, anybody want to guest blog it? Or offer three counters via the comments? Chime in!