Yelp has been a breakthrough in reviewing businesses online. Never before could you look up restaurants or dentists in your home town and see how others had experience with them.

There are some ups and downs that come with this responsibility of reviews, especially on the business owner’s end. Yelp is set up so that anyone can sign up for a yelp account and review different businesses. On the business end, a business can either create an account and encourage clients/customers to write reviews – or – a business can claim it’s account if Yelpers (yelp users) have already start reviewing on their own.

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Here’s when things get tricky. Let’s say you own a restaurant and you have an account on Yelp and over the past few months, you’ve gotten some reviews. Most of them are 3 and 4 stars, but you also got some one or two 2 star reviews. At first, you might feel defensive and reactive about how the customer reviewed your establishment and want to react. I’ve read business owner’s reaction to low ratings and it can go either way.

Some business owner choose to use this opportunity as a frustration outlet and lash out at the customer, blaming them and accusing them of behaving badly, ordering the wrong food, having too high of expectations and overall, being defensive. This defeats the whole point of a site like Yelp. On the flip side, I’ve seen some business owners react openly to negative reviews, responding to the customer and asking them to give them feedback to improve the experience. It simply could have been a bad day or night for the business or the staff and it came through to the customer. That happens, but I think it’s so important for the business owner to see how they can be a part of this communication process and turn the corner. Often times,  once the reviewer has communicated with the business owner, they will update their review.

The message is simply – don’t lose out on gaining a customer for life. Bad reviews happen but business owners have the power to turn them around. Your customers are huge part of the new wave of advertising, there’s nothing more powerful than hearing a recommendation from a friend to a friend. It’s magical and it can spread like wildfire.

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I discovered Threadless after asking a few friends where they got their awesome one-of-a-kind t-shirts. I signed up for Threadless’ email newsletter and have been amazed at how entertaining and fun it is to shop at their site. They have a special formula – let me explain who Threadless is -

Threadless is a community-centered online apparel store that began in 2000. The business is primarily based on community voting – members of the community submit t-shirt designs online – which, by the way, are some amazing pieces of art.  The designs are put out to a public vote. A percentage of the submitted designs are selected for printing and are sold through their online store. Winning designs receive prizes of cash and store credit.

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Their marketing ranges from traditional – holding a “scary designs” contests for Halloween or using social media tools like Facebook,  dedicating themselves to interact with their customers and attract new ones. Here’s some of the ideas they have been cooking up:

• Fans can add items to their cart directly within the Threadless Facebook Page. After choosing your size and clicking “Add to cart,” you’re then directed to Threadless.com where you review your order or return to the Facebook Page and continue shopping.

• Under their tab “New Tees”, you are able to browse the new items of the week. You can post a comment about a t-shirt which then posts to your Wall and News Feed.

• Every Thursday, the company posts hourly videos, giving away prizes by spining on the prize wheel to random fans. Its like a short talk show with prizes and no celebrity guests.

Here’s another profile of Threadless with more examples of how they use Facebook . Who wouldn’t want to go and hang out on their Facebook Fan page? Sounds like fun

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There are some days when a rolodex makes sense, but since we have so many ways to keep track of business and friend’s email and phone number, is there a place we can organize all of them?

When I started looking for an online solution for this, Plaxo came up.  An actual online networking platform that helps you organize your friend, family and business contacts.

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Some nicer features of Plaxo are:

• It allows you to upload photos, blogs, reviews and as well as link into other networking platforms like Twitter, MySpace, Digg, and others.

• Easy to navigate! One would assume that you would get lost or overwhelmed trying to organize your contacts and your feeds, but they did a great job with the user interface and made navigating intuitive.

• It syncs up with your Yahoo, Google, or Outlook Calendar as well as your email on those networks. This is a big deal if you have a lot of contacts on your phone. Plaxo can serve as a way to keep a backup of your contacts. We all know how important that is!

Are you using Plaxo now? What’s your favorite feature?

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Setting up a Facebook Fan page is the best way to advertise your business, but I’ve found a lot of folks baffled about what to do with it.  Here are steps on how to set it up

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1) Feed your blog postings into your Facebook page – this can be done by editing the Notes tab and adding your blog feed. Facebook will confirm with you if it’s done correctly and you simply confirm.

2) Add business apps, there are a ton to choose from here,  but don’t go overboard, pick a few that having meaning to your business.

3) Promoting your page – you can’t just friend someone the way you do from your personal profile. You can encourage folks to be fans of your page by spreading the word.  Find contacts from your profile that are business connections, in the industry, or who could benefit from what your company provides and invite them to become a fan. Send a personal note what your page offers. Also promote your page in other places such as Twitter, email sigs, business card, your website or blog.

4) Build a community around your page – start discussions by asking questions regarding your products or what they suggests should improve. Post on a regular basis, such as you would on a blog. Be patient, it won’t happen overnight, but it change slowly.

Want to take it to the next level? Read this report on developing a Facebook pan to attract a million fans!

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A friend of mine told me about ping.fm a while ago. He used it as a way to update his Facebook and Twitter account. Luckily, since that time, he’s realized that those are TWO separate audiences and keeps the accounts separate.

He kept telling me how easy it is to use Ping.fm so I broke down and tried it out. He was right, it only took me 5 minutes.

Some of the best features:

Supports over 30 services such as Twitter, Facebook and even instant messages such as AIM Status or services like Hootsuite and Skype (more on how those integrate these)

You can literally use ping.fm with so many services as well such as your email, SMS, instant message, Facebook app, iPhone app, desktop app, and so on. The possbilities are endless.

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Now here’s the feature I’m still playing with and find fascinating:

It allows you to post to different group by methods. The methods are “micro-blogging” such as Twitter style updating, “blogging” as in adding a post to your Wordpress blog, “status” – more for Facebook or LinkedIn updates and “photo posting” which could be Flickr or Facebook.

Creating posting groups is great and allows you to set a group that updates only to Twitter and LinkedIn, but then set up a different group to send updates to Facebook. It’s pretty awesome if you update some social media sites with business and want to keep your personal life separate.

I’m curious how people really use ping.fm and how well it works, here’s a fun example of 16 different ways you could use it.

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