In the first nine months of 2011, Yelp generated a whopping 80% increase in year-over-year revenue totaling $58.4 million. Advertising sales accounted for 91% of the company’s revenue during this period. Local advertising revenues grew by 67% year-over-year to $40.3 million, while branded advertising also grew by 67% to $12.7 million.

During the past year, Yelp has been increasing its spending on sales and marketing. Year-over-year expenditures have risen 60% to $38.5 million.

Yelp is currently concentrating on local and brand advertising on its website including graphic and text display ads. While not currently featuring local or brand advertising on its mobile apps, Yelp does “see the mobile market as an attractive monetization opportunity.”

Yelp saw an average of 61 million unique visitors in the third quarter, up 63% from the prior year. As of September 30, 2011, the site was maintaining more than 22 million reviews with approximately 529,000 free business pages claimed. As of the same date, Yelp also recognized revenue from approximately 19,000 local business accounts.

Yelp user demographics are as follows:

• 42% age 18-34
• 45% college graduates
• 36% annual income of $100,000+

Get an active Twitter account.

Yes it sounds basic, and you may already have one, but don’t just breeze past this section.  We have some interesting tips to help you maximize your usage.

For those of you just getting started, open your account at http://twitter.com/signup. Once you have the registration form complete, connect with as many people as you can. They make it easy by allowing you to search your email lists (see below for more information).  Customize your profile to show your main website and your, or your company’s, bio information. Don’t forget to set your location, update preferences and how you want to be notified of friends who have joined the Twitter revolution.

Draw attention with a customized background.

Get creative here. Simply click on “Settings” and then “Design” to choose a premade background or upload your own image.  If you have a flair for design and a little Photoshop experience you can create a background that speaks volumes about you and your company.  Check out some great custom layouts like:

http://twitter.com/JetBlue

http://twitter.com/BBCClick

http://twitter.com/MarthaStewart

Gather friends and follow interesting people and organizations

Finding friends on Twitter is easy. Three options are available.

1.   Search Twitter.  Use the “Find People” function to search for anyone from your next door neighbor to celebrities to companies.

2.  Search other networks.  Connect to anyone in your email contact list. Twitter can search through your hotmail.com, Gmail, Yahoo mail or AOL mail contact lists and if your friends use Twitter they can be added to your list.

3.  Manual invites.  Have friends, co-workers or clients who are not on Twitter? Manually input their email addresses and invite them to be your friend.

Connect your blog to Twitter

One of the best tools to connect Twitter and your blog was created by Alex King.  This plug-in will automatically create micro blogs from your WordPress blog posts. Just follow this link for all the information

http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

to download this plug-in click here

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/share-this.2.3.zip

If you blog regularly, be sure to review the instructions and support information.

Monitor your Twitter Rank

Twitter offers the Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com) to show you where you rank against other Twitter members.  Once you enter your user name, you will see where you rank among a possible 100 points. 

Twitter Grading is based on overall rank, number of followers, your following and updates.  The more active you are the higher you will rank.

Link your Twitter account to social bookmarking sites.

If you are in the Twitter game, be in it to win it.  Build up your social networking account by bookmarking your Twitter account to sites such as Digg.com, Propeller.com, Dropjack.com and others.

Take advantage of advanced search features on Twitter

To really maximize your connection with people in your target market, go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced to use the Advanced Search features Twitter offers.  In Advanced Search you can search by keywords or phrases, location, names and more.

Resist the urge to connect with everyone you see.  Be choosy and select only the best people who actually have good information to share and are likely to accept your friend request.

As you take these steps to maximize your Twitter impact, you will see your social status rise.  As with any adventure, the more you keep at it the better the results will be.

Unfortunately, it is not as easy as you would hope for.  Google clearly states on their website that they do not own the internet. This means that in order to get the pages off of Google’s search results, the website that houses the undesirable information must be changed.  Your only hope of getting a change is to approach the webmaster of the offending site to request removal of the page or at least request they block the page from Google’s indexing.  Google’s response if you approach them first is a polite, but firm, “We are sorry, but we can’t do anything without action by the webmaster.”

Your only hope is if the information falls into one of the categories that Google is prepared to deal with.  They include:

• Social security or credit information in results
• Adult content in results, when SafeSearch has been turned on
• Inappropriate images in video results

Beyond these points, you are pretty much on your own.  Once you understand that Google has no control over what is posted to the internet, it does seem to make a bit more sense.  Google’s job is to tell you what is out there, not to police what is already posted to the Web.

So what is the best way to protect yourself?  Be on your best behavior to keep your reputation intact, and well, if that doen’t work for you… than you’re in good company.  If you do have to approach someone to get a page removed, make nice and hope for the best.   If that does not work, just make sure you have lots of good stuff to make up for being less than perfect.  After all, nobodys perfect.

When a blogger mentions your business consider it an open invitation to respond. If a blogger criticizes a promotion you are running or pans your business based on their experience, it is your opportunity to craft a well thought out response.

You have every right to explain yourself. Address the specific issue raised in the blog; explain what your business is all about or the structure of your promotion in question. Be sure to take the high road and always be professional. Personal attacks are never appropriate; even if you were attacked first.

Opening a dialog with a blogger gives you the opportunity to provide an explanation, to correct misinformation and address misunderstandings. With a well thought out and timely response, showing your thought process and professionalism is likely to enhance your image.

Don’t forget that the blogger’s posting and your response is going to be viewed by all of the blog’s readers. Accuracy is a must. On a side note, a quick “Thank you for the kind words” post to a positive blog comment is always appreciated.