some small business owners are up in arms over the impact of negative customer reviews on yelp. we talked to owners who have had success on it and those who feel they've been treated unfairly. plus, what you need to know about connecting with your customers through instagram. that's all coming up next on "your business." ♪ small businesses are revitalizing the economy and american express open is here to help. that's why we are proud to present "your business" on msnbc.

♪ hi there, everyone. i'm jj ramberg and welcome to "your business." this show dedicated to giving you tips and advice to help your small business grow. negative consumer comments on a review site can be a night pair for a small business to overcome. that's why a number of businesses are up in arms over concerns with reviews they've received on the site yelp. some are raising questions about whether yelp is treating them fairly. >> customer who is satisfied with my service asked me if i had a yelp page. she was eig story write a review. i gave her the same answer i gave my friend, what the hell is yelp. >> he is a new york city based lock locksmith. when he opened lockbusters he

says he was unaware of yelp and widespread impact on customers' decisions. >> people would call me. did you know you were highly regarded on yelp? nope because i couldn't afford a smartphone. >> he credits much of his six-figure income to that online review site. >> yelp pretty much catapulted things to a stratosphere up to the point that now i'm franchising, let's put it that way. >> with so many consumer review sites out there, it's hard for a small business owner to keep track. and as we discovered, some serious questions have been raised about how yelp solicits advertising. >> to be perfectly honest, we didn't really know about yelp before we got into this business. >> kelly and her husband matthew recently opened a modest priced italian restaurant called verace. like jay, kelly and matthew at

first knew very little about yelp. they were proud to see that their customers four and five-star reviews far outnumbered the handful of negatives. >> our number one priority is word of mouth. >> unlike jay kelly and matthew chose not to buy advertising on the site despite what they say was a barrage of sales call. >> finally after i don't know the fourth, fifth or sixth time they called we said please stop calling, we have a lot going on and we're not going to do it, end of story. >> reporter: but it wasn't the end of story. according to the colandros shortly after the rejection, the next thing they knew many of the positive reviews had been filtered off their main yelp page. is there a kikz? yelp says no. they say their computer program that filters out questionable entries is fully automated and cannot be fiddled with by anyone. but for the restaurant, their overall ratings had plummeted and many of their new out of town customers stopped showing

up. >> the positive reviews would come off leaving maybe just the mediocre or not so great reviews. >> peter tristman is owner of oleck leebson when it appeared all his positives were dropping off leaving only the negatives. >> the problem with yelp has been that yelp has distorted and suppressed all of the positive review. >> reporter: yelp acknowledges it filters reviews to keep out the phony ones and that the filter isn't perfect. they told us that the filter sometimes catches legitimate reviews but it's an automated system which cannot be manipulated to bully business owners. >> and this appears right below our company name. it's very damaging. it cost us a great deal of money. >> while his company has been in business for more than 60 years, has a staff of experienced craftspeople restoring museum quality antiques and buildings

such as grand central station, you would never know this by just reading the two-star rated main yelp page. >> having a reputation trashed after 25 years of work is an awful thing. >> more importantly, you would never know that his company also received 8 five-star and 2 four-star reviews because the yelp remove algorithm placed them on a hard to find difficult to access filtered page and excluded them from his scombroefr all yelp rating. >> they ruin a reputation saying we're a one or two-star company by hiding all the 75% of the reviews which would make us four-stars. >> there's no other way to put it. this sucks. because this is the situation, you do not create and you don't have time for and don't have resources for. >> brandon mendelssohn author of "social media is bull [ bleep ]." despite the examples of several

companies that do not pay yelp for advertising he identifies cases where yelp has deliberately filtered out positive reviews authorized to sell ads, he feels. >> those suddenly vanished. >> they didn't say this but maybe they insinuated that maybe some of these bad reviews might disappear and some of these good reviews might stick. >> they'll help direct more traffic to your site and get you more positive reviews. >> implicit if you don't, we're not going to fix this and you're going to be stuck. and this happens time after time after time. you can go all across the country and hear the same story repeatedly. >> on your side story involving a local business and the website yelp. >> local business owner calls a review company's practices unfair. >> they report on controversy over the company's alleged sales techniques. >> in fact, the ftc has recorded well over 600 business complaints about yelp. many following this same pattern. and in california, a class

action lawsuit was filed against yelp listing many of these same issues. the suit was dismissed based on a law which says operators of interactive internet sites are immune from lawsuits over content. as a result, the question of how yelp selects or filters customer reviews was never fully examined. >> yelp will say or make the argument we're a neutral site. there's more than enough stories about people getting that mysterious phone call, hey, we can make those good reviews reappear if you give us money to suggest they're not neutral. >> yelp denies this and while we've heard many allegations, we have not found conclusive evidence nor any legal judgments that say they do. furthermore, yelp denies there's any connection between the ad sales and the review filter process. >> we also don't punish businesses who choose not to advertise and it's very important to make that clear. >> we keep reviews in

advertising entirely separate at yelp. it's kind of like a separation between church and state, if you will. >> darnell holloway is the yelp manager. in addition to their clear-cut deni denialse denials, he's been hosting meetings. many small business owners like matthew and kelly remain unconvinced. >> if you're making a living on advertising sales for the people that you're reviewing, there's an inherent conflict of interest there. >> these are our customers. honest to goodness customers that are leaving thoughts about us, good, bad or indifferent. there's a mix and we're fine with that. we just want it to be an accurate representation. >> what the calandros did was to take their case to the media. >> these bigger companies that come in and bully the smaller family owned businesses. >> and today if you visit their

yelp page you'll find they're listed with a four-star rating and they still aren't paying for advertising. we asked yelp about this and they say, maybe the publicity got their customers engaged but there was no change in the automated yelp algorithm. >> fairly or unfairly, the effect that a negative write-up on a review site like yelp can have is potentially devastating for a small business's bottom line. let's see what solutions our panel has. nick marsh is here focusing on the restaurant business and john taffer host and co-executive producer of "bar rescue," also the president of the nightclub and bar media group. great to see both of you. >> hi, jj. >> hi, nick. >> both of you guys work with bars and restaurants, nick, you run a restaurant right now called chopped. yelp is a big deal for companies like yours, restaurants and bars. what do you do if suddenly you start getting a lot of negative reviews and you know people like

your restaurant. >> you know, absolutely, jj. as i was watching that piece i was thinking as i'm sure you say to your 5-year-old on a regular basis, life's not fair. and we have to just deal with it. there's certainly some things that are frustrating and there are certainly times you're missing reviews but i think the best thing to do, try to use the feedback in a positive way, reach out to people if there is a problem and use it to make your business better when you can. >> in what way, john? have you worked with people who dealt with this. >> we have and what nick says is right. life is unfair but people can get assassinated on facebook, this he can get assassinated in twitter and people can assassinate it and get away wit. one, i think we have to keep the media pressure on like you're doing, jj. that will keep yelp performing on the straight and narrow but i agree with what nick says. "a," we have to learn it from, "b," somebody has to write a negative comment for that

negative comment to appear. we still have to manage our business one customer at a time, right? >> yeah, indeed. so to nick's point of responding to people, but if you have a bunch of negative comments on your site, whether it's on your page, whether it's yelp or another review site and know that there are some customers who like you out there, what can you do? because a lot of these review sites filter out someone who is a new reviewer if they've only reviewed you they think it might be fake. >> something that sounds counterintuitive, a friend of mine runs a company and he will -- part of their strategy is always tell the truth. they will actually retweet or they will republish negative things said about them and put it back out there and with an apology so they'll actually engage to say we're totally to take the feedback and that's one creative way to deal with something that ultimately is, you know, a little bit unfair. >> interesting but you still, john, want to have someone come to your -- yelp or whatever site it is and see positive not

negative comments. >> absolutely. you have to anyone rate those positive comments with a good experience. what nick is saying, you can also reach out to that individual and invite them back. >> absolutely. >> and have them repost the positive experience and promote that, as well. you have to work it. you know, yelp is a universe and as a marketer small business marketers we have to market that universe and turn the negatives into positives and work each situation to our advantage. not easy. not always fair but this is the environment we have to market in. >> when you say work it, what can i do? do i have to ask all of my guests hey, post something on yemfor me or angie's list, whatever the site is? >> i think we should. you know, candidly over the years every city has their best burger contest, their best pizza contest, you know, the industry has been stuffing those ballots for years, all our employees' votes and friends' vote. when a customer has a great experience nothing wrong with having the server say, please

tell us on yelp. there's nothing wrong with that. >> let's take it to the next level which as i was saying before, some of these sites if you are a one-time poster, they will filter you out so do you have to then say to your guests hey go post about me and post about the ice cream shop down the street so they'll keep your review. >> you have to stay engaged with the audience. so some of the best reviews you get are the negative reviews you turn around and sometimes that's an opportunity to engage with somebody who will beat the filter so to speak but it's not a one-time event. it's sort of a consistent process of reaching out to your audience through a whole bunch of different mediums. >> one more marketing arm. one more thing to think about if your audience is the kind that looks at review sites. thank you so much for this. it's a tricky subject that is going to evolve as everything on the internet does. but stick around because i need you back later in the show to answer some more questions. >> absolutely. >> good deal. customer reviews and referrals are a huge generator of potential customer growth. if you're looking to turn your

biggest fans into marketing assets check out our website of the week. customerlobby.com helps small business owners gather reviews online along with sending them to other sites like facebook and twitter you can feature them right on your own website. connecting with top twitter influencers can be a very effective way to grow your customer base. five free tools to interact with influencers who know or who are familiar with what you do. one, who tweeted me sorts the people would send you tweets by their number of followers. two, after a quick install of the bookmark tool topsy notes the influential tweeters on your pages. three, commun.it prioritizes your most recent interactions and organizes it and how much impact each of the influencers tweets made.

four, friend or follow. this tool grabs all your friends who follow you but who you aren't following back and sorts them by the number of followers. you can follow them right from that page. and, five, fruji, this site breaks your followers into groups by the number of followers but also shares how likely it is for that person to notice your tweets. with so much content competing for attention on the internet you only have a few short seconds to catch someone's eye. enter instagram. if you haven't considered using the mobile sharing website for your business, you might be missing out on its 100 million plus users. the picture only service is a quick and easy way to engage and share your brand instantly through photos. lynn cooper is the founder and chief social officer of socially ahead, a social media consulting and training firm that helps create digital strategies for small businesses so i love instagram just as a person it's

so fun to take pictures and share them with people but can be helpful as a business. >> absolutely. >> you were saying before you may not be a good writer but can certainly take a picture. >> content is king. for us it's hard to put our product or service into words, why not put it into pictures. >> you can first use it to tell your story. your story as a business. >> sightglass is a coffee roaster in san francisco and they use it to tell you everything from the time your beans where they come from, so here all the way to your cup. >> interesting. so it gives more flavor, i mean no pun intended to your company. you know the history of the company. where your coffee is coming from and can do it with your employees doing something. >> absolutely, makes it fun showing behind the scenes, i love to know where -- sometimes where my clothes are made. who makes my things. it makes me feel more comfortable and more personable. >> the next thing you can do is

showcase your product. this one seems obvious. >> this is called my pink lush and they are an online jewelry retailer. since my pink lush has been started they went on instagram and doubled their business because they were able to get people to mobilely buy. tell you the price, put the hashtag for a bracelet all set. >> put hashtag for bracelet in case somebody is searching for a bracelet they'll search that and all the bracelets on instagram will be there and put the url so people can click through and buy something. >> absolutely. >> moving on to the next one, let your fans be the star. this makes it your instagram page more interactive. >> you want fans to look at your products, show them using your product. we get engaged. i can see you using my product. wow, is this great, i want to do it to. ohtobeadog, pet sitting service.

their fans are dogs. so this is really great. owners can go on and see their dogs after they've been walked or cared for by them and just feel a little more comfortable. >> so they take pictures of all the dogs. this is a great way to get people to come to your instagram page because, of course, they're going to want to come and see their dogs and share that with their friends. >> absolutely, absolutely then the great thing -- only thing that's lacking right now with instagram is the fact that you can't click those links to actually go to the internet. so, unfortunately. the only thing they would be able to do is go back here and go there to be able to go to a page but you can't click on a visual picture to make them -- >> but you can get people to your instagram page, someone can like it and their friends can see it, as well. which will get people to your page and talk about your business. then finally, be helpful. you can use this page to be helpful. basically what you're trying to do is do things that are interesting so people keep coming back so helpful.

>> so being helpful, really want to give people tips and encouragement so this is the page of jeanette jenkins, a celebrity trainer. she does awesome things like showing her working out. >> yeah, great idea. >> showing tips like her personal life, just being all around encompassing. you want to work with her and know about her personality. feel she's fun. getting people interested. >> i would follow her because i want to see, oh, here's a new, interesting exercise i can do. >> i don't know if i can do that. >> we'll try. we'll try. we can dream. all right. well, lynn, thank you so much. this is really helpful. instagram is a great tool and one small businesses need to know about. thanks a lot. still to come, more important information to make your small business successful including how to establish a close relationship with a banker and what to do when it's time to sell. plus, the owners of a hot new fitness company soul cycle tell us what women bring to the table when it comes to starting

and running a small business. ♪ soul sister sister go sister is like hammering. riding against the wind. uphill. every day. we make money on saddles and tubes. but not on bikes. my margins are thinner than these tires. anything that gives me some breathing room makes a difference. membership helps make the most of your cashflow. i'm nelson gutierrez of strictly bicycles and my money works as hard as i do. this is what membership is. this is what membership does.

today that business is thriving and we find that the owners of soul cycle attribute to female entrepreneurs having their own unique style. >> for super spinner julie rice this isn't just a workout. it's work. seven years ago rice co-founded a unique brand of exercise calling her spin classes soul cycle and it's been a wild ride ever since. >> woe thought that we could make exercise fun. we thought we could make it inspirational. >> the philosophy is part spin. >> rock 'n' roll. >> part party. part metation. 45 minutes of intense cardio set to high energy music lit only by candles, to say it's popular would be an understatement. most days rice is riding right along with the pack.

>> i'm always moved by it. i'm actually never immune to it. >> rice never thought she'd end up in the fitness business. the married mom of two spent most of her career as a hollywood talent manager but when she couldn't find the perfect workout she decided to create it. rice started the company with elizabeth cutler, a virtual stranger she just met. >> when you meet a great guy, you just know and we knew when we met each other we shared the a common vision. >> they wrote out their business plan on a napkin. >> elizabeth whipped the out a pen and said if we had this many bikes and get 75 people a day to come we can pay the rent and pay our baby-sitters and we can be passionate about what we're doing. >> part of their vision, a laid back workplace where most people show up in gym clothes and are encouraged to get in one workout a day. >> we think about creating a place where our kids would want to come to work and have careers inside the a business getting

larger and larger and larger. >> most of the staff is under 30. >> women are incredible entrepreneurs and i think one of the reasons is that we manage households and when you're managing a household you can manage a small business. >> what once was a small business now has more than 5,000 riders each day in 14 studios in california and new york. >> things don't have to be giant in the beginning. a small idea can just be a small idea. >> rice also quickly learned there were life lessons she could take from soulcycle classes themselves. >> i would tell people not to overthink it, just do it. put one foot in front of the other. if you have a passion and just make it happen. ♪ >> time now to answer your business questions. nick and jon have joined us once again. getting out of your business. >> i want to have an exit strategy. i have a wonderful client base. we have video clients that we care about and we just want to

make sure that do i central it, do i dissolve it? >> all right, i'm going to start with you, nick. you have had a couple of successful exits yourself. how do you figure out what the end game is? >> great question. sometimes you know going in if you had investors coming in you sort of know what you're headed for. in this woman's situation sounds like she sealed the business on her own and now sort of needs to find a good place for it to land. maybe as opposed to looking externally the way to do it develop somebody internally, somebody would comes in at a more junior level and has the goal of taking over the business. so that she can move out in sort of a slower and easier fashion. >> jon, it seems like a smart thing to think about. once you know the end you can work backwards to figure out how to get there. how do people decide whether it's going to close work internally like nick is talking about or they'll sell to someone. >> it's a darned good one. i did that myself. sold them to my own general

manager and i can provide the loan and the paper and finance it and put it together. put them in business and then i keep my same employees, my same customers, it's a nice transfc . that can help her retirement. so never dissolve it if it has value. determine what that value is, look internal naturally to sell it if you can. if you can seek out a business broker. >> how do you find a good business broker. >> well, typically each town has them. i will look for the type of business that you own and see if there's other flower shops for sale. if there are, i'd see -- look for the broker who is handling those transactions who has experience marketing in that space. >> let's move on to the next one. this is about building bridges with a bank. >> i would like to know how to establish a relationship, a close relationship with a banker. and is it good to stay like with the big bank rout or go to the

smaller little community size banks. >> jon, i think she's asking the right question in asking how to build a relationship because ultimately a lot of this comes down to relationships. >> years ago i used small banks that got gobbled up by the big banks and signs changed four times in a year. i get more personal service and won't mention which one out of a large bank because of the banker and branch i work with than i have out of some small banks. it isn't big or small it's the branch and the banker that you're working with. >> how do you build a relationship. >> she's on to the right first step. i always say when people start their business it's usually with investors who are friends and family and if you think about it, those are people you've known your whole life, 15, 20 years before they will give you money then all of a sudden when people move into the banking world they think it's a process or financials. it's still about the relationship so it's about time. i think that where we've had successful relationships with the bank it's because we've known the banker in the branch

for two or three years before you really get to the point where you have a need for a significant amount of money. >> somebody suggested to me once also get the banker to know about your product or your service before you're going in to ask for money. for instance, if you have -- you're selling cookies, send cookies to the bank and maybe not directly to him or her, the baker but to somebody else so he tastes them or she tastes them then thinks, oh, these are good. then when you come in they recognize your name. okay, then finally our last question, this is an e-mail from miles. he writes how do you get your customers to trust you when you are first starting out? jon, nobody knows you. you open something up and want people to come, use your products or service, how do you get people to put their money with you? >> well, obviously guarantee means something. standing out there. testimonials mean everything from your first customers and attaching your own face, your own brand to a business saying, i'm accountable, makes a big difference also.

make people know they're doing business with a person, not just a business. in the beginning that can create the trust you need. >> great idea. >> the only other thing i point out he says in the beginning, it doesn't really end. you know, the restaurant business is certainly one where you don't ever get to do a touchdown dance and celebrate. you got to get up the next day and make it happen again so bringing that same day one approach every single day i think is something that can help build success over time. >> all right, thank you so much. and a special happy father's day also. it's father's day today. happy extra special father's day to my dad who taught me so much of what i know about business. thank you, guys. i hope to see you both again here soon. >> if any of you want to see more of today's show go to our website, it is openforum committee/yourbusiness. find web exclusive content with more information to help your business grow. follow us on twitter, it's

@msnbcyourbiz. become a fan of the show on facebook. next week the owners of a play space based in new york city decide to open up branches in india and dubai. >> do as much research as you want but never know how things will play out until you get there. >> how to determine if international expansion is right for your company. till then i'm jj ramberg and remember, we make your business our business. ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker every day. ♪ ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker and i'm working every day. ♪ ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker and i'm saving all my pay. ♪ small businesses get up earlier and stay later. and to help all that hard work pay off, membership brings out millions of us

on small business saturday and every day to make shopping small huge. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. we are having a moment right now in republican politics. the last 48 hours all across a broad swath of the country we have had a flury of really remarkable, like, ripley's believe it or not kind of politics. first of all, iowa, the republican governor of that state, the most important mustache in american politics. he signed a bill, the first of his kind anywhere in the country ever. we have seen a lot of anti-abortion bills from the republicans in the federal level and at the state in the last couple years, but never before has an individual republican politicians reserved for himself the right to personally decide if you can have an abortion. it's not a vague stance that the state should have a say or the