The Fine Art of Writing a Yelp Review
Be fair, concise, and embrace the fact that that no one will truly care. There is a right way and a wrong way to craft a Yelp review for a restaurant, but no matter how it’s written, it will never earn you a Pulitzer Prize, nor is it something to add to a LinkedIn profile. Maybe if you eventually writes enough reviews, Yelp will bestow the title of Elite Yelper upon you, which is right up there with being knighted by the Queen of England. However, it’s more likely that the review will languish in the ether, peaking when one person clicks the icon beneath your review because they find it useful, funny, or cool. If you should choose to use your precious moments on earth to write a review for Yelp, here is how it should be done. Make it concise.
If it takes longer to write the review than it took for you to eat the meal you’re writing about, you’re doing it wrong. These aren’t dissertations on philosophy; they are opinions about mashed potatoes. All of your flowery alliteration is for naught when most people just want to know if the restaurant has four or five stars (good) or one or two stars (bad). Save the prose for your blog and provide just the facts. Use good grammar.
If you want to be seen as an authority on the subject, put some effort into it. This isn’t a quick text to your bestie, it’s a public forum for the world wide web to know your feelings on how perfectly or imperfectly cooked the wild salmon was. Even though a teacher isn’t going to send it back to you with corrections (their / there / they’re) and a big D- at the top of it, it’s going to be judged by internet users, and they are way tougher to please than your eighth grade English teacher Mrs. Schaffner ever was. Be fair.
If you’re going to write a review about a bad experience, then make sure to write one for a good experience too. When someone sees your one-star review and then looks at your profile to see that every other review you have written is also about how bad a restaurant was they’re going to reach a conclusion that the one common denominator in all of those awful restaurant experiences was you. Your Yelp anthology needs to be well-rounded with both good and bad reviews so you seem like a fair and sensible human being. Don’t use names.
It isn’t necessary to specifically mention someone, especially if it’s for a negative reason. Calling out your server by name is petty, pointless, and picayune. It doesn’t help anyone to know the name of the waitress who you feel didn’t feel smile enough, and there’s never a need to mention their body size or the style of their hair. If you have a distinct issue with a person at the restaurant, be an adult […]
