Send a Message to Dear Social Diary
Please contact The Social Diary for general enquiries, to send a social invite, to submit a story or send us your Yelp-Yaps1. Please use the salutation “Dear Social Diary.” We accept general enquiries regarding etiquette and manners, however, we may respond with a future story in our publication. We do not accept requests, however we do entertain social invites. 2
Contact: Email Policy
In order to ensure your email reaches us, please do not spam or send links. We eat spam, but we don’t read spam.
Yelp-Yaps: Billion Dollar Bully
The popularity of public review sites like Yelp should help consumers and businesses3. But do they? For instance, a review may help change business practices. Moreover, it can warn other consumers of a bad experience. Additionally, good to great reviews can help businesses attract more foot traffic or increase online sales. This is the logical “best practices” scenario. But Yelp is not reliable and is a broken system.
Take public review sites like Yelp with a grain of salt. That’s because the reviews are only as authentic as the reviewer. Moreover, don’t rely on Yelp’s “algorithm” which elevates fake reviews and hides the real ones. For this reason, The Social Diary covers our reviews “Beyond Yelp.” Additionally, you can voice your “Yelp-Yaps” in contacts. Sometimes these ugly truths about Yelp turn out to be the real truth. So, tell us your Yelp story. Our investigation uncovered that Yelp is nothing more than a Billion Dollar Bully.
Legitimate reviews on these public sites should “weigh” more than AAA Diamond, Forbes Travel Guide or Michelin stars. That’s because these reviews are coming from actual consumers. They are not coming from “compensated” reviewers. However, did you know that Yelp “Elites” are compensated with free parties, gifts and other “perks?” That’s why it’s important not to weigh Yelp reviews more, just because Yelp says so. Additionally, they heavily promote Elite reviews over non-Elites.
Our investigation also uncovered a “pay to play” scheme. The more a business or organisation pay for services, the more “elevated” reviews they receive. Yelp suppresses the negative reviews and don’t even bother counting them into the overall score for that business or organisation. It’s a scam!
Contact for Businesses and Organisers
The Social Diary is open to partnering with businesses and organisations. We leave collaborative options open for the right opportunities.4 Please send us a “social invite” to get the ball rolling on evaluating your hospitality setup and event, in addition to preparing your staff for this important social engagement.
The Social Diary provides services and expertise for publicly noted events and socials. We can also provide evaluations for private members’ clubs5. These undercover evaluations can play a critical role in the success of your event. We provide these complimentary evaluations so you, your organisation and event can put your best front forward6.
Changes to this Page
Please note the following changes.
- The etiquette “exercise” on table setting moved to Hospitality. We invite you to link over to Hospitality where we provide three examples of table setting standards in America. In addition, to providing information on British and French standards.
- The Social Diary selection process moved to the About page. We felt it was too confusing in contacts. This section details how The Social Diary makes our selection process for events we add to the Social Diary. We add and remove events and programmes based on certain criteria.
- The Social Diary is investigating Yelp. This is your opportunity to review Yelp and send us your favourite Yelp-Yaps. ↩︎
- When sending a “social invite” please include the event details such as organisation, venue, date, time and purpose. ↩︎
- Our relationship with review sites have dramatically changed due to our own investigations and Member and public submissions ↩︎
- We provide complimentary hospitality evaluations for public engagements. ↩︎
- The hosting member of the Private Members’ Club should adhere to the public engagement notifications. ↩︎
- Complimentary evaluations are underwritten by The Foundation because training in high standards are lacking across the board. ↩︎