One of the great features of social media is the conversation that’s available between real people. One of the earliest benefits of a “social media” was word-of-mouth advertising. You hear about a great new place to eat, or a cool place to have fun, you’d tell your friends.
The Yelp website takes the word-of-mouth function we’re all familiar with and just web-enabled it. When you find a great restaurant, write a little review about it and let people know. Have a favorite small business you like to support? Why wouldn’t you tell others about it.
Here’s a few of my reviews on Yelp, hopefully I can discipline myself to write more of these on a more regular basis.