Using Google My Business
Sam will take you through how to use and get the best out of an often overlooked social media platform, Google My Business. Looking at Maps, GMB’s insights page and the different types of content you can post to it, if you haven’t used this platform before, this course will get you started.
You’ve used Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… but is there a social media platform you may be unfamiliar with, and it’s right under your nose. Google My Business is an extremely underused platform that deserves more love, for everything it can do for your marketing. So, what exactly is it?
Google My Business is essentially a free social media service that you can sign your company up with in an instant. Many companies will have the base of the platform already when your company is being established in general online. For example, if you ever search a company on Google, a section will appear in the search results on the right of the screen giving the base information of your company. This is Google My Business, and it is more influential than you think.
Those results you see when searching for a company will apply to yours as well when people are searching for your business, so it’s important to make sure your information is up to date. So set up your Google My Business account, and when you have, you can manually set up all your contact information and also set your opening times. But this is just the start of this platform’s features.
Google My Business has its own free web page for you once you sign up. A separate page with all of your details on, which can be edited however you like. It’s rather simplistic but it gives you a new way of optimising your company and posts for the web. As well as this, you can see all of the insights and analytics of how people got to your Google page. This is great as it adds an extra chunk of side analytics to your main website analytics, offering you a chance to see new keywords that your visitors may have searched in order to get to your Google site. All you need to do is search for the site, Google My Business, and if you don’t have a page set up already, the site will instantly guide you through the process of setting one up and linking your company.
Google Maps is also implemented into this platform, letting users see where your premises are in an instant and also giving them a view from what your HQ looks like from outside using street-view. Depending on the quality of your SEO, your map results can come above all of your competitors on Google Maps, and having an up to date and in depth Google My Business site can help to optimise your keywords and Google ranking even further to do this.
You can also post features you may post on your usual socials, and also post photos and videos that will come up immediately when someone searches for your company on Google. You can keep track of how many people view your posts as with any other social media platform, but with photos they are all in one place and they are much easier to see how many impressions they’ve had. You’ll also get email updates when your posts or photos exceed a certain number of views on a post, so you know exactly what is doing especially well.
It’s worth noting that your audience will only be able to do so much in terms of interacting with your post. They can follow links and call to actions that you have made, but they won’t be able to comment or like, as they would do on Facebook and Twitter for example. For that reason polls and debates, or anything that asks for feedback should be avoided, as you won’t be able to get that. Google My Business is a lot better for announcements and posting photos to your site album. Speaking of, photos and videos are essential for this site. You’ll notice a lot of the time when you search a company on Google, pictures will appear alongside the information on the right hand side of the search. These pictures are directly related to your Google My Business account. So, if you want your photos to be seen straight away, it’s good to update the site regularly with your recent visual content.
The higher the viewership of a photo, the greater chance it has of showing up in those search results, so make sure you pick the photos that best represent your company, as you won’t get to choose what is shown.
Finally, Google My Business houses your Google reviews, Google’s biggest feature for your company. You can get your reviews on most platforms nowadays, but Google is by far the best platform to get them. More than likely, any new prospects will search your company first on Google, and seeing your reviews pop out as soon as the visitor sees your site in the search results, will impress them right away. So, when a client is about to post a review, make sure you ask them to do it via Google. Again this is very easy to do, just by typing in a company name into Google and finding their Google My Business site on the right hand side, you’ll get the option to leave a review right there and then. It’s also good to inform whoever is writing the review to leave in a few of your top keywords if they can, as this will help to boost your search ranking even more so than the marketing you’re already doing for it. It’s also handy to remind you to always reply to your reviews and say thanks for taking time out of their day to write them, and maybe you can get in some keywords with your replies as well.
