The Essential Guide to Google Posts on Google Business Profile
Standing out from your competition in local search results can seem like a nearly impossible task. If brands want to win over consumers in today’s hyper-local and competitive world, it’s essential to find new ways to continuously engage with consumers.
This is where Google Posts, one of the most robust features in Google My Business (GMB), comes into play. By incorporating Google Posts into your local SEO strategy, your brand can connect and drive purchase-ready consumers to your business.
Keep reading to find out how you can develop an impactful local marketing strategy with Google Posts.
Are Google Posts Worth the Effort?
Yes! Think of each Google Post as a mini advertisement for your business that gives you the opportunity to get in front of your target audience. Implementing Google Posts into your local marketing strategy will help your business gain more visibility in local searches and drive consumers to visit your business.
How to Use Google Posts
Using Google Posts from start to finish is relatively simple, but there are important best practices that go along with Google Posts, just like any other platform. The steps below will give you an overall guide for your Google Posts strategy.
1. Optimize Your GMB Profile
All your information on your GMB profile must be up-to-date and accurate with NAPWCHD consistency: business name, address, phone number, website, categories, hours, and description. This is an important first step because you don’t want to confuse consumers with the wrong information once they’re interacting with your profile.
2. Choose the Type of Post Specific to Your Goals
Each type of Google Post serves a different purpose. Here are all the types of Google Posts your business can use depending on your goals:
What’s New: What’s New posts are for sharing any recent updates about your business. Announcements about new employee additions, new blog posts, customer reviews, and any similar news are great pieces of content to share in this category. There are also several call-to-action (CTA) buttons you can add to your What’s New post:
- Add a button (optional)
- Book
- Order online
- Buy
- Learn more
- Sign up
- Call now
Events: With Event posts, you can promote any upcoming in-person or virtual events that your company is involved with. Add a start and end date for your event, as well as an event time so consumers can be aware of the exact event details.
This will keep your Event post at the top for consumers to see in your GMB profile. Keep your event title concise by describing it in 4-5 words, since you only have 58 characters for your title. Event Posts offer the following CTA buttons:
- Add a button (optional)
- Book
- Order online
- Buy
- Learn more
- Sign up
- Call now
If your business is trying to heavily promote your event, it’s a good idea to not create additional posts after your Events post so it remains at the top during event promotion.
Offers: Offer posts help your business promote any current specials, deals, discounts, or coupons. You can also use this post-type to create a promotion that is exclusive to your GMB profile.
The GMB promotion will show up as a bright yellow tag at the bottom of the post. These posts also require a start and end date so consumers can know how long the offer is valid for. Encourage consumers to take action in an Offer post with these CTAs:
- Coupon code (optional)
- Link to redeem offer (optional)
- Terms & Conditions
Products: Let consumers know about current products in stock with Product posts. These will be displayed within the Product tab and at the top of your GMB profile. No need to include all of your products in these posts, just share new or popular products worthy of the feature.
You can also create separate categories for products that correspond to each category. For example, if you’re a brand like Home Depot, you can create categories for departments like Outdoor Living, Appliances, Tools so you can have products added to each related section. Entice consumers to take more action on your products with these available CTAs:
- Order online
- Buy
- Learn more
- Get offer
Product posts include your business’s phone number alongside your CTA of choice. Products will not expire unless you remove the item manually.
COVID-19 Update – GMB added a COVID-19 Update post in spring 2020 for businesses to share any COVID-19 related updates. These updates can be about any changes to your business such as a change in hours, new health & safety protocols, contactless services, or other COVID-19 related news.
Source: Berkshire School
3. Create Your Post
Now it’s time to carefully craft your post. GMB Posts can be created either through the GMB Dashboard on a desktop browser or the GMB app. Google Posts have a 1,500-character limit, but you should still make your post short and to the point. Try to make your first sentence the most appealing and informative, since that will catch the reader’s eye encouraging them to click to read more. Unlike social media posts, hashtags don’t matter for Google Posts so it isn’t necessary to waste characters with hashtags.
Source: Hodad’s Downtown
The photos and videos you pair along with each post description are just as important as the content. Google recommends photos on Google Posts to have a minimum resolution of 400px wide by 300px tall, in either JPG or PNG format. Video file sizes can be a maximum of 100 MB.
Your visuals should be high-quality and relevant to the general post. In the What’s New, Offer, and Event posts, you can add up to 10 photos or videos. Keep in mind that the order of your photos will be different across multiple devices.
Once you’re ready to post, click the “Preview” button to make sure the post is exactly how you want it to look, then hit “Publish”. It’s as simple as that!
4. Monitor Your Performance
Analyzing the success of your Google Posts is an instrumental part of your GMB strategy. You can receive insights directly within your Posts tab, whether it’s for an individual post or posts from the last week or month. These insights will show how many views your post has received and how many times a customer clicked your CTA button. The summary view shows how many times your posts were viewed in the last week.
Understanding how consumers are interacting with your posts will help you improve your future content strategy.
Can I Create Posts to Google My Business with Chatmeter?
Yes, if you’re a Chatmeter user you can easily create Google Posts through our dashboard with these steps:
- Open Chatmeter’s Social tab.
- Go to “Publishing”, select “Create a Post”, and select Google as the Provider.
- Decide what type of post you want to create.
- Add in your content.
- Hit “Publish”.
Don’t have Chatmeter’s Social Suite? Speak with a representative today.
How Often Should I Post on Google My Business?
It’s important to consistently post on your GMB. Aside from Product, Offer, and Event posts, Google Posts will disappear from the top of your GMB profile after seven days, so it’s a good idea to create a Google Post at least once a week.
This will help increase your click-through rates and chances of receiving more engagement on your GMB listing. It’s also important to note that you can only have 10 maximum posts live at a time.
Build Engagement on Google My Business
Your online presence on GMB is vital for driving consumers to your business. Google Posts is an integral feature that every multi-location brand needs to take advantage of. By establishing a consistent content calendar on your GMB profile with Google Posts, your business can reach and convert consumers at a much faster rate.
Want to see exactly how your brand is performing online? Connect with us for a free brand audit! We’ll scour your online presence and show you what’s working, what’s not, and how you can rocket past your competitors.