Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. I'm Mr.
and I'm Melanie.
And today we're talking about how to use and set up Google My Business. Do you have it already?
Well, I do.
Yeah, me too.
I had it for a while, but in fairness, Google My Business would be one of the first places that I would have gone to. Way back when. But it wasn't Google my business then. It was called Google Plus.
So it is all one and the same thing because I was thinking,
Yes
You know, Google Plus used to exist and lots of businesses used to be on it. And it was great for certain people, but it then just disappeared. So this has taken its place then?
It really has. And the reason why it disappeared, unfortunately, is because an awful lot of identifying information was lost by Google Plus. Then it will come socks. But lessons have been learned and new security has been put in place. So if anybody is not using Google my business now because of their concerns about security issues, I can assure you Google have done their best to improve the security as of every platform out there, to be honest.
Yeah, they really have. And I mean, Google has basically got the monopoly on a lot of things, don't they? I mean, if you're looking for something, you turn it into a verb and just you Google it, you know. So while you're on Google My Business, is that, then helpful for getting found online?
Absolutely. I mean, when you've got any sort of Google relation, which is like obviously YouTube, Google Docs or a Gmail address is all called the one account and it's all called the one account for a reason, because once you've got a Gmail account, you can access every single section and segment of Google. So you may have a very old Google My Business sorry, Gmail address, but you can update you get a fresh one for your business and then you can get Google My Business, which is just a literally a plug in and play area. You open it up, you fill out the information and the way you go.
OK, and what about people who work online or have no fixed abode? Can they have a Google My Business account?
Actually can now. Now, it was originally for people who had bricks and mortar addresses, but now you can have a general area. You know, you don't have to give your door number and house name that say, so you can actually have like a general area and it will help you get found in local searches.
Oh, that's good, because, well, in our case, we're in two different countries, so we may need to set up two different ones. What about and then whenever you set it up, what do they ask you for?
Oh, well, when you originally set up and you set up your if you would like to have a map, but you don't have to have a map, but if you do have a map, you then get sent a verifying postcard. From Google, it takes sometimes two to three weeks to arrive, and that's to assure that whoever's confirming that address or location, general location can be found because I could set up an account in your name if I wanted to, and I could say it was at your address. But if you receive a card and you don't know anything about it, this is the best way to secure, you know, me setting up the business.
Yeah, yeah. And that's very helpful, that people can't steal your information and can't say that, you know, their business is at your address whenever they can't get it verified,
Whole point.
So what do you add to the Google My Business? What's the point of is it like another social media platform? Do you add posts and photographs and images and writing? What do you create there?
You were listing that directly at my blog post, don't you?
No, I wasn't.
"Laughs" yes.
Although Melanie does have a blog post written all about this that has a lovely tiger on it "laughs". Not that I would know. I'm not looking at it right now.
No, that's funny. No, quite truthfully, you can have all of that on there. Images obviously do well on every social media platform is eye-catching. It gets found in searches. And if you can create, if you can create blog posts, ideal, but you don't have to do blog posts on every social media platform. It would be easier if you did, though. And the only reason why is because Google My Business is a fabulous platform for search engine optimization. And if you can attach lovely images or videos that say it means it helps people stop in their tracks when they're doing a Google search.
Yeah, and it can help, you know, whenever people are looking for your Business, if you have pictures of the outside of your office.
Yeah.
That helps because while I know in our case and the street address, if you click on it, it doesn't show any buildings around. So Google has an issue with sometimes, you know, getting the right number on the right.
You work on your shed, no one's going to see your shed, ok, we've had this conversation before.
My shed is actually visible from the street because we have lots of lights outside it. So, you know, you're just jealous of my shed. But like I was saying, if somebody was to come and try and find us, they would literally be in the middle of a field because the little point, the little dot that they put on it, the little pin that's the name, the little pin that they put down for our address is not at the right place. So having pictures of the outside to show people is also useful, but also being able to move the PIN is very, very useful as well. Now you can move the pin on Facebook and they use maps as well, but the Google Maps as well, and that can actually aid you being found better when people traverse through your Google My Business account online. But it's not just an area where you can get search engine optimization. It's also a really, really good place to get reviews. So let's say you look up a holiday, you look into TripAdvisor, if you look up hotels, you go to booking.com or places like that to find decent hotels and check out the reviews. But you can also get reviews just like he can on other social media platforms, on Google My Business and then quite trusted reviews, because you have to use your own name. So if you have a look at any of your local businesses, the hope is that some of them have got Google My Business accounts and you'll be able to see that they got Google reviews as well.
Yeah, but there are some people who are afraid of reviews. Can they turn them off?
You don't have to have them up in the first place, but you can. The great thing about reviews is you can defend yourself. You can respond to them. Sometimes it could be that, you know, somebody actually got the wrong business that has happened in the past. But there are companies out there that also look after your reputation and we'll talk about them another time and they come in and actually specifically target the people who troll reviews.
Yeah, we don't like trolls, but something that I've noticed that, you know, they keep updating the Google My Business. And most recently, you know, they've always been saying it's coming up to a holiday. Are you modifying your opening hours? Are you still going to be open on st. Patrick's Day, for example, in our case, are you going to be open Christmas Day, you're going to be open in New Year's Eve. You know, all these things are now with the current situation as it is or has been depending on when you're listening to us coronavirus. There's also been a way to update on how people can still get to your business or get, you know, get in touch with you. So all that has been very, very helpful and
Well, yes and no. I'm going to critique Google here a little bit, because if you haven't been using your Google My Business account and you had a Google My Business account in the first place, Google in their infinite wisdom for some ways and told everybody on the Google My Business accounts. Well, you haven't posted for a while, so you must be temporarily closed. And a lot of businesses are Google searching now and looking up local businesses and they look like they're temporarily closed because the Google My Business account has said they are. So if you think you may have a Google My Business account, this is the time to check guys, because you may have been temporarily closed by Google and you need to go in there and open yourself up if you are indeed open, even if part-time.
Yeah. Or even just write an update of what's happening right now, that even if you are still temporarily closed due to coronavirus or due to going on holidays, I mean, if and when we can leave the country or staycation, but just make sure that it is up to date, it's always good. And the app came in quite recently, didn't it. Melanie?.
Oh, I'd absolutely suggest everybody, if you're in any social media platform, but particularly this one, always make sure that you get the app because it makes you far more responsive and you get to see all the notifications that crop up, you can get messages, you can get obviously Google reviews, you can get questions sent to you and you say you need to respond. And it's not normally an app you would have open on your laptop in fairness. So if you get the app on your phone, you can respond.
Yeah, yeah. And it's one that it's going to be around for a while.
It's not going anywhere, it's not going anywhere.
It's a Google product. This isn't going anywhere.
Well, making another Google Plus "laughs" we thought the same about Google Plus all those years ago.
And by the way, guys, this is not a sponsored podcast. We're just talking about products that we use that we would recommend. But we're not getting paid by Google to talk about this podcast at all.
Although if anybody at Google is listening and would like to sponsor us, I will not say no.
You're not wrong
No, but we do. It is something that we use and it's something that we think will be useful for you as well. So that's why we're talking about it today. So that's it for today. And we'll be back with another episode next week talking about more interesting stuff. So be sure to join us and check us out on all our social media. Find us on Google and give us a review, see you later,, guys
bye.