The Complete Guide to Creating the Best Google My Business Posts

If you want your business to be found online, Google My Business can help you be more visible.  It connects you to new audiences and helps you to understand the behavior of customers around your business surroundings.  But, how will your Google My Business posts do just this?

This article will lay down the guidelines that will give you an idea of how you can create the best posts on Google My Business that will help you achieve your marketing goals and objectives.

What is Google My Business Post?

First, you should know that Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to manage your presence on Google, the world’s most popular search engine.  Through this tool, you can tell the story of your business through posts, photos, reviews, and other important information that potential customers get attracted to before they land on your website.

What are posts that you can create on your Google My Business page?  These posts enable your business to:

• Proclaim your promotions and discounts on your products and/or services to help increase engagement with your potential and current customers
• Advertise events that encourage engagement or promote new products and/or services
• Provide a one-click connection between your customer and your product and/or service.  It serves as an additional line of communication where customers can engage with you directly through Google.

Creating Google My Business Posts That Will Impact Your Marketing Goals

1. Select the Best Type of Post For Your Goals

There are five post types that you can choose from for Google My Business.  The best type for you to use will depend on your goals while incorporating the image, text, and a clear call to action.  The options you have are:

• Covid-19 Update

This GMB post was created last year in response to the pandemic.  You can use this post for this type of information:

• Closures and reduced opening hours
• Safety guidelines and protocols like relevant social distancing measures and hygiene practices
• Availability of gift cards to support your business
• Online classes and visits
• Adjusted service options like curbside pickup, takeaway only, or free delivery

• What’s New Post

This post is focused on announcements and general information about your business.  It is also called an ‘update’ post that includes images, some copy, and a CTA.

• Events Post

You can list your live or online events with this type of post.  You will need to include a start and end date and time.  You can include a photo, the event title, an optional ‘Add more details’ text, and an “Add a button’ CTA for a link.

• Offers Post

This post includes limited-time coupons, discounts, promotions, or sales.  It can also be something that you give away for free like a download or a brief consultation.  You will also need to include a start and end date and you can choose to include a coupon code if needed.

Add value to your offers post with ‘evergreen’ offers, which are things that you offer year-round.  You can include free consults and free services along with your ‘evergreen’ posts.

• Products

Feature one or more of the products that you have available in your Product tab.

2. Creating Your Post to Match the Needs of Your Customers

The best GMB posts are not flashy ones.  They’re the ones that provide the information the audience needs.  How do you do just that?  Keep these tips in mind:

• Aim to keep your text within 300 characters even if the limit is up to 1500 characters unless you have a very good reason to make a longer post.  Keep things short and direct.  Users will have to click to read more.  Make sure that the first 7 or 8 words that show up above the fold will grab the attention of your audience.  On-brand emojis can add a nice touch to your text.
• Use professional-grade photos and videos that can be a deciding factor for a new customer trying to choose you above your competition.  Showcase your absolute best that will increase your conversions.
• Add a CTA that is linked to an effective landing page.  Choose a CTA that matches your post type.  A pro-tip in including CTA’s is to use UTM parameters for your links so you can measure how much traffic is coming from Google against other marketing efforts that you have.
• Include a date range for the events and offer posts.  Google archives posts with no specific date range after 7 days.

3.  Publishing Your Post

Before you hit publish for your post, click preview to see how your post will look.  Copy-edit and fine-tune, if needed.  Your post will be shown in these places:

• Mobile
• Desktop
• Google My Business websites (if you don’t have your own)

The best time to publish your post will depend on your unique audience.  You can find your own best practices on this by learning how your audience typically responds to your posts.  Consider these tips:

• Post when your audience will see it by knowing the habits of your audience and their time zones.
• Run a test on the same posts posted at different times and learn from the analytics to see what time works best for posting.

4.  Check Your Analytics

Once you get your post up and running, you can use insights from Google to check how many customers are engaging through your GMB profile.  Support the insights with a strategy that will address what your customers need.  Respond to reviews that customers leave on your profile because this will give them the idea that you are trustworthy.

Taking Control of Your GMB Posts

Most of the time, you can control your GMB posts.  Google has recently added a new area called ‘For visitors’ in the ‘Updates’ tab in google Maps where visitors can add images along with captions for the image that they add.  Hence, this user-generated content changes the area of the GMB profile that businesses used to curate.

Overall though, GMB posts are a great place where engagement and conversions can happen for your business.  It also introduces your business to Google in terms of an entity.  Stay in touch with your customers with these tips and guidelines for creating Google My Business posts.

More from Infintech Designs

Anything You Need to Know About Video Ad Sequencing on YouTube

11 Landing Pages Stats for 2021 That Can Help Conversion Rates

Infintech Designs is a digital marketing agency that specializes in helping small and medium-sized businesses succeed online.

Located in New Orleans, Louisiana, we understand the importance of making sure your business gets seen by customers searching for you on Google or other search engines—and this can be done through an effective web design strategy and clever use of ads.

We want to help make it easier for people like yourself with limited resources to get started! Contact us now.