Managing Google My Business for Home-Based and Service-Area Companies
In this week’s Office Hours we discussed a common issue with small businesses: how to handle home-based and service-based companies.
Google MyBusiness (GMB) is an important part of a local business strategy. It can be a challenge, however, when it comes to working from a home-office or if you don’t take customers at your location, but go to them (service-area companies). Google is getting more and more strict about setting up your listing properly. What will this look like? We offer some insights.
We’ve talked about Core Web Vitals becoming a ranking factor in May, before. What’s the latest? We talk about some of the things we need to do and what we can expect from this update.
One member asked a question about turning off automated reports sent from Google Analytics. This can be tricky! If you don’t do it right, you might never get another report from Google Analytics. Turn it off properly. We talk about how to do this.
I had a question (because I don’t know everything, for sure) about different tools to share posts over social media. I received some recommendations based on some specific needs I have.
Transcript
David: Welcome to office hours. Today is March 24th, and we’re here to talk about all things SEO. And we had one question submitted by a member of the colony, but she’s not here. So we might wait for her question at the end in case she’s able to show up. And otherwise, I mean, it’s a really good question. In fact, there’s a couple of things…yeah, I’m glad she asked it. But we didn’t talk about whether we wanted to talk about success stories over the last week. Oh, Alie has a success story she’d like to share with us.
Alison: Yeah, I’ll go.
David: Good.
Alison: So I’ve been keeping track…you know, I do my weekly dashboard, and one of the metrics I keep track of and that is calculated from my own personal bonus is website traffic. So far this month, I know it’s a five-week month, so I compared the four weeks. So far, in the first 4 weeks of March, I’ve exceeded our website traffic by about 200 people compared to the month before, like 150, 200 people. And then for new users, it’s up over 200 people, for new…
Tricia: Wow.
Alison: …users.
David: Wow.
Alison: I am pretty proud about that because that is the one thing that makes me the most nervous because I feel like it’s very hard to predict how many people are going to come to your website. People behave kind of oddly, you know. We had a lot less social media this week, but I’m going to chalk that up to the weather. Like, people were outside, they weren’t going on as much anymore and being tied to their computer screens and everything. But to me, the fact that the overall traffic is up is signifying that even though I am terrible at following your game plan, I am doing some things right because our traffic is increasing every month.
David: Has that translated into new customers, new clients?
Alison: Yes, it has.
David: Great.
Alison: We’ve had…I can’t…The website can’t take credit for new clients completely because, at the end of the day, we don’t know for sure if that’s where they’re coming from if they’re coming word of mouth. But we have had a major increase in new clients in the last two months.
Tricia: Awesome.
Alison: Like to the point where it’s almost been difficult to keep up with it.
David: What a wonderful problem.
LaVonya: I know.
Alison: Like, we’re hiring more than ever. We have 60 active clients now. We’re hiring more rapidly. We just hired another operations coordinator. We have our clinic opening in a few months. So we’re in a really exciting time of growth. And all that growing traffic on the website is before we’ve even published anything about our clinic. So that’s not even out there yet because we’re waiting until everything legally is down and done before we start advertising it, which was great advice since we thought it would open in January. Here we are still tied in legal mumbo-jumbo. So, you know, that is really awesome. We didn’t even do that extra mile of promoting this new exciting thing. We’re just sticking with our current services and trying to optimize what we do and how we post things, and it’s been working for us.
David: That’s really great to hear.
Alison: That is a success.
LaVonya: That’s great.
David: That’s great. Good work. Oh, boy, now I’m intimidated.
Tricia: I know.
David: I don’t even have a score that great.
Alison: Now I’m going to mute myself, so I can eat my cheesy puffs.
David: Wow, that’s super. Any other…You know, success stories are all the eye of the beholder. So, I’ll go with my second success story. I told you that I had been working with one of my clients to get them a placement in an industry-focused kind of website, blog, periodical, whatever you want to call it. They happen to be like a printed periodical, but they have a blog too. And so obviously, for SEO, I want to be in their blog. And gosh, it’s been six months to get this one opportunity settled. And finally heard back from the last week that it’s going to be published in April. And it’s such a success story because the client’s excited about it. It’s mainly one link, but it’s one link from a really good authoritative source in our industry. And I’d take that over 100 links in crappy old blogs and websites everywhere.
Tricia: Yeah, that sounds awesome.
David: And I’m just excited that it’s going live. It just kind of goes back to the whole link-building story. Link-building is all about perseverance. You know, I could’ve easily given up on them. They have gone through transitions internally. Somehow my email ended up in their spam folder even though I promised I wasn’t spamming them. You know, it is like everything wrong to the point where I wondered if the client really believed me this was an opportunity. And finally, finally, it’s going through. It’s not published yet, but they promised it’s published in April. So, hurray, like I’m glad I just kept going with it, kept going with it. It’ll be successful, and that’s my success story for the week.
Tricia: Sure, well, that’s awesome.
David: Anybody else wanna share a success story, or shall we proceed?
LaVonya: We can proceed.
David: Okay, Alie [crosstalk00:05:53.767]
LaVonya: Unless Tricia has something.
David: Come on, I’ve had to…LaVonya’s had something good. But I won’t put you on the…So, what questions do you have? If you don’t, I have a question for the group. But I want to make sure you have the opportunity to ask your questions first. And I’m not going to ask a troubling quiz question and make you…stump your question. This is like, I have a problem in my business, and I need your help. So, go ahead, LaVonya.
LaVonya: Well, I was just going to ask about Google My Business. I get an email saying that I have people I saw through Google My Business like so many people saw your business. And then I recently got an email, yes, stating that, “Do I have special hours for Easter?” But Patricia said, like you can’t change anything before you get that code, and I did. But why is it still giving me…? And then when I look at it on the map, it’s got me for the whole United States. I’m trying not to put my home address on there, but then again, I learned that you can’t put, like, a secondary…like, it can’t be from, like, UPS or…
Tricia: Yes, correct. So when you signed up to get your code, you probably, I think, put your home address in but then said not to show it, is that right?
LaVonya: I don’t remember. I think I went back and forth between two of the addresses because I think I put in the UPS address first, and then I read the instructions that said don’t do that.
Tricia: Yeah. Do you remember where they delivered the postcard to?
LaVonya: To my house.
Tricia: Okay. So then that’s the address you used. Because that will tell you…They send it to the address that you put in. And so basically, when you did that, there’s a little box that says, “Check this,” so that you don’t see people at your place of business. You don’t have a brick-and-mortar store. You have a service area business. So now what you would do is go into your dashboard in Google My Business, and there’s a thing that says, “To set your service area.” So I can’t remember…I think you’re in North Carolina, South Carolina, I can’t remember.
LaVonya: Yeah, North Carolina.
Tricia: So like, for me, I would go in and put Metro Atlanta, maybe some other outlying areas. So you would go into your service area and put into that…It’s near where your address is when you go into your dashboard. And you need to set your service area and just put it in some different cities.
LaVonya: I did, well, I did Charlotte and North Carolina, and then I did South Carolina. But I didn’t put anything, like a specific city for South Carolina.
Tricia: If it took it, then that’s okay. Sometimes they want specific areas, but I do think you can put a state then. So if it took it, you know, that’s okay. Because when you look at it on desktop and just look at it…Or do you want to share the screen and since I’m not logged in, maybe have me look it up and see what we’re seeing?
LaVonya: Yeah, hold on a second.
Tricia: Okay. Tell me, what’s your business name again?
LaVonya: LDJ Web Design.
David: So you can, from your Google My Business listing…Before you share it, LaVonya, don’t screen share it quite yet.
Tricia: I was going to share from mine, from like what I see. Oh, I see what you’re saying.
David: Don’t share it from yours, LaVonya, because you don’t want your address, but it might have your address in the back-end.
Tricia: Yeah, I’ll share from my screen so that we’re seeing…I’m obviously not logged in to her account.
David: Yeah, yeah.
Tricia: Let me see where I am. There, share. Okay, can you guys see it?
LaVonya: Not yet.
David: Not yet. There it is.
Tricia: Okay. So I see what she’s saying is that it goes all the way like all this. So…
David: It’s nice to know you can serve Hawaii.
Tricia: Yeah. So it’s something about…And I’ll tell you I did this once too. So there’s something in there in that section about when you put those service areas. Double-check. For example, I was putting in ZIP Codes for a client of mine, and I transposed the numbers. But the ZIP Code that actually got put in was clear across the whole. I don’t know what. And all of a sudden, it starts in Georgia and goes up to Alaska. And I’m like, “Why is that?” And it had to do with that. So you might want to go in and clear your service areas, clear them and then go in and add the two, the North Carolina, South Carolina, because this would…leaving it like this would probably trigger something you might have an issue with Google.
LaVonya: I see Services, but when I click on Services, that’s like the service I offer.
Tricia: Yeah, you’re going to click on Info.
LaVonya: Oh, Info, okay.
Tricia: But, yeah. Because I’ll show you mine, for example, while we’re…And look, I’ll click…Whoops, I’ve got all of these things for Chrome that pops up. Okay, so, for example, here there is mine. And you see, it doesn’t have all the United States, everything on here. Sorry, I’ve got all kinds of Chrome extensions.
David: I would love to hear your walk-through of those Chrome extensions too, and why you use them, and what they’re valuably teaching.
LaVonya: I have a lot too.
Tricia: I have a gazillion. And that was actually a problem for me when I got my new computer. I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, I think last week when I launched my website, and it was at like the same time, a new computer because my old one just completely crashed. And then I launched my website. Well, I couldn’t log into my website and edit it. I could log in to WordPress. When I said, “Edit with Beaver Builder,” it just went to, “Here’s what your website.” And the Beaver Builder edit was gone. And I’m like, “But it said it was logged in.” And so I went to Edge, which I’m not a fan of, but I’m like, “Let me just try.” And I logged in fine. So at that point, I knew it was something, and I had to literally test every single plug-in, extension…not plug-in, extension that I had on Chrome. So, anyway.
David: But what was the pop-up you had on your map that had all the information? It had your CID. It had the…
Tricia: It may have been…I’m not sure. That one might’ve been like GMB Crush is one of the ones.
David: Because there’s a lot of really great behind-the-scenes information like your entity number.
Tricia: Yeah.
David: [crosstalk 00:13:13.946]
LaVonya: [crosstalk00:13:14.746] area. I see what happened. I have the United States selected on there too. It’s on that list.
Tricia: That’s why. That’s why. See, it was going all the way to Alaska and Hawaii.
LaVonya: It was.
David: And that’s an interesting question because technically, LaVonya, you could serve anybody in the United States.
Tricia: Okay, so, yes. However, I just did a presentation this morning so hopefully, if I get too involved, just say, “Enough.” So technically, like LaVonya, and like me, you know, we can serve people in other areas. But Google My Business is specifically for local businesses. It was kind of based off of the map. It used to be called Google Places years ago. And so they want…To have a Google My Business listing, you need to either have a brick-and-mortar store or they want you to have a what they call service area business where you don’t go…they don’t come to you, but you can come to them. Now, some businesses like internet marketing, things like that, are a little bit more flexible, but from what I’ve learned is that you’re recommended to have a 200-mile radius maximum. Otherwise, you could trigger in Google and get your account suspended.
So that’s why I would say even though…And so, for example, most of my clients are in the Atlanta market. I do have some that aren’t, but the majority of them are. And I do have clients that I go to. Since COVID, I haven’t gone to as many… I’ve gone to one or two to meet with them. So it’s not…for example, e-commerce-only stores are not allowed to have Google My Business. So if you had an e-commerce store, that’s all you did. You would not be allowed to have a Google My Business. So, and things like that.
David: Great. Okay.
Tricia: I hope that clarifies.
LaVonya: Thank you.
David: Yeah. No, that’s great. And that’s a great strategic question, too, because although someone like LaVonya can serve anybody, it’s always better to focus. It would be better to say, “Okay, I’m a Charlotte-based web developer,” than it would be to say, “I’m a web developer.” Because you could compete in a Charlotte market, even though it would be pretty competitive, but you might not be able to compete against nationwide firms in just a blanket organic search.
Tricia: Exactly.
David: So, as a best practice, like on my website, I say I’m a Charlotte marketing consultant, even though I literally have no clients in Charlotte, right?
Tricia: Well, the other part of that too is like, for example, Atlanta. So, you know, I always say I’m in Atlanta, but a lot of times, I’ll say, Marietta. I may focus like…especially when you’re getting in and trying to get your foot in the door somewhere. I might focus on smaller geographic and then move out because if I were just to say, “I’m going to service the Atlanta market,” there are so many there that it’s so saturated. It’s easier for me to say Marietta or even further up on the map like Kennesaw to say, “I focus on these,” and once I get known there, then spread out some more for SEO tactics. Yeah, for sure.
David: So, LaVonya, did you update that yet?
LaVonya: I did, but now Google is saying that North Carolina is under review. So I can’t…
Tricia: That’s okay. Sometimes it takes a little bit more. And so I just refresh if it hasn’t been done. Sometimes it takes a little bit when you make those updates for it to show up. I would think by…Sometimes it takes like 10, 15 minutes. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer, and that under review is just there. So like, if you see here on the screen, it was here, Alaska and Hawaii. So, yeah.
LaVonya: Okay, I see.
David: Great. Great question, LaVonya.
Tricia: Okay, I’ll stop my screen share.
David: All right.
LaVonya: Thank you. So I don’t have to go back into Google and change anything. Everything should be okay now, right?
Tricia: Yeah, as long as you went in and changed that. And I would just go back and just double-check what it looks like on the map when you’re not logged in just to make sure that it picked up that change.
David: We’ll give it a couple of days?
Tricia: Sometimes it’s only about 20 minutes, but sometimes it takes a little longer. So, you know, when we get off of the call today, I would go back and check on it, and then if not, maybe tomorrow morning, check it.
LaVonya: Okay, thank you.
David: Great. Thank you. What other questions do we have to struggle with today?
LaVonya: Well, so Google now will be focused a lot on page speed, right?
David: Yes. Well, yeah, to a degree, yeah.
LaVonya: Okay. So we have to make sure every page is within what Google considers appropriate, I guess, in case there’s something. Right?
David: I literally just watched a presentation about this. So it’s an oversimplification to say page speed matters to Google because page speed is really hard for Google to objectively measure. So what they’ve done is they’ve pivoted and said, we have three Core Web Vitals. Sometimes they call them the Web Core Vitals, but it’s the same three things that we need to make sure our website performs well for these three different metrics. And when I say website, I’m actually meaning every page on our website because the Web Core Vitals, Core Web Vitals is a page-by-page score. So, you can see how your website’s performing by going in the Google search console and looking at the Core Web Vitals report at the bottom of your page. You can also use the PageSpeed Insights tool. It will tell you not only your three scores for the three Web Core Vitals but the simple answer of whether you pass or fail on that particular page. The deadline for this is sometime in May.
LaVonya: We have to have our site…So I have to meet Google’s Web Core Vitals by May.
David: So, the question is, what would happen if it didn’t?
LaVonya: Yeah, that’s what I’m getting to, yeah.
David: Right, right. So, remember there are 200 or so different ranking factors for each page in Google. And these three will become some of those, to what degree, we don’t know. Is it going to be the most important factor? Probably not. Is it going to be the least important factor? It could, but probably not. So we have to weigh in with all the other things we need to be doing and then figuring out what we can. We know for sure that this is number one if you don’t achieve a green score. A green score varies on the three metrics per page on mobile. You do not benefit from the Web Core Vitals. That’s what Google said. You have to achieve a green score for the three Web Core Vitals on each page to receive a benefit. So that suggests if you don’t, you won’t be penalized. It just means you won’t benefit from it. So that tells us if your site passes a Web Core Vitals from a mobile perspective, you might get an advantage. But if you don’t, it doesn’t mean you’re going not show up in Google.
LaVonya: Yeah, I get green vitals on desktop, but that mobile is, like, stuck in yellow.
David: And remember, as of March this month, Google is evaluating your website based on your mobile experience only. They’re not even looking at the desktop anymore. So, mobile is key here. So what I’m recommending clients do is focus the Web Core Vitals on your website’s important pages. Those are probably going to be your homepage, always going to be your homepage, right? The most important page on your site. Also, any, like, service-related page that’s really about selling. So if you have a page about web development, a page about web design, a page about SEO, those are where you make money, those are important. It’s probably not important that your About Us page has good speed. Obviously, you want it to be relatively fast, but it doesn’t have to achieve green.
It might not be important for your blog posts, but, you know, we can’t do all the things, right? So we have to say, “Okay, even if we had an unlimited budget and unlimited time, we still would take time to even implement this, so we, kind of, have to make our priorities.” So I’d prioritize on the homepage is where I would start. And I bet you what’s going to happen, as you improve the homepage, all your other pages will be improved. Because the odds are the things that are affecting your homepage page scores for the Web Core Vitals translate through your entire site because with the way WordPress works especially, it’s one CSS file. It’s a data query on every page. And the basic designs are there. So if you fix it on your homepage, you’re going to fix it for every page because you’re going to be fixing things sitewide with your same CSS file, or you’re going to figure out, “Oh, this is what’s causing the problem.”
Now, this is tough. It’s so tough that a few months ago, Google said, “Okay, we’re giving in. And now, you don’t have to have a score better than a certain point to go green. Now you can be better to or equal to a certain point.” Do you understand the distinction? It used to be you had to be better than a certain metric to get green. Now you can at least be equal to that metric. So that’s kind of like Google saying, “Okay, we know no one’s reaching this.” I have a client that’s had a team of engineers trying to fix it on their site, and they still haven’t done it. It’s tough. It’s tough. So, weigh it with all the other things you’ve got to do.
Like, what is things that are always going to be ranking factors? Having content on your website for which people are searching, right? Always going to be important. So does this mean you shouldn’t blog to do the Web Core Vitals? I wouldn’t put it that way. You need to be blogging regularly. That’s a really easy way to get more tour traffic and customers. So if I could only do one or the other, I’d probably blog more than I would do page speed. But, you know, if you could have more time…you know, I would pay attention to it. And depending on your time and availability, like go through and try to do one way to improve your homepage every week.
LaVonya: Oh, okay.
David: Just try to make it a little bit better. Again, focusing on mobile. Don’t go on page speed. Go on the three Web Core Vitals, and just see what you can do to improve one each week. And I think what you’ll find is as you improve it a little bit, you’re going to find that translating to the rest of your site, and you’re going to learn a little bit more about what it takes each time. And then by May, even if you’re not all green, at least if you’re not red, meaning you have a poor user experience, then okay. So that’s how I would approach it. I’ve told some clients because, I mean, all my clients are working on it, and it’s tough, and I’ve basically said to them, “If we can hit May, great. But if it takes to July to do it right, that’s okay. Let’s not panic.”
Tricia: Well, that’s…I don’t think…Everybody’s in the same boat. And so, yeah. I have a question.
David: Let’s not neglect our good marketing to only focus…It’s kind of like everybody focused on SSL certificates a few years ago. Oh my gosh. Well, guess what? Many websites don’t have SSL certificates, and they still show up in Google. It’s not like it’s the end of the world. It’s better to practice to have an SSL certificate, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t. You really need a mobile website, but if you don’t have a mobile website, well, as of this month, it’s going to be a lot harder to compete in search results, but you’ll still…I bet that you’ll still show up.
Tricia: Yeah.
LaVonya: Okay.
Tricia: A question there on the mobile. So, for example, if a client says, “Look, I’ve got…all of my customers are, like, 90% desktop. And their Google Analytics, you know, agree with that. I still need to get it mobile-friendly, well, for user experience, but also for Google.” Explain to them so that you won’t come up in the search engines as high, you know, if you had a competition that’s a lot better than you, you may not come up in the search results, is that correct to say?
David: So the way I’d say it is, Google is evaluating your pages of whether or not to show them to your customers based on what it sees when it looks at the mobile version of your site. It’s not even looking at the desktop version. So if you don’t have a desktop version, it would look at that as if your mobile phone were looking at it. So that would be very broken. And it might not show up very well in the search results. Remember, we can look at traffic for mobile versus desktop in Google Analytics. That’s one of the things we’ve been learning. But remember what that shows. It only shows what is happening now. It doesn’t show you what you’re potentially missing out on because you don’t have it.
Tricia: Thanks, yeah. Okay.
David: I did a test a long time ago with a client. They called me, and then he’s like, “We need a mobile website.” I’m like, “You don’t need a mobile website.” He’s like, “We need a mobile…” I’m like, “You don’t need a mobile website.” And so I said, “Okay, listen, let’s do a test. And we’ll put a phone number on your website that only shows up if it’s a mobile visitor. And suppose people click on that number because they call you. In that case, we know, not only is it a mobile visitor, but they’re really willing to do business with you over mobile.” A month later, we had enough data to build a mobile website, right? It was, like, clear as day I was so wrong. They absolutely needed a mobile website. This was eight years ago.
LaVonya: Ah.
Tricia: Ah, yeah.
David: So maybe 10 years ago. It was, wow, I was so wrong.
Tricia: Before…Yeah. Wow.
David: I was like, “Your customers…” I said, “Your customers might find you, but they don’t contact you off the mobile.” And I was using data in Google Analytics to prove that. But once we allowed them to call them…
Tricia: That’s what they wanted.
David: …they wanted to do it. And they were missing out on a ton of business because their mobile experience was really hard to use. And it was so clear. I was like, “Wow, I was so wrong.” And we just rebuilt the site immediately.
Tricia: Yeah.
David: But, yeah. So, you know, I have many clients, they insist, no one ever does but, you know, they don’t know what they’re missing.
Tricia: Yeah. Well, and obviously, you know, now it’s like you build them mobile-friendly as well. So it’s not as much of an issue, but, you know, a lot of times, they’ll come to say, “Well, mobile doesn’t matter.” It’s like, “Well, we’re going to stick to it. We’re redoing it. Let’s do it right.”
David: Yeah, yeah. I want to go to Stephie’s question real quick before we get lost. So Stephie asked a question on these, how do we turn off mobile reports…or, sorry, not mobile reports, how do we turn off reports that we have received from Google Analytics? So, I’ve encouraged everyone to set up these, you know, weekly reports from Google Analytics. She asked, “How do you turn it off?” I’m glad she asked because, in every one of those emails you receive, it says, “Do you want to stop receiving these? Click this link.”
Tricia: We should not do that.
David: Don’t do that. I learned this the hard way. Learn from my experience. Suppose you click the link in your email from Google Analytics. In that case, it will prevent Google Analytics from ever sending you another report again. So, don’t do it. Instead, Stephie, go into your Google Analytics, go into the Administration section, log in to the proper account, view the view in which the report was set up to come from. And on the far right-hand column, towards the bottom, you will see something that says something about scheduled reports or emailed reports, click on that, you will see all the scheduled reports that are being sent to you from that particular view of Google Analytics, that is where you delete that report. And it will stop sending it immediately. But please don’t be tempted in frustration to click that link, or you will never be able to get a report from that view in Google Analytics again. So…
LaVonya: Whenever we question deleting something or changing something in Google Analytics, we need to ask David, right?
Tricia: Ask David first.
David: Learn from my many mistakes, many mistakes. When I was at my last agency, I learned this because all my team members send a report to themselves like the one we do here each week, and I had to get a copy of it every week. That was just my way of monitoring everybody and stuff and how the clients were performing. And one day, I accidentally clicked that link, and I was like, I went to the employee a couple of weeks later, I’m like, “I’m not receiving these anymore. Will you make sure I’m still set up to get them?” And she’s like, “Yeah, I did, and you are.” And I realized what had happened, and I’m like, “Oh, no.” Because I couldn’t get a copy of that anymore. It was very frustrating.
Tricia: Yikes. Yikes, yikes.
David: Yeah, be careful. Learn from my mistakes. Any other questions, or do we have time to ask my question?
Tricia: We have time for your question [crosstalk 00:33:54.507].
David: Okay. I’ve been begging. So, here we go. I am an avid user of Hootsuite.
LaVonya: What now?
David: And I use Hootsuite to monitor my own social media. I also use it to monitor a few clients’ social media. I also use it to schedule social media posts to go out over a month or so. And sometimes what I’ll do is like even post, “Hey, here’s all the holidays for the year. Here are all the holiday messages going out. Now we don’t have to worry about it.” Everybody gets a 4th of July message, everybody gets a, you know, Labor Day message, whatever. Hootsuite is raising my rates. I’m apparently grandfathered under some crazy, really cheap plan that they realized I’m nearly not paying much for the services I’m getting. And they’re going to up my rate by fivefold…
Tricia: Whoa.
David: …a month, which is still pretty cheap considering all I get. And also, considering I’ve done some pricing on some other solutions and they’re all expensive. So as long as I got it, I have to pay this money. And I will admit to you and the world that scheduling a bunch of social media posts to go out over a month does not a social media strategy make. That’s a crappy social media strategy. Like, I’m just literally vomiting on people. That’s my social media strategy. That is not a social media strategy. So, you can tell… part of your answer to your question might be, “Don’t do that anymore, David.” But, what have you used to schedule out things? Where have you found disappointment? Where have you found success? Maybe it’s several different tools. Maybe it’s one tool. What have you all found? I’m going to tell you the ones I’m looking at too.
Tricia: So I can tell you the one that I currently use for myself and clients is…And this, and I don’t know, I want to say that they are working on something to look at the mentions, but I don’t think I have that yet. It’s mostly scheduling. I can do bulk scheduling, I can do something where it’s like if it’s a similar post, I can say, “Schedule this,” you know, “certain times and give it once a month,” whatever. SocialBee.
David: SocialBee?
Tricia: Mm-hmm. And I can send you a link to that. I don’t know if they have any specials or not. So I lucked out. I got it on an AppSumo deal.
LaVonya: I knew you were going to say that.
Tricia: I got an AppSumo deal. So I’ve got a good deal. So, but I don’t think they’re really, really pricey for what they do. They do Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, there’s a Pinterest. I don’t do Pinterest myself, but I know that it’s good for certain businesses. There’s a way to do it, but it’s not…You have to connect something else. But it can do that. And there might be something else. I want to say there’s a couple more, something else that they do. I really like it. Their support has been really good if I have questions. And I can go in…So if I’ve got one post, and let say I’m going in and want to change it and have like, for instance, Twitter’s shorter, and I have something longer for Facebook, I can go in and say, “Okay, this is what it will be on Facebook, but here’s the same thing on Twitter.”
David: Oh, neat.
Tricia: You know, it’s got…It took a little bit to get used to. But one thing I’ll tell you is 2019, I was in Orlando for WordCamp Orlando. And I was there for a week because I had another presentation in Orlando I was not presenting at but going to and listening to. And so I was there for the week. In the middle of my…It was work/vacation. This was before SocialBee, my previous social media thing broke. And it broke for Facebook. They had a problem with Facebook. And it was like, I had to like, in the middle of all of this…and I want to say because it was Facebook, it was Facebook and Instagram. And I had to like, in the middle of trying to relax, whatever, I’m like…Because I had my client stuff too. Mine, I’m like, “Oh, well.” It was like, “Let me get my clients.” So thankfully, I had SocialBee. And I think it was the week SocialBee actually had a sale on AppSumo. I’m like…So I picked it up, and I went with it, and I’ve been very happy with it.
David: Okay, okay.
Tricia: That was probably longer than you needed to know.
David: Oh, no, that’s good. Alie, what do you use there?
Alison: A girl named Candice.
David: Oh, you hire someone just to do it. All right.
Tricia: Does it physically [crosstalk 00:39:32.452]?
Alison: We have an employee who basically does admin work for us. Part of that is managing our social media.
David: Does she do it for less than $50 a month?
Alison: I don’t know.
David: Because that’s what I can get an app to do it for.
Alison: I don’t know. I mean, it’s like…It’s just, I don’t know what she gets paid for it, yeah.
David: I’m joking, I’m joking.
Alison: But she just plans out the month ahead of time, and then I think, like, pre-scheduled on the individual, you know, sites. We primarily use LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And then, we also have started posting on Pinterest. Still, Pinterest posts are much more planned. It’s only original content, whereas sharing other things on the other, you know, social media sites. But yes, her name is Candice and she’s very nice.
David: The Candice app.
Tricia: The Candice app, yeah.
Alison: Yes.
David: LaVonya, do you use anything?
LaVonya: No, not yet. But I’m going to have to stay stuck on AppSumo because Tricia gets a lot of good stuff off AppSumo.
David: I did sign up on AppSumo.
Tricia: I’m like, this awesome deal, you won’t be able to get it because it’s no longer there. Sign up for AppSumo to get their emails, yeah. I’ll send you a link too, David, on SocialBee.
David: Thank you. I was looking at Buffer.
Tricia: I used Buffer before.
David: That’s a pretty good price, but it’s just barely enough accounts, like, to use, like, their limit is the number of accounts you use. So it’s like, I could make it work, but it’s not quite enough. SocialPilot is a pretty good deal.
Tricia: I’m trying to…I had a problem with renamed them, and I don’t know what they renamed themself to. I may try and look that up and see because…yeah.
David: And then I looked at CoSchedule, which is…
Tricia: I heard of them, but I haven’t used them.
David: CoSchedule is almost two and a half times Buffer for only a couple more accounts, but they do a lot more than just Buffer too. But I think CoSchedule is more like a team thing where team members can do it together, hence the “Co” of CoSchedule. And I don’t need that. It’s just me. So, right, I just want to put things in a queue and go, and that’s why I’m looking at Buffer as the best solution.
Tricia: Yeah. I use Buffer. I really like it. The main reason I didn’t was that it was based on how many I have. It was going to be too costly. So, and based on Buffer and SocialBee, I’m not sure what it is because I’ve paid a one-time. The other one that you mentioned was not…Tell me the other name.
David: CoSchedule.
Tricia: Okay, yeah. I’ve not heard…I’ve heard of it, I haven’t used it. The other one I think too, I’ve not used.
David: Okay, okay.
Tricia: But I’ve used Buffer and like it. The main thing…
David: Yeah. But Buffer is very basic, but it’s kind of what I need. I just don’t need…I don’t get paid to manage social media, I get paid to promote on social media, which is not a good strategy, but hey, that’s what we’re doing. And for that, Buffer seems like the right solution. I’ve heard that people say that your stuff will worsen if you don’t upload it on the platform when you use a system like Buffer. I’d be willing to test that. But I also don’t want to log in to every client’s Twitter account and do it manually.
Tricia: That’s the thing, you know, that I don’t know. It could be. However, the kind of thing is, is if they’re looking for that, to me, they’re looking for a much higher cost. And so, my business used to be more focused on social media. Then I kind of veered towards Google My Business now because that’s what I enjoy and what I kind of saw my focus needed to be. But it kind of got to where with social media it was like so many things that it just kind of…And sometimes, you know, you have small businesses, they’re like, “Well, I don’t want to pay all this money, how can we…?” So kind of you has to hit a happy medium there.
David: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. That’s very helpful.
Tricia: Okay.
David: I think that’s all the time we have.
Tricia: Okay.
LaVonya: All right.
David: All right, well, thank you, everybody.
Tricia: Thank you.
David: Good to see you.
Alison: Thank you.
David: Thank you.
Alison: Oh my God.
David: All right, everybody, take care. Have a great week.
Alison: Bye.
LaVonya: All right, great, bye-bye.
Tricia: See you, bye-bye.
David: Bye-bye.