Should You Only Post Unique Content on Your GMB Profile?

It is tempting to use the same blog content in your Google My Business profile, but should you?

Video Transcript:

David: I think the bigger question, to reiterate what Dave’s asking, is what’s the best practice for posting into Google My Business?

Tricia: So, I think it’s a little bit confusing. But when you make content, you can post about your recent blog and lead people to it if that’s what you want people to do. However, I really think that the best thing for these posts is to think of them as an ad. If you were taking out a local ad somewhere, what do you want to emphasize? And I would really kind of stick with that. Occasionally, you might want to lead them to a blog, but I wouldn’t… You know, I do that myself sometimes. I get a little bit like the cobbler’s kids have no shoes. I don’t do mine as well as I do my clients. And I need to work on that – spend time on mine. But I will definitely say to try to use your own photos. That’s one of the big things, I know. It’s harder for businesses like ours, especially in posts. If you’re uploading photos to your profile, just photos, not photos in a post; don’t use any stock photos. It’s frowned upon to use stock photos. But I don’t think that they’re really as adamant as they are about just photos in general when you upload photos to your profile because people want to see your business. And that’s another thing, too. They want to see… So, let’s say, for example, so this one here, Quality Restoration Services in Port Charlotte. What I did was I looked at their profile, and they’ve got all these pictures of before and after. Things like that. And I just told him, you need to have some photos of your workers. And they had recently gotten some shirts. And I think if you click on the photos there, David, you can see. So, they got the shirts, and I told them you’ve gotten these new shirts. You don’t have to stand there and smile and show your face. You have them working and just take a few pictures and upload them. So, they listened to me. So, yeah. So, that’s something to, especially for your clients, make sure that there’s even, for example, good pictures that show that they’ve handled cases that have all this water damage and the after. People do want to see, especially people coming into your home; they want to see them. They’re actually working. Another good example of this is our people who do pet training and dog training and stuff like that. The pictures that do better are the ones… Like, for example, if you’re a dog trainer, you should be in the photo with the dog. They do much better than just the dog, and Google actually sometimes will misinterpret it. I had somebody once tell me that Google didn’t like some photos they were posting because they thought they were selling animals. They’re like, I’m a dog trainer. I don’t sell animals. I train them. It’s like, well, you need to show pictures of you with the dogs, not just the dogs. So, those are your Google My Business profile tips for the day.

David: So, specifically about posts.

Tricia:  Yeah. I kind of moved off to photos.

David: Do you have to have a blog post?

Tricia: Say that again?

David: I got a little confused when we talked about posts in Google My Business.

Tricia: Gotcha.

David: Can you reiterate? You’re suggesting that it’s okay to duplicate the content from your blog in the Google My Business profile.

Tricia: I wouldn’t just copy all of it. There’s a limit on text. But if, say, you do like on other social media, where you have a couple of sentences, and it leads to it, you can definitely do that on your Google My Business profile. But I would kind of limit doing that because one of the main things is you want to really kind of use that more as an advertisement. Now also, for example, what you might want to do instead of that is, say, sign up for our blog and to receive updates. Get your five free tips on Google analytics, blah, blah, blah, whatever, click here. And when they sign up, they would sign up for a newsletter, like when your blog updates, you would send them emails. So, I would say something more like that would probably be preferable. Now, I’m not saying that you should never mention your blog there. If you’ve got a new blog post and you want to post it, sure, post it.

David: Because I’ve done, and I don’t know if I’m doing it right, I don’t consider myself a local specialist, but I will just use an automated system every time I publish a new blog post to add a Learn More link to my profile.

Tricia: Yeah, and I do the same, so you’re not alone. Having said that, I do need to update mine and change it around a bit. So, I would say yes, you can keep doing that. But in between, I would definitely add some promotional-type things, you know, getting people to sign up. Telling people about your GA4 study group and saying, sign up for this for free. Then you’ve got their email, and then you can market to them about Curious Ants.

David: Right. It’s interesting how, and for a while, I would, and I started doing again, put Google UTM codes in posts.

Tricia: Yeah, I do that.

David: And I was really surprised to see how few people were clicking on posts. So, I don’t put a lot of effort into posting on Google My Business. If I can do it automatically, that’s great, but I don’t… For a while, every time I published a post, I would manually go in, and I would tag it. Then it would be like, okay, yeah, this is pretty much not helpful to anybody.

Tricia: Well, I will say, though, that I use them more for getting their attention and getting them to click through to the website. So, for example, if there’s a post there, and it’s more of an ad, it may get more clicks, but also, they may see your post and click on your website and not on the Learn More on your posts.

David: Right.

Tricia: So, I look at the post not really as the post is going to get the click-throughs, but your profile is going to get more views and click-throughs. So, that’s kind of how I look at posts.

David: Great.

Tricia: It’s helping your profile overall and not that specific post. Of course, unless you’re doing things, more ad-type things, to get them to click through. Then I think you may increase your click-through rates.

David: Right, right.