How to Get Started with Google My Business Posts [Video]

In this post, I’m going to show you how to get started with Google My Business posts. This is a new feature from Google, and it enables you to create a quick, micro-post, almost like a little mini blog post, or even a Facebook status update, that will then show up, with an image, in search results for your company’s name. In some cases, these mini-posts also show up in Google Maps searches.

It’s a really good opportunity to get some messaging out there and put a spotlight on specific elements of your business.

Main Uses of Google My Business Posts

Most people are going to use these posts for events, special offers, maybe even product updates. They can also be used for more general announcements – say you are closed on the 4th of July, you could make that messaging clear so people see it before they even visit your site.

The option also offers an avenue for content marketing. For example, in a test that I did, I went in and highlighted a recent guide that a client had posted on their blog, using that as the hook.

To get started with the new posts, log into your Google My Business profile. There,  in amongst your normal elements – your insights, your traffic, etc. – you’ll also see a new option called ‘Posts’ in the main window and in the left function menu.

If you don’t see the posts option, don’t worry – it is coming, it’s being rolled out to all users. 

Click on ‘Create Post’, either from the main screen or the dedicated Posts tab, and you’ll be taken to the user interface for the new tool.

Images are very important for this post type, because they’re a huge portion of it. Like I said earlier, think of this like a Facebook post – if your image is kind of boring, it’s not going to draw or attract much attention.

Google says the minimum photo size is 720 by 720, though  I would recommend the photo size larger than that – I would double it and go 1440 by 1440 just so you have a higher res image across multiple devices. Upload a very engaging image.

Next is the post itself – you can enter up to 1,500 characters with spaces, which equates to around 300 words. Write in your description, then move onto the next element.

Google’s also added a special section for events, which seems to be a key focus for the option. 

You can enter up to 58 characters with spaces, and you’ll also get neat features like the ability to pick the start dates and the end times.  

In addition to this, there are also five different CTAs you can include – ‘Learn More’, ‘Reserve’, ‘Sign up’, ‘Buy’, and ‘Get Offer’. The CTAs add a link to the website of your choosing.. 

 When you’re done, your live post will look something like this when clicked in the search results. 

Here’s an example of how it actually looks, before clicking, in the SERP – as you can see, I’ve Googled ‘Club Woodside’ and you can see all the information that’s pulling from their Google My Business account, including the post.

The image is engaging – it’s colorful and simple to use. If you click the ‘Learn More’ CTA, you’ll go right to the blog post they’ve linked to.

Google has made this a simple, easy to use option – they could have added a lot of bells and whistles to it, but hey, if you want to make a huge blog post, you’re going to use WordPress or something like that. This is just an simple addition, something to add to your toolbox that you can get an instant benefit from. Worth noting to, as soon as I hit ‘Publish’ on a post, it was instantly available in the search results.

Let me know in the comments how you plan on using this – look forward to seeing your feedback.