What is Google doing to help your business during lockdown?

So first things first, if you don’t have a Google My Business profile for your business, go and do it now, immediately, don’t delay – EVERY business should have a Google My Business profile, if you don’t you are missing a trick and by the way it’s free. To find out how to do it and ultimately sign up check out Google’s instructions. A couple of tips, don’t try to shoe horn too much in first off, do upload photos, if you have a physical location make sure one of them is the front of your premises clearly stating your business name, do use your logos so that your brand recognition is there for your customers, don’t make out you are something you are not. Keep it short, sweet, snappy and truthful.

Depending on your business type, you will have the option to put posts on your profile, a bit like Facebook you can include text and images. Not all business types get this option but they usually have other variables, for example, restaurants can’t post status updates but they can upload their menus. Our twofentons business has the option of posts but our other business a self catering studio doesn’t but you can book online for that – well you can’t at the moment as obviously it’s closed during lockdown, but it WILL reopen at some point this year we hope!

If you do have the option to use posts

Google have added a new post type directly related to Covid-19. These posts will be highlighted, i.e. they will remain above any other post type you put out for 14 days. All posts have a shelf life of 14 days with Google My Business so if your information hasn’t changed remember that you will need to repost the update every two weeks.

Why would you use the Covid-19 post type? Well, you can inform your customers about your temporary closure, or your new business hours, changes to services that you provide be they new ones or usual services, what kind of precautions are you taking at the moment with regards to sanitising products, what is in stock, low stock or high demand products?

If you don’t have the option to use posts

Google has got a message on all Google My Business profiles at the moment in the admin section stating there is limited functionality and edits could take longer to be accepted during the Covid-19 situation, be patient, they will get round to it eventually.

Now is the time to make sure your profile is completely up to date. We’ve found that some customers profiles have been automatically set to show they are temporarily closed due to the lockdown, by trying to change the heading in your profile to show you are temporarily closed doesn’t work so let Google get to it. If your profile doesn’t show it just yet, change your hours to reflect any changes to your opening times, or adjust the section in your profile where you get to wax lyrical about your business. Perhaps you have closed your front door but you are still able to make deliveries, or post products out to customers or you are offering a particular service that customers could find useful in these trying times?

Depending on how long lockdown goes on for, or which businesses will be allowed to start trading again, we are pretty certain that Google will be adjusting profiles to reflect these changes, but again please remember there could well be a delay getting to yours. In the meantime, utilise all the options you have on your profile and revisit it every now and again to see if there is anything further you can adjust as Google do seem to add things in randomly from time to time.

Having trouble? Don’t know where to start? We are more than happy to help you out, be it to point you in the right direction or to do the leg work for you, just give us a shout and we’ll get back to you.