Google My Business | Live with Google for Nonprofits Ep. 7

hi everybody welcome to live with google for non-profits my name is isha and i'm a program manager on the google for nonprofits team if you're joining us for the first time today live with google for nonprofits is a twice monthly show in which we bring in different speakers some across google um some across other partners to talk about things that you've requested in our surveys so we've talked about many things such as how to get started with google ad grants things like the online marketing challenge and various trainings across google um so in the last episode we actually talked about how to make the most of your youtube channel so if you're interested in that after this episode you can go ahead and look on our youtube channel on the live with google for non-profits playlist and you can watch any of the previous episodes and the live chat does replay so you can actually see the questions that were answered in real time so speaking of live chat um you should be able to see the live chat on the right of your screen um or if you're on your phone it should be below the actual video and you can type in any questions that you have during the show um we do ask if you can keep your questions related to the topic that would be awesome um we won't be able to answer one-on-one technical questions about your specific account but any general questions about how to make the most of your product that would be super useful for everyone else joining us today too if you're having any issues seeing the live chat you can try to just refresh your browser and that should help you uh see it and then if that's still not working let us know and our teammates in the live chat will help troubleshoot any issues that you might be having same thing if you have any issues here and you're seeing us type that in the live chat and we'll work on fixing it as soon as possible so a few other reminders uh this is recorded so if you want to go back and view any part of it re-watch the entire thing anything like that you can do that after the episode and it'll be on the same link that you're viewing it now so it exists on our youtube channel on and uh to look at future episodes make sure to subscribe to our youtube channel uh this should give you reminders of new episodes other other types of youtube content non-profit stories things like that and we hope that you continue to engage with us and at the end we do always send out a survey so make sure you respond to the survey and let us know what other topics you're interested in hearing about as i mentioned every episode we always bring on topics that are requested by in the survey results actually so this topic google my business that we'll be talking about today was requested um by a non-profit who joined us in a previous episode so speaking of today's topic we're super excited to have marco here so i'll be bringing him on the screen shortly and he's been at google for two years and he works on the google store so he really knows the importance of an online presence um and so marco will be joining us to tell us more about how to make the most of your google my business profile and you might be saying what is google my business what is a profile and why does this relate to non-profits um so with marco is here to answer those questions so i'll go ahead and bring him on right now hi marco hi hi everyone thank you thank you very much for having me uh i'm really happy to be part of this amazing set of live shows but let's let's get into the topic so um as i was saying my my work is very much related to the online presence i work on the google store for who doesn't know it's an e-commerce it's a it's a google e-commerce that sells made by google devices and i recently started in particular with during the commit times i recently started working closely with small businesses and with no profit in trying to help them improve their digital presence as you know the customer is changing the way they interact with businesses and their consumer journey is made of many different touch points those touch points could be the website that you have could be youtube video could be social channels uh but one of the most significant and i you know i can kind of can tell from my experience working on the google store is the service search it is the number one channel and it tries the majority of the traffic google my business it helps you have visibility on search as well as on google maps um so let's jump into the topic um i'll share quickly an agenda of the of the points that we're gonna look at uh first of all we look into why do you need a profile what are the main reasons um we'll take a look at how the google my business profile looks like from a from a customer perspective but also from a manager perspective we look at uh how to create the the profile and how to manage it uh and we'll look into some extra features that hopefully uh will help you you know really stand out in front of your customers and then we'll leave some time for question and answer at the end so starting with the with the first question why do you need a google why do you need a profile on google um there are you know as i was saying like search is the main the main channel for traffic uh certainly is for for online businesses and for for businesses that are trying to get more customers online um i want to give you some some data points and some some insights into how how important is search uh and and why you should really uh think about improving your online presence on on those platforms uh first of all if you think about how people search um and if you maybe think about um with you know put your mind in in a customer that for example is trying to organize something during the weekend and they want to probably in better times they probably want to go for example to a museum the first thing they will do is to go online go on google search museums nearby and that's something that we have seen at google a lot year over year the amount of people that have searched uh available near me as a as a search free phrase has almost doubled uh so that that's impressive that it means people are looking around them on on the digital world they're looking they're searching around them and also four out of five people uh users are actually using search uh to find locations trying to find directions and to find um open hours so that's that's a very relevant use case uh for search to give you another another data point that i think is is something super that they kind of hit me when i when i when i saw it is 30 of total mobile searches are related to location so imagine everything that people write on um on google 30 is entirely uh location so you know that kind of gives you the perspective of how important it is to have a profile on search and google maps another important reason is that when you when people search for your exact business name that can appear above everything else so even you know in terms of priority even above uh ads paid ads and it's right to the to the right side for example in a knowledge uh in the knowledge uh space of this of the search page uh and it it will be kind of your your your first the first touch point that a customer sees when when searching on google another aspect that we tend to to forget is that even we are even if we are now in a more digital world consumers are still looking to have the contact uh and uh and that's why for example google gets uh through the through the cool button on the google profile um he gets billions of calls every day and i don't know you but for example during this pandemic if i was looking to go to a restaurant or to get a pizza somewhere i was always calling the number to check if they were open uh so it's it's kind of it's it's very important to have the that visibility and to be to be visible there um the other aspect that is very important of google my business is not just um your profile but it's also a way for interacting uh with the customer so you can share photos you can you can share informations like working out opening hours you cannot link to your website don't forget like linking your website is important because it's a it's a very uh good source for traffic as well um and and you can post updates we'll look at more in detail but just to give you um another data point um having an updated an up-to-date google profile um from the perspective of the customer make sure you stand out and you are 2.7 times more reputable and i know that uh reputation is quite important in the nonprofit world so that's something certainly uh to have in mind now the first the first question or the first kind of action that i i want you to to take if you're new to google my business is just ask yourself this question what happens if somebody looks on of my no profit on google but also on similar nonprofits where where do you appear in the in the in the search in the search journey are you right on the top you know how how are customers finding you and then kind of follow up questions or follow up information is if you if you don't have a google my business profile and you you search uh your business you may find out that that business profile is already existing and that's because uh google maps in particular is a community full of um you know different uh supporters that share information and add content uh and therefore you know you may have been already you may have been present already in google my business so as it would go profile so that's why it's important to kind of be aware of of this profile but for for who of you still has some doubts on what exactly uh google my business looks like let's have a look at uh from a uh from a consumer perspective um at a typical google my business profile this is what how it would appear on on your mobile you'll have as you can see right at the top the reviews uh obviously the business name and then you have right at the top the photos not not by chance those are definitely some key uh points of key aspects of your of your profile you have some quick links right at the bottom those are where your customers will start interacting with you calls we mentioned directions is is is very important obviously uh end website um then you have some location information if you have a location and then hours so opening hours remember the time where if you wanted to see if something was open you had to go through the website go to the bottom of the page or find the hours somewhere you know google is trying to bring more information you know in an easy way uh more closer to to the customer so at the search without having to enter the uh the website itself uh which i find very helpful um and then so this is kind of how it looks like from from the customer from the business perspective and please don't be too scared about you know these like lots of um panels and lots of um points in into this platform but basically there is an interface that you would be able to manage and uh with this interface you'll be able to manage your profile both on search and maps so it's kind of one place where you can manage both um if you don't have a google my business profile that's perfectly fine let's go through um rather quickly the steps if you have any question there is always um there are actually many guides that help you step by step um uh i see a question how can google my business be useful for online based non-profit um i think google my business in general even if you don't have a location uh there are different things you can do you can have a service area so you know you can if you for example um you know support the community instead of having a physical location where customers like come to you you can show you can say i cover this area so that's an information that is available on google maps otherwise people can still leave reviews and and kind of share their experience with you as a business so for example a volunteer that has worked with you can say can leave a review and say i had a great amazing experience with this uh with this business i would just um with this charity for example i totally recommend them and you can interact as well with the peace with um with the customer in the way so i it it's obviously more you know relevant for for um physical location but i would say it's not less important for who doesn't have a physical location and in particular online based business uh because and again if someone searches for your name you will appear right at the top and that's super important and that gives you um gives the perception that you know you are a solid business you know you can you can have some description of your business you can have some reviews uh you know at quarter like like basic information about your business so i think it's in any way it gives you makes you look like more solid business and you have a better reputation just by being present there while if i wouldn't find you there i would have doubts that you know maybe there's something wrong with the business or i don't know how the quality that i can expect from this business from from this non-profit let's look into sorry let's look into the step by step to create your profile so first of all just go on google.com business that's where you can start your journey to set up your profile you'll have to you need to have a google account um if you don't have a google account that's not a problem you can create a new one uh it's it's very quick it can take up to five minutes so you know just go ahead set a google account you can use existing email addresses and and set it up um and then the first thing is do you need to do is find or add your organization as we said um your organization may be already present but if not and let's assume it's not there you can just type your business name and proceed to the next step then it asks you do you have a location or not it's totally fine if you don't have a location as i was saying um but in case yes you can add where customers can find you and that's that's kind of the next step then you go go ahead press next enter your contact information the phone number is important is where people are gonna call so when when you see the phone button that's where you know that's the number they're gonna use and then the website website personally has an e-commerce the person that works in commerce i think is fundamental again if you don't have one at the moment it's totally fine because google my business helps you also in that so you can choose the third option uh which says get a free website uh based on the information i i nowadays it's super it's it's getting more and more easy to create your own website so i recommend also to you know to maybe build one at some point but if you don't have the time and if you just want to set it up you know quickly you can you can use this platform it gives you a very simple layout a website and it serves the purpose and it may be perfectly fine for your for your new profit going to the next one just confirm all the information and uh click finish and then this comes the verification step uh obviously google wants to make sure that you actually own that business you're responsible for the business so the way that um google checks that is by sending your postcard at the address that you mentioned the postcard will be will be sent to you in five days and they will give it will give you a code that you can use into the verification as as we said for online based business and in case you don't have a physical location in case you don't want to add your your office location um which can be done by the way so the public doesn't know your office location you can also sign up with uh with the phone number uh or with an email obviously google will request we require some information so that they can verify your identity and you the fact that you own the business but that's that's pretty much it from a setup perspective um i know i've gone through very quickly i i'm sure if you know if there are questions i think there are many resources we'll link them maybe at the end but yeah okay i got a question what is the best practice for how frequently you post non-event promo based content on gmb um that's a great question um i'll get to you in a second my suggestion is that you know you keep trying and post um rather frequently lists once per week you don't necessarily need to post every week maybe you know if you if you're just updating the opening hours maybe just just refresh the hours are updated so the customer know that you know if they see updated in august 2020 you know they may be concerned that that's not the latest so you may just say yeah hours are updated for example uh but otherwise you know just interacting with the with the google my business but we'll look it we'll look into it more in detail in a in a second so because i know that every one of you is super busy and you're probably struggling between marketing finance and like different functions i want to give you four things that i think are super important and we'll cover 80 percent of what you need to do on google my business and you know if those should be some hopefully this will give you a at the end the to-do list that is something that you can do in 15 minutes every week so it shouldn't be too much of a trouble to maintain so let's start with the with the number one so make sure basic information is up to date that it's it sounds pretty obvious but in reality it's not because business hours especially now are more important than ever um you know how you know kovid and the pandemic has changed this um uh you know simply has put some more constraints on business hours where you can be open and so on and so i think that's super relevant to have updated um you can select the days you can select the hours so it should be a pretty straightforward interface and you can also select special special hours so that's something that i i recommend to do especially for business for um holidays or particular you know moments in which you you may be closed or you may you know work on some so only certain hours the reason why is that if you don't have special hours set then automatically google will say the hours may vary and that that's a as the signal is not a great signal to the consumer i prefer to have you know very clear opening hours uh whenever you know whenever i um if whenever i have my own business i want to make sure the customer feels confident that they can come and they don't need to call alternatively what i was doing as a consumer i was calling through the button to check are your hours correct but that that's you know that's another step that you can save the customer to to do add photos photos i mean i you we all know this is kind of a social it's also a bit of a social platform for us so we all know how photos are important uh customers are more likely to visit the place if you add photos you can choose cover photos so you can actually select the picture that you like the most you know you could potentially get a photographer to get a nice picture of your business or your theme something that represents you and that you think is is most relevant uh but i mean at this point i think any any good camera on the phone would do um and and so you can select the cover photo you can select your profile photo you can add videos so that's it's it's always nice and and i kind of expected again from a customer to see something about the business um when they visit online reviews their views are you know i i will i will say this a lot but i reviews are super important uh what is even more important is to respond to the reviews and to be present in this conversation because reviews are good for tourism first of all customers are very you know someone that is giving a review is is making an effort to give you an advice or to either to thank you because you had an amazing experience or to give you some advice so i take that every feedback very seriously i'm very uh with lots of attention uh but also you can respond and if someone has had the bad experience you can try and make it up to him so to this person so you can say come back we have we have fixed the issue and you can gain that customer back and you're going to show to the other customers that look at the reviews ah this this this business or this nonprofit is actually you know caring about this issue that arises of these uh situations so they're gonna they're gonna be happy though the fact that you're actually interacting with them um you can also ask for more reviews you can generate a link and this link you can use in many touch points so for example thank you for the donation here is a link if you want to leave a review so that's also a way to encourage and we know that the more reviews we have the more relevant you will be also in the google search so if there are you know let's say men in a profit you know we don't want to call them competitors because we're all doing you know something for good but you may want to appear first in the in the in the map so reviews are very important the more reviews you have the better it is for your business for your for your company and the last one sharing updates uh which is kind of the question that i got before uh there are different kind of updates other than promo and events you can you can just share something that is new that's very relevant during covet times you know if you had to change something you can launch a fundraiser for a limited period of time just remember the post will will be automatically uh will go away after a certain period of time so they will so it's it's important to keep uh updating your community and talking to your community and and as a customer if i go and google a business or a non-profit i look at it and i see that they have interacted they've posted something i can see that things are happening and and and i can get the update but i also see that this company is very you know mindful of telling and giving information to to their customers so that's something i look up when when i look on on a business online uh so getting to the short of the to-do list which i think is very useful um if you need to take something take something away from from this meeting from this live i think this page is very important take a screenshot whatever you want but like these are the things that i recommend doing 15 minutes per week 10 minutes per week to keep your account alive to keep your account updated so review your suggestion obviously people that visit you they may have experienced something else so for example the hours were different or they got to the place and it was closed they will suggest then they will contribute so you need to review those contributions and and potentially adjust them if they uh with good intention but if they were wrong for example um up-to-date pictures respond to the reviews already mentioned and ad posts so no you know not overdo it but it's important to to be present let's see um what we had just done is as i was saying 80 percent now if you really want to excel and you want to stand out there are other things that you can do something that i really like as because of my job i'm quite analytical uh i like to understand and deep dive uh on why customers have come to the site so this uh the platform that you have available in google my business is called insights and it gives you some you know useful uh data point on uh what your custom what are your customers doing so for example uh how do they interact with the different buttons what do they what do they view uh and but that's just just one but like for example something i really like is when do they come where do they come from so you can see with the heat map when where they were searching when they were looking for your place so that can give you some important insight first of all on the area that you are attracting more people to so if you see that this area is particularly relevant you can discover new things and you can you can find ways to be more relevant for that part of the city or you know the of the region the other thing is that you can do is that you can you can add information to your site to your website to your profile based on these insights because you see lots of people call and that's obviously there is an information that that is missing on the profile so maybe you need to update your your opening hours and things like that so it's interesting to discover at least and you can spend a lot of time on it and figure out many things about your customers um you can add attributes those are always nice again give a bit more color to your page and provide useful information the most frequent ones are for example payment card accepted or so accessible with a wheelchair for example that's i very you know very useful and provide more detail to your about your business if you want to be super sophisticated you can add 360 view of from the street view so you can for example uh show around like i think this is very used a lot in museums and art galleries now you can see uh and navigate and help the customer have a virtual journey of your location i found that super interesting and and it's fairly easy to set up we you know you just need the camera and and you can create your 360 uh photo um another feature that and and just uh be mindful that google is adding features continuously and like it's very alive google my business because it's always trying to help customers to find the right the right place and the right information and personalize it so this is another one messaging so you can as a as a knowner you can receive messages and you can you can reply respond in real time or you can have automatic messages as responses so you can you can set it up pretty much as you want and you can turn it off if you think you cannot manage the messaging another nice uh nice one is you can order some free marketing toolkit so you know we all love free stickers and things that we can put around even you know just on my laptop is full of stickers but you know you can order them and you can have them around around your location where you are and it can help you get more reviews you can use reviews that that are very positive and you can display them in a nice way so there's lots of things that you can um that you can do with this content um so we're getting kind of to the to the to the end of the presentation i think the the final the final point that i really care to to pass on is how you know i hopefully you got a bit of how important it is to be part to be part of the of the search journey and the google maps journey but it doesn't take too much to have a strong presence on these two touch points these four are probably you know the key the keys to gmb to google my business so having complete data informations attributes all those things that were talked about regularly updating opening hours responding to reviews and adding photos this is kind of you know the the the summary of this live in my opinion and uh the thing that i really recommend doing and this will improve your ranking so that the more reviews you are and the more relevant photos um you have it will help you stand out uh versus other um other organization nearby within your um your area and and finally i think this live you know is obviously hopefully i gave you some good insights but i want to give you some tools also to find support if you need it afterwards so the one thing that i recommend if you haven't done it is to go through the google my business skill shop course which is online again we can shut the links um if you haven't find it but it's pretty easy to find it's just google my business course and you can find it online it's it's quite quick and it gives a lot information explained much better than what i could uh do in in this live uh and then the last the last point uh there is ways that you can get in touch uh you can check the help center so there's lots of questions and answers that are you know of people that have been through the same position before you and they have already found the solution uh there is a google my business community where people share ideas and questions they ask for you know even give suggestion on the product and how can be improved and uh you can contact the support so if you have any technical question or your postcard doesn't arrive or for any reason feel free to get in contact and and they'll help you right away and with that i uh thank you very much and i'll leave the word to isha and maybe we have some uh additional questions all right thank you so much marco um so while we wait for some questions i'll go through a few reminders um but i also wanted to touch on a few points that marco said and how they're especially relevant to non-profits i think as he mentioned when people are searching for you especially if it's those who are looking for your services for example if you're a food bank and someone's trying to find your resources it's especially important to keep your hours updated and your services service availability updated for your community as well as potential volunteers or donors so that's one thing i just wanted to touch on and then another thing that jason mentioned in the live chat which i saw which is a great suggestion um he said he just wanted to mention that if you have a google ad grant um you can connect it to gmb in order to add local extensions to your ad so great point from jason so thank you for bringing that up um and we'll wait for some more questions to come in and in the meantime a few reminders um these are our resources for social and for our community forums so you're on our youtube channel now so go ahead and subscribe since you're already here it'll be awesome and then you can see videos from previous episodes um also if you're looking for more of like an actual introduction to google for non-profits in which we go through all of our product offerings um and provide useful ways to use those products we do have that on our on our youtube channel so you can go ahead and just go to youtube.com google for non-profits and you'll see on our homepage there that there are some introductions to the google for nonprofits product also we suggest following us on twitter and liking us on facebook so you can get up to date on the newest opportunities with google google for non-profits as well as future events live streams and um other tips and tricks for making the most of google tools um one more thing actually speaking of that is that the google earth team is providing a free workshop about creating stories um using google maps so definitely recommend on february 18th joining that one and you can see the link to that on our social page there so if you go to a twitter account you'll be able to see the link we also have a community forum you can post your questions and get answers from members of the google for nonprofits community so those are a few reminders we also have our survey um so it's g-l-e slash webinar um if you go here you can fill out the survey um and you can let us know what you thought of today's live stream and you can also suggest future topics like i said this is how we actually source our topics every week as we look at the survey results um so let's see if we have any more questions that came through in the meantime all right so um how can i so one other question we got was how can i use alternative means to prove my address um i don't have a reliable postal service in my area marco do you happen to know the answer to that question oh i think you're muted sorry about that there you go no way no worries uh yeah so absolutely i i i think i'm mentioned up in the in the slides there are alternative ways to to verify your address if if you're if you're not getting the postcard one is through call and one is three emails so while you go through the setup make sure to you know skip the verification through uh postcard and choose select an alternative way of verifying verifying email on phone and and uh the customer service team will get in touch and and they'll be able to verify you uh without the address okay awesome that's super helpful um one other question um that we have is during the pandemic the way that users interact with maps and search has shifted um what do you think the most useful feature of gmb is in these current circumstances yeah thanks so i mean this is uh quite is it comes back to um as a user and and i tried you all experienced this experience that during this time as a consumer a bit is the uncertainty of the information that i find on google search and on google maps uh i guess many businesses have kind of struggled to kept the business hours up to date and and sometimes you know you may be just more just a little bit more concerned than visiting a place and potentially finally finding it closed so i think absolutely the probably the number one um aspect that i would focus on is making sure that business the opening hours are updated and even if they haven't changed the suggestion of just leaving an update and saying business hour opening hours are updated don't worry you know we're working as uh as normal i think is uh is a very helpful uh reassurance to the to the customer and anyway they will in case they feel uncertain they will call and then that's an option as well okay awesome um a few i think there was one more point brought by william um that he mentioned that a couple years ago he took pictures of a local business and posted them to google maps um and many of them have hundreds and thousands of views now so that's just one more example i know you mentioned earlier about how it's important to have photos on your google my business profile and i totally agree and and seems like william agrees to so um i've even posted a few reviews on google my business in the past and i've gotten some notifications that there's been thousands of viewers on those those reviews too so we highly recommend especially for credibility for your nonprofit if you are trying to get more donations and you want to make sure you stand out it's really important to have this profile updated i know in the past like before i volunteered or or donated to a non-profit i've looked to see it their profile to make sure that it was a cause that that was legitimate and that everything looked good to go and and i think that just adds really to your credibility so thank you so much marco for this i'm just going to check to see if there's any last questions before we wrap up and it looks like that might be all the questions that we have uh so thank you so much for joining us uh mark thank you so much yeah thank you marco joined us all the way from italy today so we really appreciate that um and for those of you i'll let you go ahead and i'll remove you from this chat and i'll end with a couple reminders so thank you again for all joining us make sure to fill out our survey and let us know what you think of today's event you can definitely leave any feedback and suggestions that you have we're super open to improving on the show um there will be captions that are posted after um the event is after the event ends so um you'll be able to access those at the end um and yeah as i mentioned before make sure to subscribe to our youtube channel so thank you so much and you can watch this uh show again anytime that you want on our youtube channel so have a great day or evening or whatever time zone you're in and thank you for joining us today you

2021-02-15 08:41

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