Posts on Your Business Listing

The feature nobody uses

Google My Business includes a posting feature. Short updates with an image, a line of text, and a button, appearing on your listing when somebody looks you up.

A large majority of small businesses have never posted once, which makes it one of the few marketing channels where the competition is genuinely absent.

The reason is straightforward: nobody was told it existed, and it sits in a part of the dashboard people visit twice a year.

Where they actually appear

Worth being precise about, because expectations here are frequently wrong in both directions.

They appear on your listing when somebody searches for your business by name, on the knowledge panel that shows to the side or at the top.

They appear on your listing in maps.

They do not generally appear in the map pack for category searches, and they are not a ranking mechanism in the way reviews or categories are.

So the audience is people who have already found you and are deciding, which is a smaller and considerably more valuable group than general search traffic.

They expire

The mechanic that determines how to use them.

A standard update stops displaying after about a week, so a listing with one post from March shows nothing.

Events and offers behave differently and remain visible until their stated end date, which makes them useful for anything with a genuine timeframe.

The practical consequence is that this is a small recurring habit rather than something to set up once, and a business that cannot commit to a fortnightly rhythm is better off using event and offer posts with longer dates.

What is worth posting

• A completed job, with a photograph.
• Current availability or lead times.
• A seasonal service that is relevant now.
• Changed hours around a holiday.
• A genuine offer, with real dates.
• An answer to the question you are asked constantly.

The third and fourth are the highest value, because somebody looking you up in a specific week is frequently asking exactly that question.

Write for somebody who is deciding

The audience shapes the content, and this is where most posts go wrong.

These are not social media updates and the register that works on a social feed does not work here.

Somebody has searched for your business by name. They are checking whether you are open, whether you do the thing, and whether you seem competent.

So a post saying we are booking three weeks ahead for kitchen installations, with a photograph of a finished one, is answering their question.

A post saying happy Friday everyone is not, and it occupies the slot that could have.

A worked example

A garden centre had never used the feature.

They began posting once a fortnight: what had just come into stock, with a photograph, and the current opening hours whenever they changed.

Fifteen minutes each time, taken from photographs somebody was already taking.

The measurable effect was modest and real: clicks from the listing rose, and staff started hearing customers mention things they had seen when looking up the phone number.

The unexpected benefit was seasonal hours. Posting the holiday opening times as an event post, visible for the whole period, noticeably reduced the number of calls asking whether they were open.

That alone justified the habit, independently of anything to do with marketing.

Use the button

Each post can carry a call to action, and it is frequently left unset.

Options include calling, booking, ordering, learning more, and signing up, each linking where you send it.

Choose the one matching what you actually want, and link to the specific page rather than the homepage, since somebody who read a post about kitchen installations should land on that page.

Where you use a link, tag it so you can see in your analytics how much traffic the listing is sending, because otherwise it is indistinguishable from other search traffic and you will conclude the feature does nothing.

Keep the images consistent

A small point that affects how the listing reads as a whole.

Post images appear together, so a run of well-lit photographs of finished work looks like a portfolio, while a mixture of screenshots, graphics with text on them, and stock imagery looks like noise.

Use real photographs, landscape, with the subject clear and no text overlaid, since text on images is frequently unreadable at the size these display and is treated poorly.

Where you have an image of finished work, that is almost always the right choice over anything designed.

The types, and when each fits

There are several kinds of post and choosing the wrong one is why some of them disappear sooner than expected.

A standard update is the default and the one that expires after about a week. Use it for anything current: a finished job, this month's availability, something newly in stock.

An event post takes a start and end date and stays visible for that whole period, which makes it the right choice for holiday hours, a seasonal closure, a sale week, or anything running to a schedule.

An offer post also carries dates and displays terms and a code where you have one, so it suits a genuine promotion rather than a general message.

Some business types also get a product option, which behaves more like a catalogue entry and persists rather than expiring.

The practical rule is that anything with a date belongs in an event or offer post, because those survive, and anything else is an update that will be gone next week whether you meant it to be or not.

The counter-case

This is a small lever and should be treated as one.

The realistic effect is a modest increase in engagement from people already looking at your listing, and anybody presenting it as a significant ranking opportunity is overselling it.

A business with a thin listing, no services filled in, four photographs from 2018, and eleven reviews has considerably better uses for the same fifteen minutes, and should do those first.

There is also a version of this that becomes a chore producing nothing: posting weekly because a schedule says so, with nothing to say, which fills the slot with filler and takes time from somewhere useful.

Post when you have something a deciding customer would want to know. Where that is monthly rather than fortnightly, post monthly.

The habit

1. Complete the listing first if it is thin.
2. Post once a fortnight, or monthly if that is realistic.
3. Use a real photograph, no text over it.
4. Write for somebody deciding, not a social feed.
5. Set the button and link to a specific page.
6. Tag the link so you can measure it.
7. Use event posts for holiday hours, with real dates.

Step seven pays for the habit on its own by reducing calls asking whether you are open.

What paid local placement buys is covered in what a sponsored local post actually buys.

Frequently asked questions

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