src=”https://buffer.com/resources/content/images/2022/07/Blog-Graphic–2-.png” alt=”Grow Your Traffic Organically: Introducing Google Business Profiles”>
Organically growing your reach, engagement and traffic without spending any money is possible.
Yet, 79 per cent of brands ignore it.
What does it mean? You can publish regularly to your Google Business Profile.
You might be wondering, “What the hell is that?” or “Since when can you post on Google?”
Let’s begin with some background.
A Google Business Profile is the listing that shows up when you search for a particular brand on Google. These listings are almost certain to have been seen before.
You might not be aware that these profiles can be used by businesses to publish posts.
Regular posting to your Google Business Profile will increase your reach, engagement, and traffic.
Yet, 79 per cent of brands don’t publish consistent
Our customers told us why, and we asked them.
Today, that’s changing.
Buffer and Google Business Profiles
You can now publish, schedule, and draft posts for your Google Business Profile with Buffer.
Google Business Profiles are available with the Buffer free plan. You can schedule up 10 posts at a time. You need more? All of our paid plans allow you to schedule up to 2000 posts
Before we dive into the benefits of Google Business Posts for your brand, let us first explain what they are.
Google Business posts work just like any other social media post. Posts can contain text, images, or other information, depending on the type of post.
There are four types:
- What’s new: a standard text and image post to share an up-date.
- Offer Similar to a What’s New Post but with a Start/End date and the possibility to add a coupon code.
- Event Similar to an Offer but for events
- Covid-19 Update: identical post as the What’s New, but for Covid-19 updates.
Customers are 50% more likely to purchase
You are missing out if you haven’t published on Google Business previously.
There is no shortage of evidence that shows publishing posts on Google Business Profiles can be a good thing for your business.
- Google claims that customers are 50 percent more likely make purchases if their profile is up-to-date.
- Joy Hawkins, a Google Business expert has conducted tests that show consistent posting can increase your traffic, engagement, reach, and reach.
- Even though postings may not directly improve your rankings, they can drive traffic and visibility which in turn will help you rank higher.
Google Business posts can help you achieve organic growth. You can capture attention by posting consistently without spending any money.
How often should you post?
For the following reasons, we recommend publishing at minimum once per week to your Google Business Profile:
- Posts disappear after six months. Keep your profile updated by publishing regularly.
- Google will only pull justifications for posts that were published within 60 days.
- Only posts that were published within the last seven days will appear in the Explore section on Google Maps.
- Google’s top brands don’t publish often, which means that you have an opportunity to be different from the rest.
Only 1 of 5 top profiles posts regularly
There are many reasons brands should publish frequently, but it seems that very few do.
We analyzed 500 business profiles in five cities while we were working on our integration: London, Sydney Delhi, Delhi, Paris and Toronto. This research was inspired in part by Ben Fisher’s analysis. He concentrated his research on the USA, so we deliberately chose cities that are not in the USA.
We looked at 50 sectors, including real estate agents, mortgage brokers, dentists and plumbers, as well as injury lawyers.
- Only 20.4 Percent had posted in the past 30 days
- Only 43% had made a post in the past year
79.5 percent of profiles did not post regularly. This surprise surprised us all.
We wanted to know if there was a single city that brought down the average so we broken it down.
However, top profilers in major cities around the world haven’t posted in the last 30 days.
- Sydney = 73% of businesses didn’t post regularly
- Toronto = 78 per cent of businesses didn’t post regularly
- Delhi = 79 Percent of businesses didn’t post regularly
- Paris = 81 Percent of businesses didn’t post regularly
- London = 87 Percent of businesses didn’t post regularly
We thought this was a sign that these businesses didn’t have Google Business Profiles. Could this explain the absence of posting?
We looked at whether the same businesses respond to Google reviews.
They do. Most businesses respond to Google reviews through their business profile.
- Delhi = 55% of businesses respond to Google Reviews
- London = 61% of businesses respond to Google Reviews
- Toronto = 66% of businesses respond to Google Reviews
- Paris = 68 Percent of businesses respond to Google Reviews
- Sydney = 72 Percent of businesses respond to Google Reviews
Google Business Profiles are used by 64.4 percent of businesses to respond to reviews. However, only 20.4 percent of them publish posts on a regular basis.
Here are the raw data.
Hence, why are so few businesses posting?
We asked our customers.
Dawn Stanyon, President of Professionality Consulting said that switching between social media channels is too difficult. “I don’t post to Google Business Profiles as frequently because I have to do it separately.”
Nial Philimore ,Director from Imexpert, stated the same: “sharing content across multiple channels and Google Business Profiles takes lots of time.”
It can be difficult to manage multiple channels simultaneously. It’s not easy to jump between tabs in order to publish content across all your networks.
Publishing on Google is not part of a typical marketer’s workflow. Marketers are already overwhelmed – publishing on social media, sending out newsletters and updating our blogs – we don’t have the time or resources to do anything else.
We have built a Google integration.
Buffer allows you to publish, schedule, and draft posts to your Google Business Profile.
Start scheduling your posts with Google today for free
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