Social Media Basics: Getting Your Business Listed on Google Places

If you’re a consumer facing business then having yourself  listed on Google Places will help in more ways than one. Google Places makes checking out businesses easy with well-detailed listings that serve as self-contained micro-sites of your business.

Are you wondering ‘Why bother with yet another online listing?’ or ‘What’s in it for me?’? Well, to start with, its Google. Creating your Google Places page will bring in better rankings when Google displays local search results. The listing with the map is one of the first thing sthat shows up when people search for businesses. That’s hard to manage on your own. Some other benefits are:

1. A free listing with all relevant information about your business. Yellowpage-sque but cooler
2. Access to analytics: data about the views and interactions with page
3. Opportunity to offer deals/coupons directly to customers

Create An Account

Go to www.google.com/placesforbusiness. You’ll be asked to sign in with your Google Account. Please consider which email you sign in with. You might want to share this account with others in the future so it is highly recommended not to sign in with your personal, primary gmail account. What I suggest to most clients is to create a generic account, which can be used to manage their social media presence everywhere., something like socialmedia@gmail.com or social@companyname.com

Google Places Listings

Add Your Business

Once signed in, you will be asked your location (country) and phone number and then be taken to the information page. Once again, consider which phone number to provide. Personal phone numbers are a no-no. To list more than 10 locations, there’s a “Bulk Upload” option. Click there and you will be taken through a step-by-step process of adding different business locations/listings .

Add The Meat

While filling the basic information is enough to be listed, it really helps to fill in as much as you can. Here are some of the details you will be asked to fill (imagine all the visibility and opportunities to spread the word!):

• Email
• Website
• Description: 200 words max so make it short but effective
• Service Area and location settings (for take-away and other services)
• Hours of operation
• Payment options
• Photos:  you can add upto 10 images
• Videos: upto 5 videos, from YouTube only though
• Additional details (parking etc)

Google Places Additional Information

Validate

You can choose between phone or snail mail to validate your listing. I’m surprised there’s no email option so stay close to that phone. The snail mail validation can take upto 2-3 weeks so its not good if you’re in a hurry (and I bet you are!) Google will contact you with a PIN. Enter this PIN into the listing page and only then the page will go live.

Google Places Validation

That’s it. You’re done! Congrats on upping your business’ chances of being discovered by a wider audience

Have you used Google Places? How was it for your business?

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