Google Posts

A note stuck to your profile

A Google Post is a short update you publish from inside your business profile: a few lines of text, usually a photo, and one link or button pointing at whatever you want the reader to do next.

They are treated as timely, and that is the part that trips people up. The newest post is the one that gets the visible spot, and older ones slide out of view rather than building into something a customer browses. A post is a note on the counter, not a page on your site.

The available kinds of post shift over time and vary by where you are publishing from, so it is not worth memorizing the menu. They come down to the same three jobs: announce something happening, put an offer in front of somebody, or just say what is going on this week. Pick by what you actually have to say, not by which label sounds most official.

The audience is unusual too. Nobody follows you here. The only people who see a post are people already looking at your business, which means they are deciding rather than discovering.

Because posts are meant to be current, publishing has to be easy or it quietly stops happening. We built a job board for a Philadelphia staffing agency for the same reason: the owner posts openings from her phone.

Writing for someone who is already comparing you

Picture the person reading it. They have three tabs open, all three companies do the work, and they are looking for a reason to stop looking. That is who a post talks to.

So the useful post answers whatever is standing between that person and the phone. Crews available this week. Yes, we service that brand. Closed Thursday for the holiday. Financing on the model everybody asks about. It is not a newsletter, and it is not the place for a holiday greeting, though plenty of businesses use it that way.

Two things do most of the work in a post. The photo, because it is what gets looked at first, and it should be a real one off a real job rather than something bought from a stock library. And the link, which ought to land on the page that finishes the thought instead of dropping the reader on your homepage to start hunting.

Frequency is less of a science than people want it to be. Nobody needs a post every day. A profile with something on it from this month reads like a business that is open and paying attention. A profile whose last update is from a summer two years ago reads like a business that might not be.

This gets more weight every year that searches end without a click. When someone reads your hours, your reviews, and your latest update without ever reaching your website, that small block of text is the entire pitch. Keeping it current is the difference between running a Google Business Profile and simply owning one.

Where posts sit in the local picture

A post is one input among several, and the quieter ones usually carry more weight: the star rating people scan before they read a word, and the profile itself, which is what feeds the local pack. A post is still one of the few places you get a real call to action sitting next to a search result, which is often worth more than the sentence above it. And a profile is only one of your business listings, so a good post cannot cover for a wrong address somewhere else.