On June 22, Google revealed Google Posts, a content snippet platform accessible via Google My Business. The goal of Google Posts is to allow businesses to share new or upcoming events, promotions, announcements or content. These posts are directly shared to Google Search and Map results. This is a great way for small or local businesses to share additional information about themselves with potential consumers.
Google Posts can be accessed through desktop and mobile devices. For mobile, you will need the Google My Business app. To use Google Posts, login to your Google My Business account. If you have multiple businesses, select Manage location for the respective listing you would like to post with. Then click Posts, the second option on the left of your screen.
Once you click on Posts, you can include an image, write content (up to 300 words), create an event and add a call to action button. The event section lets you input a starting and ending date and time. The button gives you five call to action choices, Learn more, Reserve, Sign up, Buy and Get offer, and allows you to put a landing page link within the button. Once you have finished creating your post, click Preview to see how your post will look under your listing on Google Search and Map results, and Publish. You can edit or delete your posts anytime. Google Posts offers statistics on how many people view and click your posts.
Since Google Posts was rolled out recently, about two weeks ago, there are currently limitations on how to fully utilize it. As of now, there isn’t a way to schedule or automate your posts. Google Posts cannot be synced with other popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. Posts does not support every business category at the moment; hotels being the big industry where Posts is currently not available for. Finally, businesses have also reported that these posts disappear after going live for a week.
Dexter Tam is a Google Partner Certified SEM Specialist at Custom Legal Marketing.