How to Create a Google Business Profile for a Virtual Business

How to Create a Google Business Profile for a Virtual Business

Setting up a Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) is crucial for local businesses looking to enhance their online presence and attract more customers.

The following steps will guide you in creating a Google Business Profile for a virtual business involves several steps.

Sign in to Google Business Profile

How to Create a Google Business Profile for a Virtual Business

Add Your Business

  • Click on “Manage now.”
  • Enter your business name.
  • If your business name appears in the drop-down menu, it may already have a profile. If it doesn’t, click on “Add your business to Google.”

Choose a Business Category

  • Select the category that best matches your business. This helps Google show your business for relevant searches.

Specify Your Location

  • For a virtual business, you may want to select “No” when asked if you want to add a location customers can visit.
  • You can enter the areas you serve instead. This helps potential customers in those areas find your business.

Enter Contact Information

  • Provide your business phone number and website URL. If you don’t have a website, you can create a free one using Google My Business.

Verify Your Business

  • Google will need to verify your business to ensure it is legitimate. This is typically done via a postcard sent to your business address, but for virtual businesses, you might be able to verify via phone, email, or other methods. Follow the instructions provided.

Optimize Your Profile

  • Add your business hours, photos, and a description of your business.
  • Regularly update your profile with posts, offers, and updates to keep your customers informed and engaged.

Manage and Respond to Reviews

  • Encourage your customers to leave reviews and respond to them promptly. Positive reviews can significantly enhance your business’s online reputation.

Use Google My Business Tools

  • Utilize Google My Business insights to understand how customers find and interact with your profile.
  • Use the messaging feature to communicate directly with customers who find you on Google.

Google My Business Tips for Virtual Businesses

  • Service Area: Clearly define your service area so customers know where you operate.
  • Virtual Services: Highlight any virtual services or consultations you offer.
  • Regular Updates: Keep your profile updated with any changes in services, hours, or contact information.

By following these steps, you can create a comprehensive Google Business Profile for your virtual business, helping you reach more potential customers online.

Spinnaker Marketing helping you boost your brand visibility across channels

Reviews Drive Perception

positive vs negative reviews

Positive or negative, reviews drive perception

You should monitor reviews and respond to them.

If they are positive, thank the reviewer. If they are negative address them honestly. Don’t ignore them. Customers and prospects will react based on the way you respond.

A negative review is an opportunity to turn a critic into a happy customer who will promote your business or will confirm their opinion. When it comes to prospects, your response will help them decide if they want to do business with you or not. Be positive, be constructive, honest and transparent.

reviews-drive-perception

Social Media Influencial in Food Decision

According to a new survey by eMarketer, social media influences purchasing decision when it comes to food:  36% bought a new brand after seeing a close friend’s recommendation, 30% after not so close friend recommended it, 20% after they saw products highly rated by users in their network and 17% after they read highly rated reviews from people they do not know

Leading Sources that Influence US Internet Users

In addition, the survey shows that when it comes to food, users are primarily sharing two thing: photos and recipes.

A May Blogher survey shows that recipes are one of the most sought-after pieces of food content online with 89% of internet users interested in food content going online for recipes.

Ina another survey, Allrecipes.com found that 65% of females who regularly used recipe sites bought branded ingredients called for in the recipes at least sometimes. 21% said they “usually” did this.

In yet another May survey, Compete found that food was by far the leading topic category for interactions on Pinterest leading to conversion.  25% overall had bought a product after discovering it on Pinterest, and surprisingly, considering Pinterest’s reputation as a female stronghold, 37% of male users were spurred to buy, compared to just 17% of female users.

US Female Bloggers* vs. Internet Users Who Go Online for Select Food-Related Content, May 2012

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Visual outperforms text when it comes to social media engagement

According to a new study from M Booth and  Simply Measured, visual content is not only taking over the digital and social media landscape, it’s also outperforming all other mediums when it comes to engagement!

  1. Videos are shared 12X more than links and text posts combined on Facebook
  2. Photos are liked 2X more than text posts on Facebook
  3. 48% of all Tumblr posts are photos.
  4. On YouTube, 100 million users are liking, sharing or commenting on videos every week.
  5. Pinterest refers more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Google+ combined
Graphics and videos drive engagement in social media

Google + vanity urls are here… for some

Google +Google+ is finally rolling out custom urls (vanity urls), something that should be old story.  Don’t get too excited though, only a few selected verified accounts (read celebrities and big brands) have access to the feature.

Google plans a worldwide roll out, eventually, but no time frame has been announced.

The new url will look like this  www.google.com/+your username

 

 

Reviews Are Key To Build Consumer Trust

Gaining consumer trust is an important issue for marketers seeking to ensure that they’re not scaring prospective customers away. In fact, a March to June survey of US adults conducted by About.com found that 84% of respondents felt that brands needed to prove themselves trustworthy before they would interact with them or other information sources. Moreover, the study found that there were 10 primary trust “elements,” or cues, that brands must establish in order to engender trust, including accuracy, expertise and transparency.

In a social media context, customers wanted to see that brands had a significant number of positive reviews, and that they didn’t go out of their way to hide the negative ones. The survey found that 41% of respondents said the ability to see reviews on social networks added to their feeling of trust in a brand. Reviews played a bigger role in cultivating trust than seeing that friends had “liked” or recommended a brand, or that the brand had accumulated a large tally of “likes.”

Video was found to improve trust the most when it served as a complement to other types of content. This ties back in to consumers’ hunger for useful information. Brands can build trust with potential customers by demonstrating expertise through quality owned content that is also devoid of a hard sales message.

Social Media Marketers Must Provide Disclosure

Advertisers who make claims about their products on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest need to be mindful of the fine print they use, or forget to use, in their postings and provide disclosure.

Last week, the National Advertising Division, an investigative unit of the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council, reviewed photographs that Nutrisystem had “pinned” on Pinterest boards and determined that the photos were testimonials requiring disclosures. The photographs in question showed people who said they had lost weight by using Nutrisystem, but there was no disclosure that the people had been paid or that the results of their weight loss were not typical. Instead, the photos simply said, for example, “Christine B. lost 46 lbs on Nutrisystem.”

The self-regulatory council conducts independent reviews of marketing and advertising on all platforms, including social media. The group often responds to complaints brought by competing marketers who accuse others of violating advertising guidelines, like making unsubstantiated claims. Following a review, marketers often comply with requests to modify or settle the claim. If they refuse, the claim can be sent to the Federal Trade Commission for further review.

Andrea Levine, the director of the National Advertising Division, said the organization tends to monitor advertising in categories like health and nutrition, dietary supplements and cosmetics closely. “Those are categories where companies are not watching each other as closely and bringing their own challenges,” Ms. Levine said.

In the Nutrisystem case, the company immediately agreed to add disclosure statements to its photographs, Ms. Levine said. “As long as their stories are truthful and as long as the advertiser discloses what is the normal weight loss range, which is 1 to 2 pounds a week, that lets the consumers put the success story in context,” Ms. Levine said.

Advertising on Twitter and Facebook is also monitored closely by the investigative units in the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council. In November 2011, for example, 1-800 Contacts challenged claims made on Facebook by a competitor, Coastal Contacts.

Coastal Contacts encouraged Facebook users to “like” its page and in doing so, promised them a free pair of glasses. It also promised discounts of 70 percent on contact lenses. The rival, 1-800 Contacts, said that Coastal Contacts did not disclose the shipping and handling fees associated with the offer for free glasses and that not all styles of glasses or lenses were available in the offer.

In addition, the company contended that users who “liked” the Coastal Contacts page in order to get the free glasses were inadvertently endorsing the company.

The National Advertising Division ruled that all claims for free merchandise must clearly disclose any hidden fees and conditions at the outset of the offer, including increasing the font size of the message that “conditions apply.” Facebook likes can be interpreted as “conveying a message of general social endorsement,” the ruling said.

“If what you are offering them in exchange for likes is not real, then those likes were obtained through deceptive advertising,” Ms. Levine said of the ruling.

One of the first social media cases taken up by a related organization, the Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program, involved Twitter. In July 2010, the program recommended that Liquid HCG Diet discontinue using testimonials that it made on Twitter — such as, “Becky and husband lost 14 lbs in 2 days!” — and claims on Facebook that said “Lose around a pound a day” and “Lose 30 lbs in a month, it’s easy and quick!”

Twitter now offers advertisers options like promoted tweets that make it more clear to users which posts are advertisements and which are authentic content.

“It’s kind of a reminder to advertisers that even though the medium changes the rules stay the same,” Ms, Levine said.

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Social Media In Fortune 100 Companies

The third annual Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-Up analyzed the social media activity of Fortune Global 100 firms – which includes such luminaries as Ford, Sony, AT&T, Honda and Walmart – on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest in February 2012. The survey discovered that 87 percent of these companies are active on at least one social media channel, with Twitter leading the way.

Since 2011, the average number of followers for a corporate Twitter account has almost tripled, from 5,076 to 14,709.

Perhaps surprisingly, YouTube finished second in the poll, with 79 percent of Fortune Global 100 corporates now using a branded YouTube channel, compared to just 57 percent in 2010.

Facebook placed third, with 74 percent of companies having an active Facebook Page. 93 percent of corporate Facebook Pages are updated at least weekly, and the average number of Likes per Page has increased by a heady 275 percent since 2010 to 156,646.

A little under half (48 percent) of firms are now using Google+. A quarter (25 percent) of these companies have Pinterest accounts.

Overall, Fortune Global 100 organizations have an average of 10.1 Twitter accounts, 10.4 Facebook Pages, 8.1 YouTube channels, 2.6 Google+ pages and 2.0 Pinterest accounts.

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New Google+ Study Confirms Minimal Social Activity, Weak User Engagement

Larry Page recently called Google+ the company’s “social spine.” If that’s the case, then Google’s backbone might be much weaker than Page has been letting on, at least according to a new report from RJ Metrics.

This week, the data analytics firm provided Fast Company with exclusive new insights on Google+. The findings paint a very poor picture of the search giant’s social network–a picture of waning interest, weak user engagement, and minimal social activity. Google calls the study flawed–we’ll explain why in a second–and has boasted that more than 170 million people have “upgraded” to the network. RJ Metrics’ report, on the other hand, is yet another indicator that Google+ might indeed just be a “virtual ghost town,” as some have argued.

Let’s start with the findings. For its study, RJ Metrics (RJM) selected a sample of 40,000 random Google+ users. RJM then downloaded and analyzed every sample users’ public timeline, which contains all publicly available activity. One important caveat: RJM was only able to look at public data, which as it points out, “is not necessarily reflective of the entire population of users,” since some users are private or at least have private activity. That said, the stats are eye-opening:

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Savvy Social Media Users Influence Peer Purchases

For consumers, the golden rule is “buyer beware.” For marketers, it should perhaps be: “beware of socially adept consumers.” New research indicates that consumers who are savvy social media users wield far greater influence among their peers.

Specifically, they tell significantly more people about their service experiences, and say they’ would spend 21% more with companies that deliver great service — compared to 13% on average, according to the 2012 American Express “Global Customer Service Barometer.”

This relatively small group of consumers is extremely engaged and vocal, according to Jim Bush, EVP of World Service at American Express.

“They … tell three times as many people about positive service experiences compared to the general population,” he said of social media users. “Ultimately, getting service right with these social media-savvy consumers can help a business grow.”

Unfortunately for many marketers, the survey — conducted in the U.S. and 10 other countries — also reveals a sorry state of service in general.