Andre Kay is the CEO and CMO for Sociallybuzz, which provides social media management, marketing, fan page management, online event digital marketing, and social media consultation services. Sociallybuzz is designed to help companies, brands and businesses with simple or advanced social media development and marketing, while delivering businesses and brands the greatest number of options in how they define and reach their relevant audiences. Kay also is the co-founder and vice president of Go Media Marketing, which was one of the first companies to introduce interactive texting technology to the U.S. Congress.
Sociallybuzz integrates Google Places into clients’ social media strategies along with Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Why should franchises not overlook Google Places?
Google Places is one the most powerful social platforms available. When a customer finds your business on Google Places, it’s because they were searching for you, your products, your services or even your competitor. According to an official statement by Google, “More of your customers search for your business on Google than anywhere else, so it’s important to make sure your business listing is up to date and can be easily found on Google.com.”
What are some of the features of Google Places that help franchises extend their brands and connect with customers?
Just as with Facebook and Twitter where you can publish a status message or post, you can also do that on Google Places by sharing an update (specials, discounts, etc.) on your Place Page. Anyone that finds your Places Page while searching in Google will also see your updated post. Second, owners can post a public response to reviews and feedback by Google users. This is a great way to reward loyal customers and quickly rectify any negative reviews. Another great feature right within the Google Places dashboard is Google Boost, which helps local franchises easily advertise within Google Search and Google Maps.
What are the best practices that franchises should keep in mind when using this tool?
Never underestimate how effective Google Places can be with connecting franchises with targeted consumers that are actually searching for them or their competitors. Also:
- Keeping information updated (phone numbers, photos, addresses, etc.)
- Consistently monitoring reviews and feedback
- Track your place’s activities (impressions, click to website, click for directions, etc.)
What’s a great example of a franchise that uses Google Places?
Yes, a Domino’s Pizza franchise owner, (also one of our clients). We used Google Places to run numerous campaigns as well as community specials. We would post weekly Resident Appreciation specials on Google Places. Then we would track to see what keywords were being used to find each specific location, as well as the regions by ZIP code. The data collected made it much easier for us to target the right people in the right cities. Those were the cities and customers that mattered the most for the growth of each location.
Image via Google
Is your restaurant using Google Places? Share your best practices in the comments.
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I find Google Places is terrible. We have entered in our company information MANY times, over and over again.The information never shows correctly. It only comes up in the google search "adword area" "paid advertising", other than that it shows all the competition under us.
I have tried to complain to google places many times, but ever try to get through to them or just try and send a message through their set up area… good luck! I finally had to comlain about this dept through my adword account, it seems they care because they want your money. We finally did get a comment back from google, stating there was some problem, and of course they have never fixed it…lol
Also anyone can put in a comment about your business. Google allows this to be flagged, but they will never remove it. Good luck on that one also. Anyone can put in a comment and there is no proof that it is real or not.
Your competition could have a great time, putting you down, making false statements, and what can you do about it?,… nothing I even put in photos of the business to the Google Places account, they don't even show up.
What is Google Maps? Google Places? Are they not the same????
Hi Kathy,
We would be more than happy to give you some tips on how to effectively use Google Places. To answer your question, Google mapping service is use to quickly locate your local organization with Google’s on the internet maps and Google places is a lot more detailed listing of your local business. Feel free to contact us http://www.sociallybuzz.com if you need any help.
Sociallybuzz Team
Kathy,
Have you verified your location on Google Places (the postcard/phone number)? How long has it been since you made the changes? The verification process has helped me make changes more quickly, and it's rare that updates are immediate. Normally it takes a few months for Google to update their cache.
As far as negative reviews go, it's actually more effective to have a few negative reviews mixed in with positive reviews. It lends credibility. If all of your reviews were perfect and flawless, you'd look like you'd paid off all of your customers, or you were trying to cheat the system. If you're doing the best you can to treat your customers right, you should be fine.
My recent post "The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or…"
Yes, Google Places, Google Maps, and Google Business Listeing all amount to the same thing. They are just various ways in which Google can get the consumer to click on your business and do business with you. Your first issue, Google's response or lack thereof is typical of Google. They are wonks, geeks if you will. They come up with great technologies, but their customer service and marketing follow through sucks. I know it's no consolation to you but you can get someone to tweek your ad on Google places in a couple of areas. FIRST, have some comsumers that ARE HAPPY with your business, create a brief profile on Google and post something positive about your business. THIS WILL HELP PUSH YOUR BUSINESS HIGHER UP ON THE PAGE AGAINST YOUR COMPETITORS… Google will weight the positive feedback much more heavily than you think. SEO strategists will want to go with Key Word sales tactics, but it is the positive input by consumers that will get you in the top 10. ALSO: Create a Coupon which is free on Google, and change it weekly. This will have the benefit of Google pushing you up as well. Lastly, and I know it's no consolation, you can go in as the owner of the Google Places account, and respond to the negative input by your competitor that you say you are recieving. Offer them a 50 dollar gift certficate. Write them a handwritten note. Respond to them on your Google places account in the appropriate place for business owners. Turn problems into profits.
Lastly you can have someone who knows how to use Google places but not a huge marketing company help you tweak it for not so very expensive money. For instance, you can create specific landing pages on Blogger ( now known as BLogSpot ) which is owned by Google, and this will have the added benefit of being VERY seo freindly to whatever organic search results you are trying to accomplish by way of driving traffic to this Mobile Web page. Remember, Google Places is about visibility on mobile phones, not just PC's.
One trick that will help you will be to Tweet the Google Places Landing page once a day, this will create clicks to the page, driving up the rankings. That's a ninja tip, use it.
Editor/Author Lonny Dunn Tweets at @ProNetworkBuild
No doubt there are benefits; however Google Places is a mess. We entered all of our locations at once and trying to make individual changes is a nightmare. Google randomly combines our places with others/competitors and then suddenly the phone number or the address becomes our competitor. We linked all of our Places to each specific webpage for that location; Google changed all the web addresses to our home page. We added specific text to each page, Google, over the course of one year, randomly removed all text from 80% of the Places. All it does is create more spots for eyeballs for Google advertising. The Google Evil Empire could care less. It is a fulltime weekly job to attempt to discover all of the random changes. What a joke!
its really easy to find a good and comfortable place nearly so that you dont have to go round and round to different places just to find a simple beautiful place for your dream place or office. Real Estate Franchise