Earlier this month, Google launched Google My Business. It’s a one-stop shop for managing your Google business identity in Search, Google+, and Google Maps. Anyone who has tried to manage a Google identity in all these apps will welcome this new one-stop shop.
What is Google My Business?
Basically it’s a free dashboard users can utilize to manage their Google-related businesses online.
This includes:
- Managing your business listings for search, maps and Google+
- Interacting with your Google+ followers
- Seeing your reviews Google+ reviews from all across the web.
- Integration with lots of stats like adwords express, google analytics, and Insights reports- Google’s new social analytics tool.
- Plus a few others.
You can learn more at Google’s launch page.
Pulling it all together.
If you have an existing Google+ page for your business you may have noticed the new format already. I really like the new interface of the Google My Business page. Google really loaded it up with a ton of useful information. You can get insights from your Google+ page (basically social tracking), quickly view your Google Analytics and monitor your YouTube videos views. The new page is starting to look more like a beginner CRM than a social network.
Making it social
Even though it looks like an awesome business tool, it’s still all about being social. You can now post directly from your page, and even start a Google Hang Out with your followers. Google Hang Outs are an awesome way to collaborate with stakeholders, suppliers, and customers all around the US. We use it daily to get feedback from our clients.
The main goal of this update from Google is to make your life as a small business owner easier and I think it’s a huge step in the right direction. If you’ve shied away from Google+ in the past, there’s no time like the present to dip your feet in the pool.
