How to Increase Focus on Google My Business Amid a Pandemic

As internet technology changes rapidly, so is digital marketing. Smart marketers learn to keep pace particularly in their marketing strategies. Google My Business, GMB is one business-marketing place many marketers find easy and convenient because they want to get noticed in the hugely competitive digital space. At the outset, GMB listing used to be something marketers could just set up and move on hoping for best results in perpetuity. Not anymore! These days, it is very important to see GMB as a constantly changing platform. Marketers need to keep up with these changes to make GMB a very viable channel in which they can easily communicate with customers and to give them more real-time information.

Even before the global pandemic occasioned by the advent of covid-19, it was important to keep up with the changes in GMB. It is even now more important to do so because of the general restrictions affecting most businesses. It now appears that GMB development team is responding well to these restrictions. Marketers cannot afford to ignore these changes at this material time. We notice that the team has been working to add still more great features to GMB. These features include a new post type that allows you to communicate any big product or service updates to customers. 

With covid-19 pandemic still ravaging the world, the team has also added the following health- and safety-related listing attributes. Marketers must take note and adapt quickly in the best interest of the businesses they have listed on GMB. Just look out for these new features.

•    More hours feature. Marketers who operate out of self-storage sites should take note of this one very important new feature. Previously, marketers could only list one set of hours. What that meant is that they often had to choose between showing their gates or office hours. Now they can set these separately.

Other new features in direct response to covid-19 are:

•    Staff undergoes temperature checks
•    Staff wears masks
•    Temperature check required
•    Appointment required
•    Mask required

These new features no doubt will help your business to address the huge concerns of customers who may be eager to do business with you from Google My Business mart. It is smart marketing to adapt these features into your listed business on GMB very quickly.

Two New Forum Features Debut in SFI

SFI is a very dynamic business and changes take place as a matter of routine. Here now are the latest.

New Feature #1

To streamline interaction at the forum and reduce clutter and unnecessary posts, we've just added a set of three new buttons--Thank, Congratulate, and Agree)--to every post.

So, instead of having to create a whole new post just to thank, congratulate, or agree with an author's post, just click the appropriate button instead.

Counts of each such action will also be reflected inside the circle beside each action. So if 193 fellow forum members agree with your post, you'll see "193" inside a circle beside the word "Agree." Hence, you'll always be able to see, at a glance, what forum members think of your post...or how many are thanking or congratulating you.

New Feature #2

Gratuitous liking of posts has become an issue on our forum. There are simply WAY, WAY too many likes being given for posts that add little to no value whatsoever. This activity defeats the whole purpose of the Likes program--which is to identify posts for readers that should be read or that contain meaningful information.

So, effective immediately, the Like button (thumbs-up icon) will not appear on any posts of less than 25 words.

Could this be circumvented? Could people simply just change from writing 3-word meaningless posts and try to expand them into 25-word meaningless posts? I'm sure some will try to exploit this new policy, but it will not be tolerated, and you WILL be banned if we see a pattern of it.

That said, you can still write posts of less than 25 words, of course. Just know that you won't be receiving any likes on these posts.

Bottom line: If you want to just say "thanks" or "congratulations" to someone, use the new THANKS or CONGRATULATE buttons. If you simply want to show that you agree with someone's post, use the new AGREE button. By doing these things, you'll help us keep our awesome forum tidy and enjoyable to use for all!

Meanwhile, if you want to elaborate, add reasons for why you agree with an author, or just make a longer statement, we encourage you to do so. Just make sure you're doing it because you've "got something to say," and not just because you're hoping to collect a few likes.