Online Marketing
Written by Corrie Scott, May 25th, 2011
A recent question by a fan of the Out-Smarts Facebook page regarding ‘giveaways’ prompted us to take a close look at Facebook’s rules and regulations
regarding contests, promotions and giveaways on their site. Running a promotion on Facebook is an effective way of generating buzz about your business, increasing the number of ‘likes’ your page has, increasing engagement with existing fans, and even adding to your business’ email list.
However, Facebook has some specific guidelines regarding these promotions, and most giveaways and contests on Facebook are actually in direct violation of these terms! Below, we will decode the legalese and give you the information you need to avoid being in violation of Facebook’s promotion guidelines and having your business page shut down.
First, you should ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do people enter your contest by ‘liking’ your business page?
2. Is your promotion being run on your Facebook fan pages wall? For example, do people enter your promotion by liking posts or leaving a comment?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, your promotion is illegal and you are at risk for Facebook shutting down your business page.
Basically, if you are using Facebook in any way to run or support your contest, you are in violation of their promotion guidelines. Instead, you need to run your promotion on a third party application such as Wildfire, Involver, Friend2Friend, and other similar application builders – see Facebook’s list of preferred developer consultants. You can also create your own custom application by building an iframe and running your promotion from there. See ‘create a custom iframe tab for your facebook page’ for how to make your own iframe application.
What does Facebook consider a promotion?
Before going further, we should clear up what exactly Facebook considers a promotion.
Directly from Facebook:
These Promotion Guidelines, along with the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, the Ad Guidelines, the Platform Policies and all other applicable Facebook policies, govern your communication about or administration of any contest, competition, sweepstakes or other similar offering (each, a “promotion”) using Facebook.
By “contest” or “competition” we mean a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria).
By “sweepstakes” we mean a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner selected on the basis of chance.
Basically, any sort of promotion of Facebook in which you will be choosing a winner in some way has to follow their promotion guidelines. Furthermore, the guidelines go on to say that you cannot use any of Facebook’s features in your promotion, ie as a condition of entering your promotion you cannot have users ‘liking’ your page or posts, uploading pictures to your page, or commenting on your posts or wall. Lastly, you cannot use Facebook in any way to announce your winner, either by posting the winner’s name on your wall, posting their photo on your wall, or contacting them through Facebook chat or a message.
Note: A condition of your promotion could be that users need to be fans of your page, but that alone cannot enter them into the promotion. They need to take some further action on a third party application or iframe in order to ensure your promotion is legally within Facebook’s guidelines. Read more
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 06th, 2011
It has been ages since we posted our social media reasons to be cheerful links. If you have been waiting on tenterhooks – wait no longer. Here, for your enjoyment, is our compendium of social media and online treasures that we have discovered lately.
Layar – “is a mobile platform for discovering information about the world around you”. Use your mobile to tune in to the social media interactions going on around your physical location. Thanks Darko for sharing this!
YMPL – Your Mail List Provider is online email marketing software that allows you to easily create custom templates and manage your newsletters. Thanks to our friends at Social Focus for that one!
Website Magazine – is always a source of great website success tips. In the latest issue we discovered: Sprout Social (Social Media Management Tool) and Bizzy (local business recommendation button).
If social media or blogging interests you then its not too late to get your tickets to Northern Voice (only 83 tickets left!). See you there?
Looking for a quote – try Quotenik.
And last but not least, take a moment to relax at - Do nothing for 2 minutes - go on – you deserve it!
More Reasons to Be Cheerful posts.
Written by Corrie Scott, March 08th, 2011
Facebook recently updated their business pages, and the changes are overwhelmingly positive for page administrators. Many of the issues with business pages have been rectified with these new changes, and the new pages more align with the look and feel of personal profiles, making for a more streamlined user experience on Facebook.
On March 10th all Facebook pages will permanently switch over to the new pages. Currently, administrators can preview the new profile or choose to opt-in to the new profile. Why not upgrade early? You only live once! Besides, you’ll have to make the change in a few days, you might as well have the new page features figured out before then and be ahead of the curve.
Once you’ve clicked to upgrade your profile, here are some of the new features you will find:
Tabs have migrated:
Your tabs have moved from the bar at the top of page to below your page’s profile picture on the left hand side. This change aligns with recent personal profile changes and promotes a seamless user interface.
Photo Strip:
Similar to tabs now being placed on the left hand side to mirror personal profiles, there is now a photo strip at the top of pages. These highly visible photos can be used strategically by your business to promote your brand and engage fans of your page. They are also easily customizable, so you can hand pick which pictures appear in this strip. If you upload many photos, you can frequently change the photos that appear there to give repeat visitors an ever-changing visual on your page or, with a spare half hour, you can create an eye-catching montage such as the one below.
Your page now operates as a ‘person’:
You now have the option to switch back as forth between using Facebook as yourself, or as your page. For example, now I can post as ‘Out-Smarts’ on other walls as opposed to only being able to post as ‘Corrie Scott’. Furthermore, if you are using Facebook as your page, you now have a newsfeed customized to your page which you click ‘home’, and you have the ability to ‘like’ other pages as your brand. You can find the option to use Facebook as your page under ‘account’ as seen below or, if you go to your business page, you will find the option to ‘use facebook as your page’ on the right hand side under the ‘edit page’ button. You can return to using Facebook as yourself by following the same steps. This is a very handy feature as it allows you to post as your page on other walls, whereas, in the past you were only able to post as yourself.
Post as yourself on your page:
The opposite of above. In the past, I could only post to the Outsmarts page as ‘Outsmarts’, but now I have the option to post as ‘Corrie Scott’. To post as yourself on your page, click ‘edit page’, then ‘your settings’ on the left hand list, and uncheck the button called ‘posting preferences’. Click ‘save changes’ and now you can post to your page as yourself.
Receive notifications from your page:
You now receive email notifications about your page in the same way you receive notifications for your personal profile. If your page receives significant activity and the notifications are cluttering up your email, you have the option to turn off email so that you only see notifications when logged into Facebook as your brand. To turn off email notifications click to edit your page, click on ‘your settings’ and uncheck the box that says ‘email notifications’.
Featured likes and featured page owners:
‘Featured likes’ are simply a name change – this used to be ‘favorite pages’. Featured page owners allows you to showcase the administrators of your brand’s page. This allows you to further humanize your brand – if you want to connect yourself personally to your business page. To add either of these features to your page you need to again click to edit your page, this time click on ‘Featured’ and click to add either option.
Changes to your wall:
You can choose whether to show posts by just your brand, or allow fans to post to your wall as well – much like before. However, posts will no longer appear chronologically on your pages wall. Instead, posts now appear according to a ‘relevancy algorithm’ where posts that have had the most interaction will now appear at the top of your page. To see posts in chronological order you can click on ‘admin view’ under the ‘wall’ tab now located on the left under the page profile picture. Admins also have the option of deleting spam or inappropriate posts which will be filed under ‘Hidden Posts’ – you can always unhide these posts at a later time if you wish.
No more static FBML:
As of March 10th, Facebook no longer supports static FBML tabs. They will continue to support any custom tabs already created with FBML, but all new tabs must be developed using iFrames.
‘Suggest a page’:
This feature is no longer available for fans of your page. From now on only admins can suggest a page to their friends, instead fans can now ‘share’ a page. This is similar to the way users share other content on the site, and is Facebook’s attempt to be consistent across their entire site.
Written by Jan, March 04th, 2011
Today and over the next few weeks we will be taking a close look at social media for non profits: we will even share some of our “Social Media Strategy Smarts” specific to this sector with a view to helping you understand how using social media can benefit your organization and help it grow.
Keep It Simple and Achievable
The Out-Smarts mantra for our non profit clients has been “Keep It Simple and Achievable”. Adding social media tools to the strategy of non-profit business is essential in our networked world and tools such as Facebook, email, blogs and twitter are not only cost effective they also encourage a two-way conversation between people and organizations that can effectively increase the momentum and reach of a non-profit - but it has to be manageable given your time and resources.
Good Planning Makes for Good Fortune:
Non profits that focus first on developing a clear strategy are best positioned to succeed with an Social Media program. The first step is to develop a strategy that authentically reflects the organizations strategic goals and vision – whether the aim is to increase fund raising opportunities, engage volunteers or educate the public.
Here are some questions to explore to jump start your Non Profit Social Media strategy:
1. What do you want to accomplish with social media?
i.e. Do you plan to use Social Media to:
- Listen and Learn?
- Build Relationships and Issues Awareness?
- Improve Reputation?
- Generate Conversations?
- Drive Visitors to a website or blog?
- Taking Action or Fundraising?
- All of the above or other?
2. Identify and Research your Audience:
- Who must you reach to meet your objectives?
- What do you want to say to your key audience? (and what will they say back!)
- Which social media tools does your key audience currently use?
- Is there research required to better understand the online social behavior of your target audience?
3. Integrate your Social Media with existing marketing – harmonize with your online approach with off-line message:
- How does your social media support other components of your communications and fund raising strategy?
- Is your website Social Media ready?
4. Change can be hard – Social Media means added transparency for your Organization
To move forward with your strategy you will need to face these common fears and concerns:
- Loss of control over your message
- Dealing with negative comments on-line
- Perception of wasted of time and resources
- Suffering from information overload already, this will cause more
- Not being successful, fear of failure
5. Pick Your Tools and Your Leader
- What tools to support your objectives?
- What tools suit your audience?
- What tools do you have the capacity to implement?
- Who will be responsible for over sight?
6. Get Started
- Do you need any outside expertise?
- Who will implement your organization’s social media strategy?
- Do you have a Social Media Policy to provide posting guidelines
- Determine how much time you can you allocate to your strategy?
If your Non Profit can answer most of these questions it is clearly ready to step out onto the Social Media stage with your message. Remember keep it simple and achievable. Treat your first steps as experimental. Go easy and record your successes and challenges to share with others.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 22nd, 2011
If you were planning on dating someone met online, you’d want to find out everything you could before committing to a real date. That’s the way it is when choosing a vendor for your business: you want to find out if they have a reputation for breaking (business) hearts or for being dependable.
Using Social Media to Make Good Business Decisions
In 2009 PR Newswire reported that a whopping 86% of recruiters use social media to research candidates and make the right hiring decisions. As business people we can use the same techniques to help us make the right decisions when it comes to determining which businesses to work with or to outsource to. It is important to get the right people on the bus and social media can be a great tool to help you determine whether or not to work with a vendor (or even a potential new client). This blog post is aimed at showing you how.
Bad Date
Social media is a tool for connecting, communicating and building community but it can also be great for research and that is exactly what you should do when making any important entrepreneurial decision. Gone are the days when you had to rely on gut instinct and the assurances of your prospective business partner.
When I meet with a potential client for the first time or talk with a would be vendor or supplier, I always do some due diligence to find out a bit about them in advance but also to make sure that they are who they say they are and that they are the right calibre of business or professional to work with Out-Smarts. I am not being arrogant here but exemplary customer service is paramount and if we make the wrong decisions in the court ship phase of a relationship it can often come back to haunt us down the road and we don’t like doing anything that will jeopardize the standard of our work.
Social Media for Due Diligence
When conducting due diligence like this, the first thing I do, after checking out their website (and especially their testimonials) is to Google the name of the business person in question as well as the company. A Google search can tell you a lot about the person’s personal brand online and will often deliver the pertinent search results you are looking for. But this is all very well and handy when the name is unique (try Googling Mhairi Petrovic – I think I might be the only person on the planet with this name) but the same cannot be said for the John Smiths of the world.
Social Media Research Tools
One way to hone in on the right person to research and find out a bit about them is to use Pipl. Pipl comes in extremely handy if the person in question has a common name because it allows you to narrow it down by place. Pipl is a simple tool which searches the “deep” web for mentions so the results are often quite extensive. Simply enter the first name, last name, city, state and country to start the process. The results that are delivered provide a comprehensive list of mentions across the web with links to the source content so that you can check out the person.
A similar tool to Pipl is Social Mention which provides real time social media search and analysis. Unlike Pipl, which is centred on people, Social Mention delivers search results on any term you choose to enter – this can be an individual’s or company’s name or any word or phrase you want to search for. You can search across blogs, comments, bookmarks and more or you can do a universal search.
Another approach, and one of the best ways to research a business or an individual, is to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the largest “professional” social network with over 90 million LinkedIn users worldwide (3m in Canada) as of January and this means that, if you want to find out about a professional or business person there’s a really good chance that there will be on there. There were nearly two billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010 and over 1 million companies have a presence there. Its search functionality is great but the most beneficial aspect of LinkedIn is that once you have found the right person you can review their professional profile to check out their references and to see if anyone else in your network is connected with them. We humans are social people, if we find that someone we know has given the person or business a good reference on LinkedIn then we are much more likely to trust and work with them.
No Active Presence?
So what happens if you do all this research and fail to come up with any information at all about the vendor or business person? You’ve done your digging but they don’t have a presence online. Well, it’s up to you whether to work with them or not but in my personal opinion, in this day and age if someone isn’t even slightly active online, you have to question their commitment to their business. My advice would be to give them a wide berth.
One last thing to consider is that this is not a one way street: the chances are that the next time you meet with a prospect they will have done their research online as well and this time you or your business is in the spotlight. So, it’s always a good idea to run through the steps outlined above, check out your own profile online and ask yourself – would you do business with you?
Just like find out about someone before going on a first date, do your research and sleuth work in advance before embarking on that first business “date”, it can help you avoid a costly “divorce” or worse in the long run and the tools to allow you to do so are at your fingertips.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, January 05th, 2011
If your New Year’s resolution is to get your business in order, then putting together and implementing social media plan to help you use the Internet more effectively should be top of your to do list today. If the thought of getting started has you procrastinating, then you’ve come to the right blog post to kick start your New Year online. Here is how to go about creating a social media strategy document that works for you.
Go Easy – Remember that your strategy document doesn’t need to be war and peace. It can be as long or as short as you want/need it to be but it must be documented (even if its just in bullet form) and achievable given your market economics.
Research – All great marketing plans begin with one thing: research. Before you start take time to do some research: find out what your competition is doing online, ask your clients which social networking sites they use, identify peers and luminaries in your industry and find out how they use social media. Doing this will help put social media in perspective and will allow you to set realistic goals.
Your Social Media Plan Should Include
Overview – Your plan should of the current situation so that you have a yardstick for comparisons. How many followers do you have right now? What is your social media presence and what resources you have available? The overview should also include a short statement that encompasses the purpose of your plan.
Audience – Define your target audience: ages, location, sex, education etc. Knowing who you want to target makes hitting the mark much more likely.
Goals – Define your goals in quantitative terms and make sure they are achievable given your resources. 
Applicable social media goals might be to increase website traffic by X%, to increase your Facebook by X, to grow blog subscribers or to build interactions (how many times people interact with your site including replies, comments, clicks etc). Remember that goals should be time sensitive.
Measure – An important part of goal setting is determining how you will measure success. If website traffic traffic is a priority the Google Analytics is a great tool to use. If it is building your network or interaction then follower count and insights should be used.
Tools - Identify and document which social media or digital networks you will use. This decision should be based on the research conducted earlier – the decisions you make here are important. If you have little time and are looking to network then Twitter’s short sharp 140 character bursts might be right for you (especially if moms, Justin Beiber fans and techs are your target audience). If you have a very visual offering then YouTube might be the most appropriate tool. The key here is to use only a few tools and choose the ones that are most likely to give you access to your target community.
Message – What is it that you want to communicate online, what impression do you want to make? Write it down! Encompass this in a few sentences and bear in mind that brand visuals and your communications style online should mirror those offline. Consistency is key and if different people are managing your presence, it is important that they “act” in the company manner online.
Schedule – Social media can be time consuming and distracting if you are not focused. To help you stay on track, schedule social media marketing time into your day and keep to that schedule.
Implementing Your Social Media Plan
Your social media strategy plan should be an organic document that can be tweaked and enhanced as you go. Once you engage and gain experience using social media, you will quickly learn what works and what doesn’t in your community. Use your social media experiences to hone your plan so that it can evolve and become even more effective.
Not Traditional Marketing
It is very important to remember when implementing your plan that this is not a traditional marketing project. It is not all about pushing out information online, it is about building relationships, communities and interacting. Bear that in mind, build an appropriate strategy, get social and you can’t go wrong.
We Can Help
Out-Smarts provides social media and Internet marketing planning services. If your social media strategy is top of the prioirity list for 2011 but your strapped for time, call us – we’d love to assist.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 24th, 2010
Despite this being his busy season, Santa has been really active online again this year:’
‘
Follow Santa’s progress on Twitter via NORAD and his Twitter profile.
On Facebook there are several Santas - its hard to see which is the real one but NORAD is on there too keeping track of his whereabouts.
Santa now ships to Canada – oh wait, I thought he lived here: shifty You Tube promotion. Ho ho ho.
The Elf Leader shares some seasonal ditties on MySpace.
For more on Santa, check out his wikipedia listing.
Even Wikileaks is in on the act – revealing Santa’s personal documents earlier this month along with his naughty list – hope you are not on it!
And last but not least rumour has it that Santa uses an iphone app to track wish lists now.
I wonder how he finds the time.
Happy Holidays to you all. Thanks for following Out-Smarts this year. We hope Santa is good to you!
Written by Corrie Scott, December 23rd, 2010
A business page is the business equivalent to a personal profile, and has a few advantages over the alternative of setting up a Facebook group for your company, although both have their strong points. Our previous post, Facebook for Business: Groups or Pages discusses the merits of both options, and you can always have both a group and a page for your company. However, between the two options, a Facebook page is probably the best way for a business to have a presence on Facebook.
A good analogy for pages vs. groups is to think of a Facebook page as a separate entity that is your business, whereas a Facebook group more closely resembles a club for your business. In other words, pages focus more on a business, whereas groups focus more on a shared interest in that business. With a page, updates and notices are seen as coming from the page itself, the names of the administrators are not listed, and your personal Facebook profile is not linked to the page which allows you to maintain personal privacy. With a group, you can control who joins your group, administrators are listed, your personal profile is linked to the page, updates come directly from you, and there is a 5000 member limit (no such limit exists for pages).
There are also a number of other features that are exclusive to Facebook pages. One key difference is that, unlike groups, a page is indexed by external search engines and shows up very high in Google search results. Pages also have the ability to add an application, which allows you to customize your page, show more content, and adopt a cohesive online presence. You can either use Static FBML to create your own customized tabs, or browse the Facebook Application Directory for a complete list of all the Facebook applications that can be added to pages. For the above reasons, a page not only appears more professional but also allows for much greater flexibility and room to grow as your customer base expands.
How to Create A Facebook Page:
Creating a Facebook business page is a simple process, just click here and choose whether you are a local business, brand, product, or organization, or an artist, band, or public figure. It is obvious which user type should pick the last category; however, it can be harder to pick between the first two. You should select local business if you strictly sell your product or services locally, and plan to continue this way in the future. For all other businesses, you should select brand, product, or organization. Also, if you chose local business, the template for the page is set up as if you are a brick and mortar business, whereas the brand, product, or organization choice gives you less restrictive info tab options for inputting your information. Choose carefully because once you have selected a category, you cannot change it without deleting your page and starting from scratch!
Once you have chosen your category, name your page, i.e. the name of your business, accept the terms, and click Create Official Page. Done! Again, name your business carefully. You cannot change it once youve created your page.
Now, fill out your new business page with all of your business information, in the same way that you would a personal profile. Finally, once youve completely filled in your profile, promote your new Facebook page and begin to grow your following. There are a number of ways to do this including, providing great content, targeting advertisements towards your target customers, and using Facebook suggestions to suggest your page to people who may be interested.
Remember to install Facebook Insights so you can track and measure your success using important metrics such as the number of fans added/lost per day, total fans, number of reviews, page views, unique views, photo views, video and audio plays, as well as total interactions. Also, dont forget to add your location details, hours of operation, and phone number to the information section so customers can find you offline as well, and remember to regularly update your page with new content to keep your customers engaged.
If you would like more information on Facebook pages, or need help creating one for your business, Out-Smarts Marketing can help – we provide social networking training and consulting services to help you use social media tools effectively. Contact us now to find out more.
Written by Corrie Scott, December 17th, 2010
By now everyone has heard of the social networking service, Facebook. The company isnt all that old – it launched in February 2004, and quickly grew into an internet sensation that currently has more than 500 million active users.
The population of Facebook, if it were a country, would be 3rd in the world after China and India. Those 500 million users spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, and 250 million active users log on to Facebook any given day.
Smart companies are learning how to harness the power of Facebook – with its vast amounts of information regarding consumer preferences, trends, and like/dislikes, it has never been this easy to reach your target market. However, we recognize that Facebook can be very intimidating for businesses used to operating in the traditional marketing realm of TV advertisements, newspapers and magazines, or radio announcements.
The following information will not only demystify some of the questions surrounding using Facebook for professional purposes but also prove that Facebook is an invaluable and increasingly essential part of a growing business.
How Facebook can help you build your business:
1. Branding
Continue to build brand awareness for your business and create a unified presence across the internet by creating a Facebook profile that uses your company logo and biography. Static FBML also allows you to create customized Facebook tabs. This creates a cohesive image and solidifies your brand in peoples minds.
2. Customer Engagement
Making your business available on a medium that your customers are already using regularly can only increase exposure and engagement. This is a great place to offer special deals, contests and promotions to current customers and to entice new ones to interact with your business.
3. Reputation Management
Facebook is about real people, which means real opinions. This shouldnt scare you off, but rather be seen as an opportunity to grow. If a customer is expressing displeasure at some product or aspect of your company, it should be seen as an opportunity to engage with them and rectify the problem in an open and transparent way. Remember, negative feedback isnt necessarily bad feedback if it allows your company to grow and gain a reputation for quickly solving customer complaints and problems.
4. Customer Feedback
Similar to reputation management, Facebook allows you to have a conversation with your customers by asking questions and responding to replies in a comfortable, non-threatening environment.
5. New Customers and Retention
Potential customers you may not have considered will be able to find and interact with your business online. Facebook also helps you stay connected with the customers you already have, and show them your appreciation for their business through communicating and providing great content.
6. Drive Web Traffic
Facebook shows up very high in Google search results because of the sheer number of people searching for, and interacting with, the social networking site every day. Your business on Facebook will also show up very high in Google search results which is where most people first look when researching a product or business. You can also drive traffic to your official website, or business blog, by including a link on your profile page which encourages fans to explore your business outside of Facebook as well.
7. Research Competitors and Business Leads
Other businesses are also on Facebook including competitors and potential allies. Its easy to view competitors profiles to see who their customers are and how they engage customers with content. This can give you tips to improve your profile. Facebook can also generate new business leads by exposing your business to other companies that may be interested in collaborating with you and vice versa.
8. Viral Marketing
The very nature of Facebook is viral. People see a comment or story they like, and they share it with their friends. Harness this power by providing exciting and engaging content to your customers and they will share it with their friends, who will share it with their friends, and so forth. Essentially, let your customers help promote your business!
9. Humanize Your Business
People like to buy from other people, and having a profile where you post company photos and interact with customers in a friendly way makes your business more approachable than a professional website. Facebook is also an excellent medium for content marketing because it engages customers with your business and entices them to share your information with their friends.
10. Targeted Advertising
Paid advertisements can be targeted to specific demographic targets and consumer preferences. Results can be easily tracked through Facebook Insights so you know exactly how effective your advertisements have been.
If you are interested in using Facebook for business purposes, but still a bit wary about tackling it by yourself, Out-Smarts Marketing can help – we provide social networking training and consulting services to help you use social media tools effectively. Contact us now to find out more.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 03rd, 2010
In our last blog post on the topic of making your business accessible online, we gave a general overview of the techniques you can use to help potential customers find your real world store location using the Internet. This time, as promised, we will hone in on Google Places. Google Places allows you to create a free listing on Google Maps so that when potential customers search Maps for information or directions to your location, they’ll find your business easily. Not only that but they will be able to find out information about your business such as: your physical address, hours of operation and photos of your store.
Google Places is one of the most powerful tools you can use to help people find your bricks-and-mortar location. Its also free and easy to set up. Here is step-by-step guide to help you do so.
Step One – Get a Google Account
You dont need to have a website to take advantage of Google Places but you do need to have a Google account in order to get set up. If you have a gmail address then you can use that, if not, click here to go through the process of setting up your account and password details.
Step Two – Sign up for Places
Google Places allows you to place you business location on Google Maps. It makes it easier for people to find your location and easier for prospects to connect with you. To add your listing go the Google business centre, enter the details as prompted. First you are asked to enter the country and phone number. You will then be prompted to enter your basic information: Company name, address, postal code, email and phone information; then more detailed information such as hours of operation, type of business category and photos and videos of your location. You can also add custom details. Your listing will be previewed in Google Maps on the right hand side of your screen.
Step 3 – Verification
Once you have completed this process, Google will verify your details. They do this either by phone (they usually call you back to verify your information within a couple of days) or you can have the verification information send by snail mail to your address, if you prefer. Enter the verification code to complete the process. Your Google listing should appear on Places within a few hours.
Step 4 – Monitor
Google Place provides some rudimentary tools to allow you to measure impressions and actions for your listing. It is useful to keep an eye on this from time-to-time.
Step 5 – Promote
Google also allows you to promote your products or services using print or digital coupons that offer in-store discounts, giving customers further incentive to visit your physical location.
Google Maps is often the first place people go these days when trying to locate an address. Ensuring your location is listed there enhances the likelihood that potential customers will make it to your door.
