Source: fotki.yandex.ru via Cindy on Pinterest
Look First Before You Jump!
It’s important to be on the cutting edge of local online marketing, but you don’t want to be on the bleeding edge. We love when we can get our customers ahead of the curve, but not all things should be done right away just because it’s available. Last week Google announced you can connect your Google Places page to the new Google Plus business pages allowing small businesses to provide more social experience with their local listing page(s).
However doing this does require you to re-verify your Google local listing, which can cause a whole ‘nother pot of problem(s). In this post we want to through CAUSTION to our clients and readers that they may want to get all the facts first before jumping in with both feet!
Reasons Why You Might Want to Wait
It seems that from Mike Blumenthals’ recent post about Google’s current missing functionality, that you should wait if your business:
- Is managing different types of businesses and you would need bulk upload options, then it would be better to wait till that is available
- Has three or more locations, the social aspect of Google+ Local doesn’t allow you to manage one set of followers to build your brand efficiently, there is no single dashboard
- Is not overly concerned about or currently value the social media aspects of Google+ Local, then let them iron out all the kinks before merging
- Is a home based operation as the current Google+ Local Business Page does not support verification for this type of business
When You Are Ready to Jump In
For those who are ready to connect their Google+ Page to their Google Local Business Page, then here is a step by step guide with screenshots, OR if you learn better with video, then here’s a step by step video tutorial on this subject.
Sometimes It Best To Wait
Google has been known to release stuff to early that is half baked and sometimes it best to wait to see how the new environment works before jumping in with two feet. If you have many locations you may want to test with one first before committing them all to connect to Google Plus. We will be testing this slowly with our clients accounts and for some we will not be opting for migration at all because we DO NOT want to go through the verification process again and we will wait until Google does force migration (which will happen in the near future).
