Today’s introduction of “Posts” on Google My Business wraps up a busy 2 weeks. Last week they unveiled the new, single page websites that can be created with Google My Business and now they have introduced a feature called “Posts” which allows you to publish short posts to your public facing Google My Business listing.

Even if you do not yet have a Google My Business listing for your business you have probably seen them any time you searched for a product or service. They are right beneath the ads at the top of the search results page. If you search for a specific business then their Google My Business listing appears as a box to the right of the search results.

Business listings are a powerful and free way to promote your business online. For small business without the funds to build a professionally constructed website Google My Business listings and Websites can be a godsend. For medium to large sized businesses having a Google My Business listing is just a matter of course, most have them for every location. It just makes sense.

What Can Posts Be Used For?

As a GYBO Local Partner (our link is at the bottom of the page) I have been promoting Google Business Listings and business listings in general for a long time as a fundamental part of local SEO for businesses. Google’s listings just keep getting better and better. Lets have a look at what you might be able to do with the new Posts feature and then I will explain how to create one.

If you first think about where your Google My Business listing Posts will show up your creativity will soon start giving you ideas on what you can put there no doubt but allow me to throw some wood on the fire for you. They will show up in search results in Google search and on maps. If someone searches for you by name or clicks on the link to your listing in a more generalized search your GMB (Google My Business) listing is there to the right of search results as a “Knowledge Graph” style box. The same is true on Google Maps and in Google+.

How To Create Google My Business “Posts”

The process for creating Posts is simple and straightforward. The following steps will help you to get the hang of it and be posting like a pro in no time.

1. Log into your Google My Business dashboard by going to business.google.com
2. Select the business that you wish to add the Post to and select “Manage Listing”
3. In the menu on the left side of the screen you are on now select “Posts” (under Home).
4. A box will appear inviting you to “Write your post”. Click on that box to begin.
5. A popup will appear within which you create your post. You can start by uploading an image (must be at least 344 x 344 px).
6. Then, under the image, you can add between 100 and 300 words of text.
7. Next you can select what kind of post you want it to be (if any), “Event” is the first choice.
8. You can add a call to action button linking to a page on your website. Button choices are “Learn More”, “Reserve”, “Sign Up”, “Buy” and “Get Offer”
9. Next hit “Preview” at the top right of the popup.
10. If everything is to your liking hit publish, again at the top left, and you are finished.

That’s all there is to creating Posts in Google My Business. I think that this is one of the best ideas that Google has had in a while in regard to this platform. If you put up a product image with a “Buy” button it seems to me that it would be very much like a Google Shopping ad. Thanks for reading this article and if you are a better visual learner I have also made a video showing how to do this and you can watch it here.