TRANSCRIPT: Okay. Google. Yeah. Yeah. Once again, the pachyderms are on the move and it’s time to make sure that you’re moving your feet so that you don’t get run over, left behind, or whatever applies to you.
Let me ‘splain. Way back in the diz-ay I used to be really obsessed with trying to get information into the hands of the people whose websites I was building about online booking. Seemed to me, being the geek that I am, that online booking was a good thing. If only from this perspective, some people want to do it. I was thinking, you know it really doesn’t matter what you want.
What matters is what they want. If there’s a sizable amount of people who would come sit in your chair and you don’t offer online booking, well they’re going to take their biscuits and put them in someone else’s chair. That made sense to me. Overtime I found out that some people just don’t want to do that, and that’s cool. Didn’t really push the issue whatsoever, however, it’s time for me to journey back in that direction because Google is doing something kind of interesting.
They are continuously, continually, one more time again they’re trying to dominate the online space. Let me ‘splain what they’re doing this time. Do you have, or let me explain by asking a question first. Do you have your Goggle My Business stuff tight? Are you on the map? If I look up your name on the map, will I be able to find it or will I just have one of those little icons that says, “You are here.”
If you go to Google My Business, and that’s google.com/business, can start the process with getting yourself on the map. It might be a little bit difficult. Might have a couple of struggles to make that happen because if you interpret Googles rules in a certain way you may think, “No, no. I can’t be on the map.”, and to that I said pshaw. Pshaw to you, because you are a business. You’ve got your own shingle. You collect your own fees. You do your own marketing. The only difference is you’re rocking it in somebody else’s chair.
There’s no difference in my mind between you renting a chair from a salon owner and that salon owners who’s either leasing or doing a mortgage from someone else. In my mind, get your happy behind onto Google Maps.
It’s only for this one reason, again going back to the fundamentals according to Sherpa. Be where they are looking. Some people do the map thing. Some people are all about Google. I know, there’s a lot of people into Yelp!. I know that a lot of people are into Instagram. I got that. However, some people start their journey on the maps. They go straight to Google, type in whatever, and then they start looking around, especially if they’re looking for services and they want to find something that’s close.
Well Google, for a long time now, I’m not even going to try and remember how many years, but they’ve had this map feature that’s really, really cool because if you are on the map, if you have the ability to be in the little three pack that they’ve got there with your actual name verified and all that, Google creates a mini-website for you. Now don’t get all happy happy joy joy, it’s not like your own website. It’s more for them than it is for you, but what it does is it publishes all kinds of really cool information about you for people who are trying to get to you.
What I mean by that is it will list your phone number. It will list your directions. It will list certain pieces of information about your business, accessibility features, services that you offer. Then of course, they can click on, How do I get to you?, and the map pops up from where they’re standing to where you’re at.
A nice little cool blue line pops up and they can follow it and tada,