Are you the proud owner of an active social media account for your self storage business?
You’re in luck! Google is rolling out a new functionality for Google Business Profile that will help your social media marketing efforts do double duty.
Not only can you now link your social media accounts to Google so links will appear on your GBP, but now Google may start showing your posts on your profile, too!
Let’s take a look at all that we know.
I’ll make this one nice and quick!
Here’s what we know about this GBP change:
To summarize these changes, when your social profile is linked to your GBP, there is a chance that your Google Business Profile will replace the Google Posts section with a section highlighting three of your recent social media posts.
If your self storage facility’s marketing plan incorporates social media, you may be wondering which sites you can link to your GBP?
Thankfully, pretty much all of the big ones are covered. Here’s the list as of this moment:
Previously, Google would find your profile on some of these sites and automatically link them together. Sometimes they got it wrong.
Thankfully, your ability to manually connect the profiles will help out your marketing efforts for your storage facility. Here’s Google’s article on how to do it.
OK, so now we know what’s going on.
But I know you’re probably wondering what that means for your business.
Well, right now, it mainly means that you may see some extra visibility on your social media posts (if you make them) and less visibility on your Google Posts (if you make them).
There’s not much for you, as a self storage owner or manager, to take action on at the moment.
Pug Pro Tip: In the early stages of these changes on Google, making knee-jerk changes can backfire. Even Google probably isn’t sure about whether or not this is a permanent change and how it’ll actually work.
Focus on keeping your fundamentals strong. If you make Google Posts, keep making them and following best practices (check out our free GBP playbook if needed). Same for social media.
When this changes, we’ll update you on what operators should be doing!
No knee-jerk reactions!
Right now, these posts aren’t even consistently showing up for all users across all profiles.
Look at this example:
Compare the example from Near Media’s Mike Blumenthal and the example from our own test search.
In Mike Blumenthal’s screenshot, you can see Facebook posts being displayed. In our screenshot, you see Google Posts displayed (you can tell because it says “on Google” above them).
Neither Mike nor myself are lying to you about what we’re seeing. This is just how Google works.
They’re rolling out the feature and testing the waters.
This is why you shouldn’t worry about this right now as a self storage operator.
If you invest time, energy, and money into making a marketing shift, it could end up meaning absolutely nothing in your market for months, even in a world where it’s eventually a good idea to push social posts.
If you’re already using effective marketing strategies? Keep doing them!
We do highly recommend using Google Posts actively for your storage facility’s Google Business Profile, but this change currently doesn’t alter that advice.
Here are some measured responses to this news:
Just follow the best marketing practices you can for your facility, at the moment, and don’t worry yet about making any changes until we see where these changes land.
And if you already make social media posts, awesome! Your work on socials may start doing double duty for you here soon.
Here are some of my other favorite posts to check out!
At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
