In today’s online world, one of the most powerful tools for businesses is the Google Business Profile. The Aiken Chamber of Commerce wants to help teach the tricks of building one.
The Chamber is offering “Mastering Your Google Business Profile” on June 12. The result is to teach business owners how to build a profile that will attract customers, improve online visibility, and raise trust for their brand through Google.
“A lot of times, that’s the first place people are going to search for companies,” Jim Tunison, Chamber President and CEO, explained. “So, it’s really important for our members to understand how valuable a tool your Google profile can be, and how that can help you generate leads and sales, and traffic to your website. It’s really that front door to your business.”
Leading the class will be Sharon Martin, Founder and CEO of Managed Nerds, an IT managed service business based in theClubhou.se at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center.
She told ABD that the Google business profile is the most valuable tool for small businesses, particularly those offering services and products in a local storefront. The Google business profile is how customers and other businesses locate what they need.
“But the downside of the Google business profile is a lot of small businesses don’t understand how to create or claim their profile, and so they’re sitting there with a profile that gets reviews that they can’t reply to, and replying to reviews greatly increases your chance of customers coming to your business,” she said. “They’re sitting on a profile that doesn’t have updated hours, updated descriptions, even an updated phone number, or worse, they’ve tried to get a profile, and they can’t get it verified through Google.”
Martin said the complexity of getting that verified profile prompts some business owners to spend thousands of dollars on a service that secures the verification. The upcoming workshop will walk participants through how to create a profile and get it verified. It will also highlight the most essential information to include.
“We will be going step by step through creating a business profile as much as I can, and afterwards, through the claim, I’ll be including some slides and some notes for attendees afterwards, because they’re not going to be able to remember everything,” she said.
“You can create a Google business profile with your cell phone, with your iPad, with your laptop, and manage it with any of those, it doesn’t really matter,” she said. “But you want to be able to get in there and manage your profile and look at the portions of it, if you have one, while I’m going through those portions, so you can better understand what that looks like.”
Martin said the class is beneficial for people who own a small business, or for a person who manages a Google profile for a small business.
Interest was high, and this session is fully booked. The Aiken Chamber is also offering workshops on teaching small businesses how to use artificial intelligence (AI).
More information is at: https://www.aikenchamber.net/eventsandnews/chamberevents
