Hump Day Headlines: Google My Business, Facebook Premiere Video and Tips for Generating More Online Leads

By Art Unlimited.

We’re excited to talk about some of the Hump Day Headlines that we've seen come across our channels this week!

You can either watch the video or read the transcript below. Plan to join us live each Wednesday on Facebook.

So, one of the topics we're going to be discussing is Google My Business; they're always making changes, and I feel like we've talked about this almost every week for the last...I don't even know how many weeks. Another topic we're going to be discussing is Facebook Premiere video, and some of the changes they're making there, as well as if you are struggling with lead generation for your business: how to overcome some of those challenges.

New Google My Business Badges!

So, to get started, Google My Business: one of the big changes that they just rolled out—I think it's a great change—is they have added not only the Women-led and Veteran-led features within Google My Business but now they’ve added an attribute that many of the businesses we represent can leverage within their Google My Business: Family-led.

That attribute is available within the backend of your Google My Business listing. You can activate it; they will say it's pending, and the feedback that we've seen right now is Google is still reviewing that, and once it becomes live on your listing you get an icon!

For now, the icon is only available through mobile experiences. So just a little something to be aware of and a great way to promote that you're a Family-led business!

Facebook Premiere Video Rolls Out to Business Pages

So another topic that we've been discussing here at the office is Facebook and their Premiere video offerings and the changes happening.

Facebook launched this back in April, I think, but only to a few specific test groups. It’s called Premiere video, and now it's been rolling out to more and more pages. So, if you own a page, this might be coming to you soon as a feature.

With Premiere video, you're uploading content you've already recorded, but it's appearing as a live video. What you can do is set up a placeholder post for it through Premiere video, so it'll say, "There's going to be a live video at such-and-such time," and people can start showing interest in it and they can tell Facebook to send them a reminder when the video is live.

Facebook says that when it's time to get that live snippet going, then it's a pretty seamless swap so that people can just start viewing it right away.

And that, of course, makes way for more ads, just like everything else on Facebook, it’s finding room to squeeze more ads in. And so, there'll be new ad slots within those live videos and you can be looking forward to that change and figuring out if your videos are going to be eligible for those ad slots or not. We’ll be finding out how we can help our clients use these features.

Checking in on Your Digital Marketing

So, the last topic we wanted to cover is a question that prospective customers ask us. "My leads are slow. Why?" or, "The digital impact for my business is not what I would like it-- it’s lackluster."

There are a number of things you can look at, like how many reviews are you acquiring from your digital platform? And the other thing to consider: it's not always just the volume, but the quality of those reviews. How many stars are you receiving and what type of content is being left with those reviews? And whether or not you're responding consistently and positively to reviews, even if they're not great. All of that comes into play. A lot of clients say, "I don't know that I need to respond to reviews," and actually, they do need to respond!

Another facet of this issue is your mobile site. Google's mobile-first algorithm rolled out quite a while ago, and in some of the industries we represent, they aren't all mobile compliant! So, this is something you should check in on, because you might say, "Oh, my website is mobile-friendly—" it might not be mobile compliant. There are a lot of hidden rules and regulations that Google is requiring in order to qualify for that algorithm.

Last but not least: make sure that when you do marketing, you don't start and stop it. And when you start something, you need to have consistency. When you have that consistency, Google says "Wow, they're just like a brick-and-mortar store with their digital presence; they're doing things on a constant basis."

So those were some of the key things that I thought we wanted to talk about today. If you have questions about any of these, we’re always happy to answer! Thank you so much for joining us!