When is a Google post worth writing?

Somebody told you that you should be posting on your Google listing. So you did it twice in January, felt slightly foolish writing an update nobody appeared to read, and then stopped. The button is still there, quietly implying you are behind on something.

It is worth being honest about what these posts do, because the advice around them is unusually inflated. They are not a way to climb the rankings, they will not make a thin listing competitive, and posting weekly because a blog told you to is a fortnightly waste of twenty minutes.

What they actually are

A Google post is a short update that appears on your listing, usually a little way down the page, and it disappears or fades back after a period. Most people looking you up will never scroll that far, so the ones who see it are the people already fairly interested in you.

That single fact tells you what they're good for. A post is not a way to reach new people. It is a way to answer the last question of somebody who is already most of the way to ringing you, at the exact moment they are deciding.

Once you frame it that way, most of the standard advice falls apart. "Post weekly to stay active" is aimed at a feed, and this isn't a feed. Nobody follows your listing.

The four times a post earns its twenty minutes

When your availability changes in a way that would surprise somebody. You've had a cancellation and can take work this week. You're booked into March. You're closed for a fortnight from the 14th. This is the single best use of the feature, because it answers the question a ready-to-call customer is holding, and it is genuinely current in a way nothing else on your listing is.

When you have started or stopped doing something. You now do air source heat pumps. You no longer do roofing. You've added a Saturday. Things like this often never reach your website for months, and the listing is where they'll be seen first.

When something seasonal is about to matter. The week before the first frost, if you do boilers. Late February, if you do gardens. The point is not the season itself but that you're saying it while the customer is thinking about it.

When you have one genuinely good photo with a story. A before and after of something difficult, with two sentences explaining what was wrong. This is the only post type that's worth doing simply because it's good.

Notice what isn't on that list: generic tips, motivational lines, anything with the word "excited", and offers you've run before. Those are the posts owners feel obliged to write, and they are the ones that make the section look like an abandoned noticeboard.

How to write one so it doesn't read like an advert

Keep it under about sixty words, because the display cuts it off and the second half is read by almost nobody.

Put the useful fact in the first sentence. Not a greeting, not a build-up — the fact. "We've had a cancellation on Thursday and Friday this week" tells somebody everything before they've decided whether to keep reading.

Then give one concrete detail and stop. There's a button for a link or a call, and that does the job a call to action would otherwise clutter the text with.

Here's a workable one:

Two slots free this Thursday and Friday, mostly for smaller jobs — leaks, taps, that sort of thing. Ring before Wednesday evening and I can usually fit you in. After that I'm into the following week.

Nothing in that is clever, and that's the point. It is a person telling you something you can use.

When a post is the wrong tool entirely

If you find yourself writing a post to explain something permanent about how you work, stop. That belongs on the listing itself, in the description or the questions section, where it will still be visible in six months.

This is the most common mistake with the feature. Owners write a post saying they cover a wider area now, it fades in a fortnight, and the information is gone. Permanent facts go in permanent places. Posts are for things that are true this month.

And if the reason you're posting is that your listing is thin — no description worth reading, no answers to the obvious questions, four photos from 2019 — then posts are decoration on a house with no roof. Fix the listing first. It will take an hour and it is worth more than a year of weekly updates.

The bigger thing posts are patching over

Look again at what the best posts do: they answer a timing question. Can you come this week. Are you taking work. How far out are you booked.

Timing is the most perishable thing about your business and the hardest to keep published anywhere. It changes weekly, it lives in your diary, and the only reliable way for a customer to find out has always been to ring and ask you — which means the ones who don't ring simply assume the answer is no.

That is the sort of thing we built hailera to handle: you write the answers once, keep the ones that change under your own control, and publish them as an agent so your website and the AI apps people now use can give a current answer instead of an old one. For a lot of businesses, though, a post on the listing and a line on the homepage cover it perfectly well for nothing, so try the cheap version before you go looking for anything more.

So: is a post worth writing?

Ask one question before you write anything. Is there a fact here that would change what somebody does today?

If yes, write it in sixty words and post it. If no, don't post, and don't feel behind. An empty posts section costs you nothing. A stale one full of forced updates is slightly worse than nothing, because it dates your listing in public.

Most small businesses will find they have something genuinely worth posting about once a month, sometimes less. That's a perfectly good rate.

Today: look at your diary for the next fortnight. If there's a gap or a stretch you're fully booked, that's a post — write it in sixty words and put it up.

Written by the team at hailera — we help small businesses answer customer questions without being there.