The Best Free Tool For Organizers
There are 99,000 Google searches EVERY SECOND. Are you taking advantage of those?
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It is five-ish in the morning right now, and I am just sitting here at my desk. It is dark because: daylight savings and it is cold because: Minnesota, and I just wanted to talk about a few things that I have been thinking about lately and just things that are going on in the overall organizing world.
Sometimes I think I talk about things a lot, and like, I think that I will tell people, “Oh my gosh, this is really important!” Basically, I think I have talked about something a lot, but in fact I haven't talked about it in a while—and it is something that is really important. And that’s what I’m doing here today. So I'm going to go through one great big thing and then at the end I'll talk about a few other things in your business!
In September, I went to the How To Summit—an amazing event in Cleveland. It was a gathering of organizers, and I talked to so many women in that two day period . And what a lot of them were saying is, “I need actual business advice.” or, “I love the stuff that's more high level and like, Hey, you can do it, but I also need to know exactly what to do in my business.”
And so that is something that has been on my mind since then, and that is something that we do in our Inspired Organizer program, which I'm always thrilled to talk to people about. And that's also something that we try to do on this podcast, is give you some of that actionable advice. So today I am going to be talking about something that I feel extremely passionate about.
I have talked about it before, but I'm going to keep talking about it. And here is why—because there are so many organizers that I work with, and I work with people in one on one coaching settings and very, very often, even experienced savvy organizers—when I ask about this thing, they're like, “Oh yeah, I don't really do anything with it.” Or more importantly, this is what I see more often—they think that they're leveraging this tool, but they're actually not.
And it is a free tool. It's 0 dollars. What I am talking about is Google Business Profile. And if you're like, Melissa, I've heard you talk about this before. Yes, I have talked about it before, but I also want to talk to you about it—because again, so many people that I work with either don't use it at all, or use just like 10 percent of what it can do. And the biggest thing I see is that people are leaving money on the table—and how they're leaving money on the table is by not having some potential clients find them.
There are 99,000 Google searches per second that happen across the world. No matter where you are in the world, there are about eight and a half billion Google searches per day. And while Google is not the only tool for potential clients to find you, one of my hot buttons is people who are like, oh, but I have to do social media. And social media is going to get you the tiniest amount of eyeballs in comparison versus what a Google can give you. What I am always going to tell you is, it's not black or white.
It's not all or nothing. It's not, you know, you only do this and you don't do this. There are many, many ways that we can run our businesses. But the one thing that I'm going to say on the hill that I will die on is if you are not using Google. business profile, if you're either not using it at all, or if you haven't touched it in months or if you're like, wait, why are we supposed to do something other than just set it up? Yes, you are supposed to do something other than just set it up, but I'm going to teach you an easy way to do it. But if you are not utilizing Google business profile, you are missing out on potentially unbelievably great clients that are out there waiting to meet you.
Here's what I'm not talking about today—I am not talking about Google ads. While I do think Google ads are great and a wonderful spend of marketing dollars, I am talking about something that costs you $0 to implement in your business. Here is what i am talking about. You know when you're on Google Maps and you search for “restaurant near me,” or you are at a client and you need to find the nearest Target, and you go on Google Maps and look it up—that is what a Google Business Profile listing is. Someone at that business is managing that profile and organizers can have them because people do search on Google maps, but the other thing that it feeds are actual Google searches.
So if someone is Googling “professional organizer near me,” “home organizer near me,” “home organizer,” and then their zip code, or home organizer and their city, that is what pops up usually first.
It works in concert with your website and your SEO and other things. It's not just your website, it works with other things that are on the internet about you and your business. But Google Business Profile is certainly the best free tool that exists for our business.
And with less than 10 minutes a week of work, you can really be harnessing all of the power of the giant Google machine that none of us could possibly understand because it's probably the most complex thing in the world.
So what I want you to be doing in your business is thinking about some of these digital foundations and your digital foundations include your website, your SEO, your Google business profile, and then other things that are out in the digital universe. And that includes social media, but your core things are your website and your Google business.
So one of the things when I left the How To Summit that really connected with me, and I had conversations with lots of people that I had never met before, I was at the airport and I had a conversation with three lovely women that happened to be in the boarding area with me and I was just talking about, you know, random business things and they're like, “Oh my gosh, you're actually giving us like business advice.” Yep! That's what I do. That is what I actually love to do.
So, here's what I decided to do. I have created a super low cost, it's 19, a $19 course that is going to teach you absolutely everything that you need to do Google Business effectively. Anything that you could possibly need about Google Business, it is in there. How to set up your profile, how to verify your profile, if you have any troubleshooting that you need to do. It gives you swipe files of exactly what to say and how to say it. The key part of Google Business is a series of microblogs. I give you 20 pre-done, ready to go microblogs so that you don't even have to think about it. And if you take my advice and you post two to three times a week, you can use those 20 posts and keep you going for months.
And by the way, you can just go repost all the 20, you can just keep reposting them. It's great. I also teach you how to pre plan posts so that you can do this work in basically less than 10 minutes a week. By the time you get done, it'll be probably about five minutes a week that you can do this, but five to 10 minutes a week to potentially connect you with amazing clients that otherwise would not be able to find you, or it would be a lot harder for them to find you. That's what I'm trying to do for you.
So, if you go to this link, you will be able to sign up for this course. I am so passionate about this and I really want people to get on this tool. So here are a few questions that I have gotten about the course. First of all, the course, you will have access to it for a year. So $19 for a year, about a buck a month. It is self paced, so you can do it on your own time. The Facebook group will only go for a month, but you can still have access to the Facebook group. I'm not going to shut it down.
You can still look at what all the questions and answers were. You do not have to have a website to go along with it. That was a question that I got. Someone said, Hey, I haven't launched my business yet. I have a Facebook page, but I don't have a website yet. Will this still work? The answer is yes. I am happy to walk through.
But even if you are not in a place right now where you want to do this mini course that I've put together for you. What I do want you to do is spend some time working on your Google business profile. You go to business.google.com, that's how you get there. I want you to go. I want you to poke around. I want you to make sure that your profile is set up. I want you to make sure that you are doing as I call it feeding and watering. You do have to feed and water your Google business occasionally to make it work optimally.
Make sure you are adding photos, make sure you are doing update posts, make sure that all of your locations are on there. Just make sure that your Google business profile is fully set up and ready to go. And that you are doing something with it at least twice a week, once a week at the absolute bare minimum, but twice or three times a week, every day of the week, if you can make it happen.
I really want organizers to use this tool! It’s so important to a great organizing business!