169 | The Best Free Tool For Organizers
There are 99,000 Google searches EVERY SECOND. Are you taking advantage of those?
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hey Pro Organizers, it's your podcast host Melissa. It is five-ish in the morning when I am recording this 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 get on here and talk about a few things that I have been thinking about lately and just things that are going on in the overall organizing world.
One of the things that I love to do is to really make sure that I, sometimes I think I talk about things a lot. And like, I, I, 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, 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!
The last two podcasts, if you have listened, were from the How To Summit it was an amazing event in Cleveland. It was put on by Home+Sort, and 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. 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, but 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 please do not press pause because if you're like, Melissa, I've heard you talk about this before.
Yes, I have talked about it before. I haven't talked about it in a while, 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. So this is something that also there are times on this podcast where I might say something that is a little bit more United States centric, this is something that transcends. 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, if you have listened to this podcast for any period of time, 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 on this podcast 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 home organizer and their city, that is what pops up usually first. Okay, so it's a combination. 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 I, it 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, okay?
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 way, 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 proorganizer. com slash links, you will be able to sign up for this course for the month of November only. I am hosting a private Facebook group where we will troubleshoot anything.
You can ask questions, you can ask for advice, we can do anything in that group pertaining to Google business profile, but I am so passionate about this and I really want people to get on this tool. Okay. So pro organizer dot pro organizer studio.
com slash links, and you will be able to sign up okay, 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 bucks 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.
That's a great example of, I would love to walk through some ideas with that person in our Facebook group about, Hey, how can you use Google business effectively while you're building a website or before you have a website? So many things in this universe that I would love to help you with. And so I wanted to make this super low cost, less than 20 so that you could, if you have never experienced a pro organizer studio.
program before you can get in and you can spend some time with me and talking about one of my favorite subjects in the entire world. So we have so many people that say they listen to the podcast and that, they love it.
So this is basically a way for me to try to bring the podcast experience to a lot more people.
But I want to give you some of these mini bite sized courses because I know sometimes people don't want to commit to a full program, but they have something in their business that they want to shore up.
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.
And again, I teach you a way that you can do it in a super short timeframe in this mini course.
Here are a few other things that I want you to think about. So I, it's not just Google business.
I want you to be thinking about this time of year and what your clients might be thinking about. A lot of people are going into the holiday season, which can be very stressful for them. They are thinking about, oh my gosh, we have all this entertaining to do.
Is my house ready to go? There are a lot of things you could still be doing. This tends to be a slower time of the year for organizing hours. So remind your clients about things that you are able to do for them that they might not think about as traditional organizing. A lot of organizers are doing holiday decorating, which I personally love doing.
I'm actually doing it for a client this week. As a matter of fact, we are getting all of her Christmas stuff or ready to go. But remind them of things that you are able to do. Maybe it is organizing their holiday entertaining things. So that makes it a lot easier for Thanksgiving. Maybe they're hosting a lot of events around the December holidays and they have a bunch of stuff where they don't know where it is.
Maybe it's getting the kitchen ready. There are a lot of things that you can advertise to your clients. The other thing I'm going to tell you is, and please do not discount. Especially right now, if things are a little slower, do not discount reaching out to your prior clients and seeing if they have any maintenance they want to do to get them ready for the new year coming up.
I know that there are people that have felt like it's a little bit of a slower time right now. And in our inspired organizer program, we had someone the other day. That's like I reached out to my prior clients and I had a huge booking from one of them. Please do not forget about people that you have already done work with, reaching out to them again and just saying, Hey, do you need a little refresh?
Do you need a little maintenance? What can I do for you as you go into this holiday season?
Don't sleep on those prior clients, because some of them, you may think that you've seen them recently, but it may have been a year or more since you saw them. And I'm sure that they could use some help. And just a reminder that you're out there. The other thing that I would love for you to do as we go into the slower time of the year, I understand it's not slow because there are a million things going on for most families around the holidays. But. I want to remind you, it's also a great time to work on things for your business.
Getting ready for 2024 and January is going to be on us before we know it. And then you have new year's resolutions of people that decide they want to get decluttered and organized. Making sure that your business is set up and ready to go for 2024.
I'm doing work right now with a one-on-one client. She realized she needed her website shored up and she needs her Google business shored up. So we are working on that so that she is ready for an influx of clients in January. Look at your business. Is there anything that has been bothering you recently that you really want to get taken care of?
The holiday time is a great time to do that. So you might be a little slower on organizing hours, actual organizing inside people's homes, but can spend that time working on your business to get you ready for when things get busy again. And to do those things like writes newsletters, get those in the hopper, get things set up, you know, as much automation as you can do in your business.
All of those things are great ways to spend November and December. Especially as you're sitting around, maybe you can just put your laptop on your lap and watch some movies while you get a little bit of work done. Okay. So I would absolutely love to have you join us in our Google mini course.
I would love to meet some of you that I have not met before in our private Facebook group, which will be open for the month of November. And honestly, probably I'll, I'll keep it open probably an extra week into December to just because I like to do stuff like that. But. But I'd love to have you join us pro organizer, studio.com/links.
And please think about some of those things that you can do and that in the next six weeks to get your business ready for 2024. Okay so that was a little bit of a mini-sode i always love talking to you guys if you have any questions please reach out to me hello@proorganizerstudio.com. i would love to chat with you. Have a great day!