Our blog, D Brief, shares succint expert advice, trends, tips, and ideas for marketing communications tactics—focusing on print, Web, social media, and promotional products—from a corporate visual identity perspective. We welcome your thoughts so we can learn from each other.

Navigating Your Google Listing During COVID-19

Each day, COVID-19 is changing how we do business. One day, we may have our doors open, and the next it is required that we work from home and shut our physical doors to all but essential business. No matter what type of business you are—medical, product-related, or service—it is paramount that you are communicating with your customers, clients or patients.

• Are you an essential business that can remain open and seeing patients/customers/clients?
• What changes are taking place for appointments, emergencies, rescheduling or services?
• What precautions are you taking to protect your clients/customers/patients and staff?

A message on the home page of your website, social media posts, and email blasts are quick and effective ways to get your communication out to patients and clients. Include the best way to reach you if they have questions or concerns.

It is also a good idea to update your Google My Business (GMB) listing with any changes—both temporary and permanent—that can be seen by anyone searching for your business about openings, hours, etc. However, the current pandemic situation has caused some changes to GMB in recent days. Here are some tips to navigating GMB. If after you finish reading these tips and are still having trouble making any necessary changes, contact Google and ask for assistance.

1. If your business is not categorized as essential and will be closed temporarily during mandated “shelter at home”, you can mark your Google listing as temporarily closed. Be careful to select the “temporarily closed” option and not the “permanently closed” option. This label will indicate to clients and potential clients that you are not out of business, just adjusting to the current crisis.
2. Some reports show that businesses that are not temporarily closed are being listed as such. If you are still open, check your Google listing and make any changes needed. If your change does not immediately publish, contact GMB support for assistance.
3. New reviews of all kinds are not showing up, even when the function appears to work normally to the user. Google has turned off new review abilities, so it is advised to wait until this function returns before asking clients to follow up their visit with a review.
4. GMB forum users are reporting that it is not possible to add descriptions at this time.
5. There are also reports about posts getting rejected, even those that follow all of the rules.
6. Questions and Answers have been removed from GMB.
7. User photos are not showing up live.
8. Business owner responses to customer reviews are not getting published.

Hopefully, like the temporary closures of some businesses, the changes to GMB are temporary. Again, we highly recommend communicating with your clients and patients during this unusual time, especially as municipal mandates and healthy guidelines are changing every day.

D Media is open for business, and we are here to help advise you through this. As a small business, we proudly serve other businesses like yours. We understand how critical marketing is in helping our clients maintain business. We will continue to give our clients updates and strategies to help you communicate with your patients and clients through this uncertainty.

We hope that you and those you care about stay safe and healthy.

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