333. Coworking Spaces and Google Business Listings: A Google Product Expert’s Advice
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TRANSCRIPTION
333. Coworking Spaces and Google Business Listings: A Google Product Expert’s Advice
00:00:00,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how tos in Coworking. I owned and operated Coworking spaces for eight years, and then served as the executive director of the Global Workspace Association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you a thought provoking operator,"
00:00:26,"case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the Coworking industry. Welcome. I am joined today by Amy Toman, who is Amy. I'll let you talk. She's a Google product expert for one, and just got to take a trip to London, which I'd love to hear about with the other Google product experts."
00:00:57,"And they're not that many in the world. You're like a unicorn, a Google unicorn. Yes. In, in a good sense. Definitely a good sense. I am a local SEOI specialize in SEO for small businesses, and I'm also a Google product expert, which means I'm a top contributor on the forums. I answer lots of questions about when things aren't going as expected or when they are,"
00:01:20,"and you kind of have little questions and Yeah. And I, I do a lot of, I do small projects. I love small projects and I also, I specialize in working just generally with small businesses. There are a lot of SEOs who work with, say very large companies, they work with franchises. I work with more individual groups, people like that."
00:01:45,"Oh, and I always, people like Us. I spent about, I spent about eight months working at, at a Coworking space. Yes. So I've always been intrigued by the business model and actually actually spoke with a gentleman in Philadelphia recently and it was interesting to hear how he, how he structured his business and how he kind of lasted through the pandemic,"
00:02:06,"which is I'm sure not an easy thing, A struggle. We're on the other side. Yes. So I love that you love small business. You have been so generous in offering to answer questions, answering questions. I run a mastermind group and every once in a while something funky will come up and we'll be like, you should probably ask Amy. She wants to help."
00:02:26,"I'm, you know what? I love answering even like little individual questions because sometimes those are the things that really get you and they can cause problems down the line if you have not prepared for, you know, for whatever to happen. Yeah. I think you were helping us with the peer space listing that like the, the, the peer space booking that started appearing on people's listings."
00:02:48,"Yes. Okay. So you were, we have not recorded since August of 2022. Wow. It's been that long while. Yeah. So we need to schedule like a more regular thing because you have so much value to add to our world. So that last episode is number 2 68. I'll put it in the show notes if you didn't listen to it the first time."
00:03:10,"Although Amy might have some updates for us. She's got some, some juicy topics for us today. But that's a don't miss. And I love that you worked out of a Coworking space because that's what I felt last time we talked, like made the conversation so relevant. 'cause you could really picture like how the business works and signage and Yeah. I,"
00:03:29,"well anyway, I'll see what you're talking about. I love, I love it. And I wish that place had, they had, they did not survive. I don't know the reasons, whether it was the pandemic related Yeah. Leasing, something like that. But I wish, if anyone is interested listening, would like to have something in or around Asbury Park,"
00:03:46,"New Jersey, I would love to come by. You're signing up. I use you a space. Yes. I'd love to sign up because I miss that. I miss that option. But yeah, it's, it's, I like the business model, especially in this post pandemic world where people sometimes just want to connect their, their job is remote. Yeah."
00:04:04,"But they want the option to go out there and be with humans. It's sometimes hard to be by yourself all the time. It's just totally, you know, slack can only help you go so far after a while. You just need to find other people to be with. So, Okay. So speaking of which, what do a bunch of Google product experts do when they get together in London?"
00:04:24,"Well, first of all, talk about Google listings. Yeah. That's the big thing. I know it sounds totally Nerd out on, To be honest. The people who do the Google product experts are amazing with solving puzzles because a lot of times when things are not behaving the way you expect, they have to figure out what's going on. Because, you know,"
00:04:47,"obviously you cannot, you cannot be in the same room as somebody, you cannot see what's going on on their screen. Yeah. What actions they're taking or not taking. And especially because we deal with people who, well, in our case, most of us speak English, but there are people who are, you know, from, from all over Europe,"
00:05:04,"Brazil, I have dealt with a few things in, in Africa, Asia. So a lot of times when we get together, it's not only meeting the people who you've, you know, worked with during the year, but it's also sitting there kind of comparing notes on things because we don't see, we don't necessarily see what each other deals with. Yeah."
00:05:22,"So when you, when you bring it up, sometimes it, it's like a big, you know, wow, I didn't realize that. I love that. I assume this is like a Google sponsored, they sort of organize. It's very cool that they do that. 'cause it's like your own community of, of people that you never see in person until you do."
00:05:39,"Yeah. It's the one, it's a one good thing. I, I mean, I'm sure there are others, but it's really, really a great way to keep us motivated. You know, they, they, they flew everybody in and we were all, I think we're all in one hotel, which was interesting because it made it very easy to say,"
00:05:55,"okay, let's all go out for dinner, let's go do this and do that. And oftentimes you found people huddling off by, on their own, going back and forth on different things. And we, we, you know, we, we, we really enjoy because everybody seems to have their own little specialty. Mine, mine is usually fake reviews,"
00:06:12,"fighting fake reviews and reinstatements also. I mean, other people do reinstatements more than I do, but I, I'm, I'm one of the ones who does that more than kind of, more than anything else. Got it. Very cool. Okay. What are we talking about today? The first thing I wanna talk about more than anything is the new reinstatement process."
00:06:32,"Okay. There's a new reinstatement process that has come out now, I spoke before and I would like to remind people, you need to protect your listings. And reason I say that is because Coworking spaces are unique in that they will have their listing and then someone else will have theirs within their space. Now, if they have their own say suite number,"
00:07:03,"you assign them a suite number, and so they use your address plus a suite number, all is good as long as they're following the rules that they're, they have a separate space and there's signage. The problem is, and I saw it this year, I saw somebody who was, who was kind of, didn't believe us. It was more than one saying this,"
00:07:22,"that the problem is that you are, that, that you cannot be sharing a space with the business itself. And because they have the same address. So this has to actually do with that. I'm, I'm all for Coworking spaces saying that, you know, they are not gonna accept people's mail. Yeah. That they are going to, you know,"
00:07:44,"you have to kind of define your services very specifically so that your Google listing doesn't go away itself. You know that you're not accused of, say, sharing a space with somebody else and you have to go to Google MySpace. It's all mine. Yeah. I dunno what those other people are doing. So there's a new reinstatement process that is coming up,"
00:08:01,"and that's why I just wanted to start with that, just to remind people, the new reinstatement processes as, as much as it's been, it's been kind of laid out for us, is that you are going to get, if your Google listing goes down, you will be told, you'll be sent an email and the email will tell you, usually gives you an idea about why you were,"
00:08:27,"why you were sus your listing was suspended, which is very unusual. They, they did not do that before. Okay. So I don't know how specific that reason is going to be, but they're going to tell you, and then once they tell you, this is the part, well, that, the first part is that they're gonna tell you why you were,"
00:08:45,"why you were suspended. The second part is you can submit paperwork and, but the thing is, if you say you're going to do that, you click the button to say that you're going to do that, the clock starts. Okay. I don't know if the clock is on screen or not, but from what I've heard, the clock starts and you have 66 0 minutes to submit whatever."
00:09:12,"Whoa. 60 minutes. Okay. Oh wow. Okay. Go. Hopefully, which people Don't Leave the Computer. Hopefully the, what do you call it? The, the onscreen documentation. We'll tell you that. Yeah. It's like, wow. So that's, that's the biggest part of it that I'm telling people, you need to make sure that your,"
00:09:31,"you have your documentation. Just, just grab it, make sure you have it off to the side, right? Yeah. That you have for your, for your listing title, it's supporting your listing, usually your listing title and your address. Okay. You need to have, and I always tell people, you wanna submit at least three pieces of paperwork."
00:09:50,"Do not ever just say, oh no, I know what I did wrong. I fixed it. And then submit for reinstatement, even if you know what this, what the thing was. Yep. Really need to be able to support it. So here's what happens. You submit this and you say, yes, I'm applying for reinstatement. Everything goes,"
00:10:11,"if they deny you, you may get to appeal. I think I'm pretty sure that that's where it is right now, is you get to appeal. But if they don't agree with you, that's it. You cannot go back ever. You cannot appeal again. See, the way it is now is if you are, if you are suspended, well then you can go back and forth to Google however many times,"
00:10:33,"times, say you have more information or something else, you had to brainstorm something else you fix. Can't do that, can't do that going forward. It's, it's going to be purely a matter of, you can only go back and forth with them. I think once and then, and, and now remember, this changes, this can change a little bit."
00:10:51,"And then the only option is to get a Google product expert to escalate for you. Okay. That is either in the forum or if you contact somebody like me privately, there are companies that have people who do that. There are individuals like me who do that. But the point is that I'm reminding you all about is this is something that can affect your income."
00:11:15,"Big time. Big time. For Sure. Think about how many leads you get, how many people come to you Yeah. Call you, contact you Most of them. Yes, yes. Specifically from your Google listing. Because of that, y'all need to protect it. Now, before I was talking about protecting, making sure that other people weren't using your address."
00:11:35,"Yep. Now what I'm saying is, if you get suspended and, and, and it may be your fault, it may be somebody else doing something, as I said before. Yeah. But regardless, it, you have to abide by Google's rules. They're the elephant in the room, whether they're, whether you disagree with them. Yeah, yeah,"
00:11:52,"yeah. Right. They're in charge. Hey, there I am jumping in to share with you a free live training we have coming up on February 15th called Four Ways to Fund a Coworking Space in 2024. It's 2024. And you know, there's more demand than ever for your Coworking vision. You wanna create your first Coworking business, or you'd like to add a new location."
00:12:17,"But interest rates are crazy town. SBA loans same. And lenders look at you like you're the abominable snowman when you say you wanna do something in the commercial office sector. So what's a passionate Coworking entrepreneur to do when the going gets tough, the tough get creative, creative but realistic. Join my totally free masterclass and we'll walk you through four creative ways to fund your Coworking space."
00:12:42,"In 2024, I funded two Coworking spaces using creative financing. And I work with dozens of operators every single month through my Coworking, Startup, School operator mastermind group and coaching programs who are finding creative ways to fund their launches and their growth. So come join us, find out what's working and what's possible. Join our free live training on February 15th. If you can't make it live,"
00:13:09,"that's cool. We have a replay. Just register, save your spot. And that's the way you get the replay. But if you can join us live, you can ask all the questions you want and engage in the discussion in the chat to register, open up your podcast player, click the details for the episode, and the link is right there."
00:13:27,"We hope to see you there. It's very smart of you to get together, get your paperwork together, make sure you have, I always tell people at least three things and just keep 'em off to the side. Right. Keep 'em in a folder, in a Google drive somewhere. And then if it comes down to that, you'll know what to do."
00:13:46,"If they don't reinstate again, they will probably give you the option to say either go to the forum and ask for help, and then you can do that. That's totally cool. Yeah. But I will say that because of the number of requests, not all requests get answered. Yeah. Okay. You Can also go, like I said, to somebody like me,"
00:14:05,"or you can go to somebody who, somebody else, another company. There are, there are companies, there are very few of them, but there are companies who will help you with reinstatements. What are, what are the three types of documentation that I should have in my Google Drive folder? It does depend on location, but I usually say it's,"
00:14:24,"it's paperwork from authoritative bodies. Like if you, if you need a license where you are to, to, to provide that, that's good. If you have tax paperwork, tax paperwork is good with An address associated with the name of my business. Yep. Okay. Leasing your space, the lease would help. All of that is good. You want to make sure that you are operating correctly,"
00:14:53,"meaning that you have signage at your location, you want to, you know, have that in mind, keep that available. So if they need photos, you have that. So it's basically supporting documentation from, from authoritative bodies. Other people will say you need one or two. I say you need at least three. And I gotta tell you, I've got a very high percentage that I've gotten,"
00:15:19,"I've gotten reinstated, so I stick to three. And then, like I said, photos. So keep all that, keep it off to the side. Hopefully you never use it. You never need it, but if you have it, It's go bagg your emergency go bag. Keep it Bag. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's, it's hard."
00:15:37,"It's a tough thing because before you could go back and forth and you could say, oh wait, I, you know, I know this, or, oh wait, I do that. And, and you know, and Google would run with it, but because of, because of the changes they're making, it's now, it's, it's pretty much one and done."
00:15:53,"It's not exactly one and done, but it's, it's almost, you submit it and if they deny it, I think you can appeal it once. And then if they say no, they say no. And that's the end of that. Okay. Be prepared. So if I get the notification and it's sitting in my inbox and I don't click the button,"
00:16:14,"I should click the button when I have the documentation. Correct. You want to, you want, well, the first thing you wanna do, I'll say this, when you, if you get, if you get suspended, is you wanna go in, they usually will forward you to, and if they don't look it up, you want to look at,"
00:16:32,"it's called Google Business Profile, how to represent your business. Okay. And if you click on that, if you, you search on that, you will probably see a document that goes over everything. It goes on your, with your title. It will go over your address, all the rules for everything. So the first thing you wanna do is you,"
00:16:54,"before you touch anything, press any buttons, anything, you wanna go through that and make sure that your listing complies. Yep. If it doesn't, then you have to go in, you have to go in and fix it. Now is the time to fix it. Once you have gone through and you're, you're sure it's where it should be, gather your paperwork and then say you wanna apply for reinstatement."
00:17:16,"You don't have to do this within a short time. Yeah. Like, some people will do it and they will wait a few days so that they have everything together. Yeah. And then they will submit it. But your listing has been suspended, so you don't wanna wait. You're right. There's a trade off there. You wanna get everything together,"
00:17:33,"but you, you wanna do it quickly because you're not getting leads during that time, or not the same types of leads. And it's, it's, it's hard because, I mean, Google sometimes, even with their reinstatements, they sometimes do not, they won't respond that quickly, I mean, as quickly as you want. So you really have to,"
00:17:49,"if you do it through the system, you know, we don't know. Would that be faster? I don't know. Going through the forum, I don't know. 'cause both of them go through, you know, ins and outs. Yes. So, like I said, the faster you get it in, the better for everybody. You know, especially for,"
00:18:04,"again, your traffic that you're gonna miss, your income that you're gonna miss. But just make sure that you are prepared in case that ever happens. Sometimes you, again, you may say it's not fair. Yeah. But again, right. You gotta deal with the elephant in the room. And right now the elephant in the room is Yeah. You know,"
00:18:22,"Google. So, Okay. So what is, what is a likely reason that you would be suspended? Oh, really good question. I, I think, I think a big thing is address. Yeah. Meaning that somebody else may claim that they're in save your address is 201st Street. That that is okay. As long as your people who have the offices that they stay in all the time,"
00:18:47,"like their designated spaces, they should all be, I don't know, 2 0 1, 2 0 2, 2 0 3. None of them should be using 2 0 2. Yep. Yep. If you have like virtual mailboxes, something like that. Again, nobody should be using Suite the, the same thing. 200. You know, you wanna make sure that that's total you, nobody else. There's also things with,"
00:19:09,"if somebody claims that you don't have, somebody may report you or Google may see that you don't have signage. If you have an address, like an address that shows on your listing, you need to have signage at that location. So like the one, the, the Coworking space that I was in, they had a sign on the door for the building."
00:19:32,"They had one on the inside at the lobby board, it said, you know, third floor. And then when you got up there, it also had another board and it had the name of the business and it had all of the smaller businesses and their suite numbers. So that was that all of that would suffice with Google. Yep. Now all that documentation,"
00:19:50,"plus then you would go over and each of the individual offices had the name of the business. It was really nice. They were on Glassdoor and they had this. Right. I love it. It sounds very clear. It sounds like a very good user experience, which is what Google is concerned about. It, It, it, the one that I was in was great that way."
00:20:09,"And again, to avoid getting the business getting suspended. Yep. You know, you almost have to be pro promoted a little bit saying, Hey, look, here's my front door, here's a sign, here's this, here's that. So address is, is usually a big issue. The other big issue can be, but it doesn't really usually cause you to be suspended,"
00:20:30,"but once you're suspended, they, it'll be problematic. Say, say you are Jamie's Coworking space, and then you add something like West Palm Beach. Oh, Well if West Palm Beach is not on your, it's not on your paperwork anywhere Yep. And you haven't registered it and you don't have a DBA or a fictitious name or an alternate name statement registered somewhere."
00:20:57,"Right. They will sometimes suspend you for that. But if you're suspended for something else, they look at everything. Everything okay. Absolutely everything open a can of worms. Yeah. It, it can get really frustrating because again, they will tell you, they will tell you what the reason is, but the reason is always not, it's not very clear."
00:21:18,"And it may also be more than one thing. So those are the ones I usually say, which is the, the, the title and issues with the address. There could also be other things that they will not, once you are suspended for one of those that they wouldn't bring you back for. It doesn't really apply to bricks and mortar. But,"
00:21:34,"but sometimes if you say you have a service area, which bricks and mortars generally don't, oh, I forgot about the service area. That's right. They will make Those for your entire, some people make it for like the entire state, which if you're on like Delaware, Rhode Island, that's okay. Yep. If you're not, you know, you're supposed to keep that to two hours."
00:21:51,"This also spam elements. If you have been buying reviews, if you have been, if if there's some other issues with spam on there that you've been doing, that also can take you down. Okay. Tell me if I'm jumping ahead, but I've heard reports that operators, it used to be we'd get the postcard and then you could make sure that the business in the space that is legitimately using your business with the unique suite number is actually like that they submitted with the suite number."
00:22:24,"So now there's no postcard because they're doing the Yeah. There, so there's no way to know if the customer, if our member did it correctly. Yeah, there is, yeah. Okay. What they're Doing now, what we is The new thing is they, instead of defaulting to a postcard, which can be easily scammed, they are now defaulting to,"
00:22:48,"and it's, it's pretty much fully rolled out now a video verification. Right. And they will tell you, they will tell you what they, what they want, which is you need to show that you have authority. Yep. Meaning you're the person in charge, you can open doors, things like that. What was the other thing? Oh, the location."
00:23:06,"That's a biggie. And this is really cut down on a lot of bad ones because I saw a lot of people come to the forum like, I can't do this verification because, and what you realize is the address that they're trying to use is in the middle of a cornfield, or it's at an abandoned, you know, building at a lot. So that's why they're,"
00:23:26,"they're saying I can't do it. It's like, yeah. Can't, you Shouldn't be able to. Yeah. Google is trying to, but my understanding is the company that submits is being asked for the review. And so the Coworking space owner may not be engaged in that process. I'm, I don't understand what you mean. They're a you, you mean the,"
00:23:45,"the Video. So I move into a Coworking space. So I move into Amy's Coworking space and I am, you know, Jamie's consulting company. So I submit to Google Jamie's consulting company at, you know, 100 Main Street, but I don't use the suite number and Google's asking me for the photos. So I go out to the lobby and I take the pictures and I take the pictures of my office door with a logo on it,"
00:24:13,"but I messed up and didn't put the suite number on it. And Amy's Coworking space does, is not involved in this process because I'm the one who submitted. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That seems terrifying. Exactly. Okay. This, this is terrifying. And I might get suspended because Jamie's Consulting didn't put the suite number on and submitted a duplicate request."
00:24:35,"Right. But I mean, I, I will say, I will say Google's AI has gotten really good and what they're asking for often gets rid of those sort of things. Like if you are saying that you don't have a suite number, but the video shows that there's all these other people with suite numbers, they will not approve If the operator is following the process and everybody has a suite number,"
00:25:03,"your photos, your Video would, and they don't Show theirs. Okay. It's either if they don't show theirs. Interesting. Okay. Or if they should show theirs and they don't. Yep. The, it's, I I will tell you the video is frustrating to make just because you, you know, you, you need to keep it under two minutes."
00:25:18,"Most of them need to stay under two and you need to show exactly what they're asking for. And if you do that, usually it goes through, but if it doesn't go through one of two things happens. Either you're doing it at a busy time, you know, so you have to kind of keep submitting and submitting and submitting, or you've submitted it,"
00:25:36,"Google has accepted it and they don't believe you. So you either have to do it again, or you have to contact them and say, you know what, what's going on? What's the problem? Hey there, I'm jumping in again this time. I am speaking to those of you that have, are either getting ready to hire a Community Manager or who have a Community Manager and you would like to support their training and development."
00:26:04,"We know how challenging it can be for Coworking space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers. And this is so important in terms of onboarding new community managers and supporting the growth of your existing community managers. And we're getting towards the end of the year, what a great holiday gift end of year gift to give to your Community Manager."
00:26:31,"So the platform is really around a couple of things. One is access to a community of like-minded folks. We have a very active Slack group with really wonderful questions that are posed every single day. And we find that's one of the biggest values. We have community managers from all over the world, and this is an excellent group of community managers that have invested time and effort into getting better at that role."
00:26:59,"And they are the kind of folks that you want your Community Manager to be by and hanging out with and they know their stuff or sometimes they don't and they ask questions and we help them out. So I am in the group, we have coaches that are in the group to support them. So we love when they ask questions for things they need help with because the other aspect of the program is really around helping them get resources they need to make their jobs easier and to learn things that they can use in their role to be better at their job."
00:27:30,"So we provide some done for you resources like Google business posts, detailed event ideas, et cetera, that they can just kind of grab and go and use. And we also provide monthly resources that add to our training library so they can do our certification. And then we have a lot of electives that help them kind of get better at all the things that,"
00:27:56,"that go with the role. So the, our community managers wear a lot of hats. So we break our content into industry knowledge for new community managers, community building operations, sales and marketing and leadership. So the leadership bucket is great for our more advanced community managers. We also have virtual office and digital mail training and coffee training for anybody who needs to know how to use commercial coffee brewers."
00:28:27,"So we have some of the, I'm just gonna give you kind of a sampling of content that we have. So in our community building modules, we have hosting your first member events, building community with budget friendly events, member events, swipe files, our sales and marketing modules. We have tour training, we have the training on the full Coworking sales so they understand what that looks like."
00:28:55,"We have social media planning frameworks. We have, what else do we have? Three simple steps to an effective marketing newsletter. These are just some of our samples. Ooh. These are some of our best utilized topics. Demystifying the process of letting your Coworking members use your address for their Google business listing, how to close a tour operations modules, how to set up automations,"
00:29:24,"how to do a new member onboarding audit. Simple ways to use AI to boost your productivity. We have over 40 courses in the program, so we cover kind of higher level topics, and then we also cover things that are timely, like the CMRA updates, Google business updates, et cetera. So we get together monthly to do official training, and we also host a best practice sharing call,"
00:29:52,"which is one of the fan favorites of the group and the Slack group. So if you have any questions at all about the program, don't hesitate to reach out. You can learn more and register at Everything Coworking dot com slash Community Manager. Now back to our episode. But yeah, you did find, you did find the issue there is that if you own a Coworking space Yeah."
00:30:16,"And you see somebody in there filming a video, you need to make sure that they are not using your, whatever your, wherever your designation is. Right. Okay. Because hopefully the AI would catch it, but maybe they don't. Woo. Okay. Got it. Correct. And then I get suspended and then I have 60 minutes. Yeah. And I,"
00:30:39,"I, like I said, no, you don't have you then you get suspend Suspended once they hit the button. Yeah. And Then once you get once, say you're ready to put that in, you put it in. Right. Just don't touch it until you're ready to put it in. Right. Okay. The next thing I was going to ask mention is,"
00:30:52,"this is something that people have been talking about, but it's not necessarily something that I would recommend Coworking spaces do unless you have a specific structure. Let's talk about that. Okay. What was kind of unearthed about a couple weeks ago by Joy Hawkins, that's Sterling Sky said SEO agency. Right? Is That she found that if you are, if you go in and say,"
00:31:19,"look up, say Bob's Coworking space, and then, or sorry, you will look up Coworking space near me. Okay. You see these three, the three that are listed, you have a higher chance of ranking in the top three. If you are open at the time someone is searching, think about that a minute. I know where you're going with this."
00:31:43,"If it's 10 o'clock at night, right. And your Coworking space opens, sorry, closes at eight, your ranking will go down until you open again. Trust. I, I saw somebody even say that they saw listings go down in anticipation of closing. So it's like at like nine. Say say you closed at eight o'clock, at seven 40, the listing would change."
00:32:06,"No, I, I had that happen actually recently. I had to go to an at and t store, and I don't know how this works, but I, you know, I looked it up on Google Maps and I looked at earlier in the day and I said it closed at nine. And then I got in the car at like seven 30 and it said,"
00:32:26,"this location may be closed when you get there. And I was like, no, it won't be. It closes at nine, it says nine. And I got there and they were about to close. And I said, what, you know, it says everywhere you're open till nine. I said, I did get this little warning from the Google Voice,"
00:32:41,"whatever, you know, the Google Maps lady, they were like, yeah, we've been trying to get somebody to fix this for like a year. But the Google Voice lady knew somehow that, that actually they were closed to eight. Oh the Way, let me tell you, the way that they figure out hours is amazing. They get it from so many different sources."
00:32:58,"It's Like, oh, interesting. Right. But I could see where Right. They're not gonna show the listing or move it down if somebody's ready to go somewhere and it's not open. Yeah. So if you have a 24 hour Coworking space, I'm sure some people do somewhere, maybe in cities, you know, then you have a higher possibility of showing up all the time in those local rankings."
00:33:22,"Local pap is, PAC is referred to the top three that show up. Yep. Before somebody has to click in to see more businesses. Yeah. You have a higher possibility of that if you are open. When the person does that, it's usually the p the businesses that I think will benefit the most from knowing this will be things like emergency, you know,"
00:33:42,"fill in the next one, contractors, plumbers, I don't know, health aides, things like that, who really Can respond. Attorneys anytime. Yeah. Right. Attorneys who, who deal with things like emergencies, bail, bondsman. Yep. People like that. But it, it is something to be aware of that if your Coworking space is open till 10 and everyone else around you closes at seven,"
00:34:07,"there's a possibility that you know, if, But you don't wanna fake that because you could get reported if somebody shows up at nine, but there's, you're not staffed. Well that's, that's why I'm saying it's a little different. See, with somebody like an attorney or an emergency plumber, They're actually gonna respond. You Have a service that would answer and that will allow them to do it."
00:34:23,"Whereas, and, and Google has, has acknowledged this. They, they did last week. Their search liaison, Danny Sullivan did acknowledge that this has become a stronger signal. But the thing to remember is, like I said, if you are a business who provides a service, not brick and mortar, but provides a service, you can have somebody answer the phone for you over those 24 hours."
00:34:46,"Whereas if you are bricks and mortar, like most Coworking spaces, I assume you have to be, you can't stay open if you're not there. Right. So, like I said, it's a, it's of limited value, but it is something to be aware of that if there's, if you have a competitor and you think that it's of value to be open an hour later than them,"
00:35:05,"you know, keep, keep your, keep your the person who, who mon who is on site. Keep them there an hour later for a few days, see if there's any, what happens. Yeah. Value to it. If there's not, you know, don't bother. If there is, go with it. That's a pro tip. I like it."
00:35:21,"Yeah. So that's, that's a big thing. I had something to mention for, I have two more things to mention. Okay. One of them is a quick one about anybody who is maybe seeking a space for a Coworking Space. Okay. Just Remember this. Like say if you're, if you're in a metropolitan area Yep. Make sure you do your research."
00:35:43,"I, I, somebody I work with a absolutely brilliant. He, he has had this whole talk like, we, we do this, you know, on a regular basis. Remember, remember two things. First of all that if you are in the same physical building as somebody who is operating the same type of business, like you are both doing Coworking spaces,"
00:36:09,"it within the same large building, only one of you will show in Google listings only one. So if somebody is already there and they are, say they have a hundred reviews, Okay, there's a Regis and you're like, I don't really compete with Regis, I'm totally different, totally different customer base, it's totally fine if I'm Yep. Huh. Interesting."
00:36:30,"Because if they're using, and it's all down to both the address and regardless of the suite, just the, the street address and the category, if the two of you are using the same primary category, and again, I, I can, you know, I can show you tons of these where, where attorneys just don't show up. I have a family member who is saying like,"
00:36:50,"why don't we show up? And I said, because you know, you're using the same primary. What If I have multiple attorneys in my Coworking space, If they are all using the same one, one of them will show up. Probably most likely only one. I mean, this isn't consistent, but usually that's what way goes it happen. Because Google is not gonna rec from their viewpoint."
00:37:11,"They're only gonna recommend one person at that location because people want a local business. So that's something to keep in mind. So if, and if that is the case, if there is somebody in the, in the area that you want to relocate to or locate to just make sure of, oh, you know who your competition is. Go look and say,"
00:37:30,"you know, Coworking spaces near like say a street address or a zip code and look around and see who's around there. If you are gonna come in there fresh from the start with no reviews, ah, and you're gonna be up against somebody who's got fifty, seventy five, a hundred and fifty. You need to be aware of that, that you're gonna have a lot of building to do."
00:37:52,"So I just, I I don't know if that comes up that frequently, but if it does, that should be something that goes into consideration when new locations are being considered. Yeah. A hundred percent. Most people don't, Don't, it doesn't even occur to people. Yeah. Especially if it's a slightly different offering. But, but if it's a competitive area and that slightly different offering pushes you down below the three pack Exactly."
00:38:19,"Then that's pretty significant. Okay. Exactly. And, and it's, it, it's gonna mean money. It's gonna mean money. Or if you locate too close to somebody who, who was in the same primary category and they've, they're established, they've got history, they've got reviews. Yep. It's not to say that you shouldn't go in that area,"
00:38:39,"but you just need to know going into it that you're gonna have a harder climb Yeah. To get, to get where you want to be. Gotta work your reviews, you can do it Reviews, content work, the SEO website, the whole thing. Yep. All exactly. Yes. So The other thing I was going to mention, and, and I don't know if we wanna close out with this photos,"
00:39:03,"I have seen a bunch of Coworking spaces and, and other businesses that had the photos that you have don't have humans in them. That's my biggest Thing. Very common. Yes. And the reason why that is not as cool is because, well, for example, I took down a network of about, I forget it was 15, 16, 17 law offices. All of the photos had no people in them,"
00:39:36,"which led me to do a little online working. And I found out that they, those photos were all stolen from other places to make your photos unique and specific to your space. Have humans in them, they don't have to be models. Yeah. And the photos don't have to be professionally done. They can be cell phone photos, because remember, they're only gonna be seen on this little teeny screen."
00:40:00,"So you need to have photos with humans in them to give scale, to give a little bit more sense of, of I guess integrity. You know, we have people working here, look, they're at three of these desks, things like that. It gets, it gets frustrating. Like I said, I mean, I, I was at a space in,"
00:40:21,"I wanna say September, and it was really nice. He does not allow anyone to use his address at all. Which I thought Okay. That's, that's one way of dealing with it. Yep. And you know, you saw, you saw that the open space where people can just, you know, sit down and work at a desk and then they had others around the kind of the periphery."
00:40:41,"But if I were to take photos of this, I would make sure to have, again, you don't have to have people looking at you, you know, it can be the back of their head. It can be the side. Yeah. It can be people who work there. It doesn't matter. But You, but it can't be a stock photo."
00:40:54,"Yes, yes. So like that. Exactly. You So, yes. Only one of these has a real person. And I don't, I can't tell if she's real or not, but AI probably can if I click into her. But these are the first photos, I assume these are the first photos ever uploaded. It's like you can't change that."
00:41:15,"Right. Whatever. Well, you Can change it. You can designate a cover image Okay. And a logo. And then after that you're stuck with whatever you upload. Okay. So this is an example. Shouldn't be the cover image probably because it has No, I wouldn't, I always recommend cover images. Being humans. Yeah. Having Humans. But all of that."
00:41:37,"I mean, I could go in right now and I could do reverse image search and I can find out if, if those are legit photos. Okay. This one is, you're right. We're looking at someone's butt. It's real. That's good. But again, you don't see any faces, but you get an idea of the space, of the size of the space."
00:41:56,"Now that to me looks like a, like a, you know, stock image. But it Looks, I think it's not, but yeah, I don't think it is. I don't think it is, but you know. Yeah. Okay. I love this point because our temptation is, we wanna show off how beautiful our space is. It's an awful lot of work to deal with models or they're in the way,"
00:42:16,"or we, you know, we want a professional photo shoot with models and that takes time. So we often don't do that until maybe after the space opens. So we'll put up some empty space photos. Oh, this one's got like a little guy in the corner. So, okay. You, you can do that, but you really should. But although those are the fir,"
00:42:36,"you're stuck with those. 'cause those are the first photos ever posted except for the cover image. So you're saying so well That's, you're stuck with the order. You're not stuck with order Exactly. Photos For shown just the order. Yeah. So technically you don't care if the first photos don't have humans, even though I'm guessing your recommendation would be show some people."
00:42:56,"I, I would continue to show people and, you know, every now and then post a couple new photos. See, the, the problem is too is that Google, now it's not a problem. Google now has something called vision ai. You can, you can actually look it up and use it on your own if you want. And what you can do with vision AI is see what basically how what Google sees in a photo."
00:43:21,"So like, you could, you could take a screenshot of one of those and then you could then go in and, and copy and paste it or enter it, whatever. In, in Google's vision AI tool. Okay. And you'll see what it says, but it doesn't give any indication of like a human being. So I've seen it where they will tell you,"
00:43:41,"say they were like three attorneys on a, on a set of steps. And it will tell you what they are wearing, what the vibe is of their clothes. Are they wearing work clothes? Are they wearing casual clothes? Are they smiling? Are they happy? Are they expressing joy? Are they expressing sadness things in the photo? Right. They will talk about,"
00:44:00,"you know, like classical building or you know, casual, little shed, whatever. But the amount of information that Google gets out of these is absolutely stunning. And using this vision ai, it really gives you an idea of all the things they pull out. I wrote an article recently and I took a photo of a person in this business because I always,"
00:44:24,"it's a different category and I, 'cause I always recommend having humans in that photo. And the photo that she has shows it's, it like high for joy. And then it even talks about, like I said, like what she's wearing. There are dogs with her in the photo. They even go so far as to check out which breeds they are."
00:44:45,"That and, and it's very, it's a very clear photo. They, they bring up all this well lit, the whole thing. My point being, she now knows how she is perceived by Google. Yeah. Google will now take all that information. They, we could do a whole thing on this as well. There is, there's a thing in Google,"
00:45:04,"there's two things. One of them is called EEAT and the other one is an EEAT feeds into this thing called entities. Okay. An entity is all of the things that Google knows about you. If you think about a balloon that has lots of little teeny balloons inside it, right? Each of those is a bit of, a bit of information that Google knows about the business."
00:45:26,"So like, when I look myself up, if I type in my name Amy Toman, SEO, because there is another Amy Toman out there, of course, you know, it comes up with all these things that I've, I've contributed to. So I know that Google knows who I am. But now you go in and say you're not that visible,"
00:45:43,"but your business is, you type in your name, the name of the business in a search and take a look and see what they say. Photos to me are underrated for expressing a lot of information that people want to get out there. But say they, they say you're promoting for yourself. You're not at, you don't have, you know, a digital marketing company working for you."
00:46:08,"One of the best things you can do is you can show people working at your space. Do you have a kitchen? Yes. Do you have a specialty kitchen coffee maker? Show somebody using that. Not just the machine, but somebody using it. Do they have a large refrigerator? Is there something I don't, I don't know, you know, a billiard table or this or that."
00:46:28,"Show it and show people using it. It is one of the best ways to tell Google what you offer because they can now, like I said, a as as ex the example with the vision ai, they can tell what's in a photo. If you have people playing billiards in a photo, Google will be able to, Google will know that they,"
00:46:48,"those people are playing billiards. Yeah. Now that we have that, we now know that people playing billiards are associated with that business name y because it's on their listing. It's, it's really, it's, it's, I think it's underrated the, the things that you can put in your photos to show people how great your business is, or what they offer or even what they do."
00:47:10,"Like if you have a, if you can look out and you can see the sunset, some people would probably love that. I know. I would Yeah, absolutely love that. If you are near a beach, if you're near a mountain, all of these things would figure in to Google's knowledge of the business. Which again, it's generally, it's called an entity."
00:47:30,"But these are a strategy called EEAT, which means telling Google all about your business. So photos are, photos are a big deal. I would go out of my way to post photos like every week. Whether it's, it's, it's things you offer. It's maybe, maybe if there are events, maybe if you have weddings. Okay. You, if you don't post it on your website and you don't post it in services,"
00:47:57,"but you have photos of weddings taking place wouldn't surprise me if you start getting recommended for weddings in that area. Interesting. Interesting. So I, it's just, it's something, something that, like I said, I, I think, I think the value of photos on Google listings is really undervalued. Yeah. I, for Google. And you're also making me think like,"
00:48:19,"you know, when you're like, okay, you know, go to the, what is it called? Google Vision, AI Vision. Vision ai. Okay. I'll, I'll link to it in the show notes and you can see what they say. Which is also like how, how others are receiving your photos, right? I mean, you just gave examples of like joy and dogs and views and coffee machines and Yep."
00:48:42,"But those are like, and what feelings do you want people to get from your photo? Like it's, that's It. And Google is now starting to be able to assess those. And because of that, it's really important for you to say, how is my business being perceived? Yes. Slash how do I want it to be perceived? Right. Versus like,"
00:49:00,"I just wanna put up clean photos of my space. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's fine to start with. Yeah. But then you need to show it in use. Yeah. Okay. If you're a landscaper, I don't wanna see grass, I wanna see the vehicles that show up at your location. I wanna see the people. Do they wear a uniform?"
00:49:20,"Do they have shirts? I wanna see that. You know, are they out there working, you know, sunrise to sunset, whatever. I wanna see them on the mowers. I wanna see Yes. Show me the, show me the before and after. That's even a good idea. But I wanna see things about your business, not just, in that case,"
00:49:36,"the finished product. I don't just want to see for a Coworking space, you know what it looks like. What about the outside of the building? You know what, maybe have people with your logo on your shirts outside the building so that people know what the building looks like when they approach it. You know, it, it, there's, there's so many opportunities to be able to sell by purely taking cell phone photos,"
00:50:01,"posting a couple every week. The more interaction you have on a Google listing, the more likely you are to, to, to stay active, to be, to show up high in the rankings. It's not just a matter of, of your number of reviews or the content or reviews or your location. There are so many things that enter into it."
00:50:19,"And this is a quick and easy and painless element that shouldn't be hard for people to do on their own. Nope. It's just reminding, put putting in a reminder and making it part of your process. Just like getting reviews. Yeah. I love it. Exactly. Okay. Amy, where can people find you if they wanna follow you? I know you post a lot on LinkedIn."
00:50:40,"I'll put your LinkedIn profile in. I Do. Please put my LinkedIn profile and I'm gonna be, I'm gonna do a sneaky thing over here and I'm going to sneak Away. I'm going to tell you, I'm just going to make sure I have it right. Let's see, see, hold on a second. We'll totally wait. 'cause we, you,"
00:50:57,"you add, you add so much value. You're like one of my favorite guests. We need to do this more often. I can't believe it's been so long. You know what, I'm just gonna tell you this. They can, okay. They can just do it to me this way. Okay. Amy dot toman. TOMA n.one at gmail. Oh,"
00:51:13,"no, wait, do it this way. Yeah, yeah. Do it. Start with that one. Start with that one. Okay. That one. I'll give others. I I have like three or four of them, but start with that one and I'm happy to even answer little questions. I don't have a problem. If somebody says to me,"
00:51:28,"you know, why is it doing this? I can generally give you an idea. Yeah. If you have a problem where a listing is all of a sudden your reviews have gone away, or people reviews are not posting on your listing, send me a message. I can generally tell you, you know, either, either what the reason is, how to solve it,"
00:51:47,"things like that. I don't claim to know everything, but what I do know, I'm happy to share. I love it. Thank you for being so, so giving. I, I, I want small businesses. I, I gotta tell you, during the pandemic, I really, really learned to appreciate the local businesses. Yeah. You know,"
00:52:07,"and like, there's, there's a pub down my street and these people had had it. Oh good lord. They'd had it for like, I don't know, 70 something years. And when I knew it was closing, it had to close eventually. It was kind of sad. I was so happy when the next business took it over and the next business is thriving because,"
00:52:24,"you know, you can say what you want about the big box stores. First of all, A, we need connection. Yeah. And, and B these small businesses are the ones that really, really fuel our, our, you know, our towns Yep. Are our economies. And you know, like I said, I sometimes, I'm sometimes upset because I think Google is right now,"
00:52:46,"it is is the big elephant in the room. You need to have a Google listing. Yep. And sometimes their rules are a little, a little hard to find. They're a little nuanced. So I'm happy to share when I can and if somebody needs to hire me to do something like with a reinstatement again, you know, ha happy to help."
00:53:03,"I always, I will tell you, I do not have a button that says, you know, pay me and I will help you. It's more like, I need to look at your information first before I make a decision. Oftentimes, because y'all may not need me, may not need me, I can just say, okay, you know, do it yourself."
00:53:21,"Do this. Yeah. But other times it's also, look, your information is problematic and I can't help you. You know, you have fake reviews, you have purchased reviews, I can't help you. Yeah. And, and that does come up occasionally because, you know, so we're, we're very, the product experts, most of us are very careful about Yeah."
00:53:38,"You know, who, who we help because sometimes you, you don't wanna help people who are scaling other local businesses. So Yeah. A hundred percent. Okay. Well thank you so much and let's do this again soon. Alright. Take care. Thank you. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend,"
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