Google Aims To Help Small Businesses With Boost

Google launches Boost for small businesses

If you own a business and have claimed your free business listing in Google Places, which then appear on Google and Google Maps, then you will be glad to know the search and advertising company has introduced another way to help your business get noticed.

The company has introduced Google Boost, which allows business owners to create online search ads directly from within their Google Places account.

The Google Small Business Blog offers more details. “Boost ads are eligible to appear in the ‘Sponsored Links’ section of Google.com and Google Maps search result pages. For example, if you’re a restaurant owner in San Francisco who has signed up for Boost, your ad may show up when someone does a related search like the one below, indicating a cuisine and location that matches yours.”

“Beyond the basics like your company name, address, phone number and website, your ad may also include the number of reviews you’ve received, an average star rating and a link to your Place page to help potential customers find additional useful information about your business. When a map appears alongside the results, a blue pin will help folks quickly find your location on the map. Businesses using Google Tags will also see their yellow tag appear in the ad.”

Currently Boost in in beta in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago. Interested businesses can sign up to receive notification when Boost comes to their area.

Google Launches Site Guide For Small Businesses

Google helps businesses increase their online presence

Google launched today “Getting Started Guide for Google Sites and Google Places,” aimed at helping small business owners increase their presence online and on Google Maps.

The company says creating a Google site for a small business will help potential customers learn more about products, hours and location before they visit a store.

Google says it will help answer customer’s frequently asked questions instead of over the phone.

The Google Small Business Blog offer more details. “With Google Sites, you can easily create a free website for your business. We have site templates that you can choose from, and, within a few minutes, you can create a new website. There are also some quick tips available on how to customize it with images of your business, a map of your location, or a menu.”

“This guide will also show you how to ensure that a listing about your business appears for free when potential customers search for you on Google.com or Google Maps. The listing, which you can quickly and easily create through Google Places, includes basic information like your business name, location, and phone number. You can also edit it at any time with additional details like coupons, customized messages and more to help your business stand out.”

AdWords Small Business Corner Introduced

New subforum designed as place to share advice

Small business owners who would like a little help when it comes to AdWords have a new option in terms of places to go for advice.  Google’s created the AdWords Small Business Corner to act as an environment where individuals can get together and exchange tips.

Overwhelmed with the number of tools available?  Find yourself signing into AdWords every six minutes to little effect?  It’s these sorts of things (and more) that Google means for everyone to address with the new section of the AdWords Help Forum.

A post on the Inside AdWords Blog explained, “This new category is not about troubleshooting specific account issues, but rather about sharing and learning from the experiences of others.”

Sample topics then included “[c]hoosing the right tools to measure results,” “[h]ow to write great ads,” and “[f]inding the right frequency to sign in to AdWords.”

Assuming enough people weigh in (and that is a major hurdle with every new community) the Small Business Corner should prove quite useful.  Small business owners are in a pretty good position to understand other small business owners’ needs, after all.

And with regards to the community’s chattiness, we’ll note that topics are averaging about five replies each at the moment.

Google Allows Businesses To Respond To Reviews

New Place Page option

Whether your approach to a bad review is to apologize or go berserk (or something in between), Google’s made it possible for business owners to have their say.  Owners can now respond to reviews posted on the Place Pages of Google Maps.

Owners should proceed with caution, of course.  While there’s value in appearing attentive and making a quick reply, everything on a company’s Place Page will probably stay accessible for years or even decades, so owners should be sure their comments will put their business in a positive light.

That said, a single negative review doesn’t have to represent a major conundrum.  A post on the LatLong Blog stated, “By responding, you can build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers.  For example, a thoughtful response acknowledging a problem and offering a solution can often turn a customer who had an initially negative experience into a raving supporter.”

And it should be possible to enhance the value of good reviews, too.  The post continued, “A simple thank you or a personal message can further reinforce a positive experience.”

Anyway, in order to reply to a review, business owners just have to make sure they’ve claimed their Google Places listing.  Then it’ll be possible to see a “Respond publicly as the owner” button and take whatever approach seems best.

Of course, staying silent remains an option.

Googler Discusses How To Discover Start-Up Ideas

Creative examples go beyond standard “solve a problem” advice

Established businesses may not need new ideas; it’s hard to argue with a product line that is already profitable.  On the other hand, even successful products an be improved – think where we’d be if people hadn’t started adding seatbelts, power steering, and eventually airbags to cars – so a post from one Google employee about finding startup ideas may be worth a look.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, is more or less regarded as an unofficial spokesperson for Google, which is obviously a pretty big and successful outfit.  But his post does a good job of making suggestions that every small business owner (and would-be small business owner) can follow.

Cutts recommended, “[W]alk around your house or apartment, and look for ‘hot spots.’  A hotspot can be an area of high information density, clutter, stress, disorganization, or any place that has a suboptimal solution.  Then think about a web or cloud solution to that hot spot.”

He later continued, “You can make it easier to organize something (can you convert something physical to digital and store it in the cloud?).  You can sell niche versions of a product (e.g. Threadless for T-shirts), you can let people make something that they couldn’t make before (CafePress for T-shirts, LuLu for books), you can pool people with similar interests (a blog like Craftzine, or a forum for book lovers or body builders), you can review products in a particular space, you can teach someone to do something.”

Not bad advice, right?  A list Cutts supplied of more random ideas/subjects that people have turned into successful businesses may get some creative juices flowing, too.

Good luck coming up with something interesting if you decide to pull out the figurative drawing board.