• Business owners short on time can take advantage Google My Business to boost sales and elevate their online presence. 
• Since building a brand is extremely important, you're probably wondering how you can squeeze Google My Business into your already busy schedule.
• The answer is not that difficult at all. All you need is to have a Google account and spend an hour updating and engaging with other business people on your account. 
• In this article, you'll learn how to create, manage and optimise your Google My Business page to build a stronger presence for your business.

Owning your own business is a 24/7 job. Of course, you need the time to sleep, but that’s pretty much all you get since you need to be constantly available to your staff and your clients.

With the help of Google, time-poor business owners can now take advantage of setting up a Google My Business page to help boost sales and enhance their online presence. 

Everybody is speaking about the importance of internet marketing, social media and Google My Business but what is it all about, anyway?

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is designed to help businesses promote their business and their product/service offering on Google. It helps businesses become more accessible to users that are searching on a local Google page.

Since building a brand is extremely important, you probably wonder how in the world are you going to manage to squeeze your Google page into your already busy schedule.

The answer is not that difficult at all. All you need is to have a Google account and an hour to spend updating and engaging with other business people on your account. In a short time, it will make a difference.

Following a few principles and Google optimisation management tips, you can build a solid presence on this social network for you personally and for your brand.

How Do I Create, Manage and Optimise Google My Business?

Follow these simple steps to set up a Google My Business and amp up your online presence:

1. Level your knowledge about Google My Business
2. Organise your social circles 
3. Follow the right people
4. Save as much time as possible

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1. Level your knowledge about Google My Business 

Before you can start with a Google My Business page, ask yourself how much you really know about this social media channel.

Did you just hear that it was great for your business or you know more about the ways it functions and about the people who keep Google an interesting place? A good place to start is getting to know the features it has.

Google has many useful features you can use depending on how much time you are ready to devote to it. One hour a day is optimal, because you can share stuff every day, and organize hangouts and similar activities weekly.

As you start spending time on Google, you will learn more and more about and it is going to become increasingly easy to manage your profile. For now, here’s a list of features Google offers, just to get to know this platform a bit better before we continue.

The people participating in the Google community are different from those on other social networks, and that is a good thing to keep in mind.

They come to Google to share their passion and interests with others, so you get a closely-knit community interested in caring and sharing.

For this reason, it is extremely important to organize your circles well, because you will save time interacting in a proper way with everyone.

2. Organise your social circles 

Since saving time and getting your point across at the same time are your primary goals here, you will need to organize the people you follow systematically into circles with transparent names.

You need to separate your personal circles from your professional circles, and this is the way you are supposed to share stuff – personal interests with personal circles.

However, sharing personal interests in your Google My Business page and vice versa every once in a while will bring you more exposure, and more people will know who you are and what you do. Here’s more on organizing your circles.

3. Follow the right people 

For starters, you will need to find people you are professionally interested in, like your fellow entrepreneurs for example. Also, you would want to follow people who are constantly active as well as content curators. 

If you did this many of them will follow you back if you post interesting content. It was easy, wasn’t it?

Don’t be afraid to share your personal interests, experience, as well as web content you find interesting. Google members love that.

You will see that if you draw their attention this way, all of them will be more inclined to further share your business posts as well.

4. Save as much time as possible 

There are various tools you can use to save time and optimise your Google account. 

The first one is mobile applications. Mobile applications can be a real time-saver. Why? Because you can have fun with Google while commuting if you are not the driver, while being stuck in a traffic jam or right before you go to sleep. Anywhere, anytime.

We found these three very useful: Google Android app, Pocket app, and Google Apple app.

Google apps give you easy access to your Google profile depending on whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone.

Pocket app comes in versions designed for iOS, Android and Amazon Kindle devices. It saves the content you cannot immediately go through for offline use. This way you can access everything you previously saved even without internet access.

The second is by using Google Chrome extensions. Various Chrome extensions make the management of Google much easier and therefore save you time. We recommend Google Translate, Google Notifications, Replies and More for Google and Google Directory.

These will help you find more interesting people, reply to those who interact with you easily and improve your Google My Business experience. 

Remember, Google My Business Is for Everyone 

Your Google account is cut out for all of us. Regardless of the time you can devote, if you can do it regularly, you will manage to sustain a successful presence.

The basis for everything is interaction. Share with your community the bits of your life and follow our tips and recommendations, and there will be progress.

The scope of that progress will depend on you and the joy you get participating in the community.

Editor's update 02/09/20:

Thanks for reading our article by Alex Petrovic at Internet Marketing. We hope it has helped you better understand how to use Google My Business to grow your business's online presence and authority. Members at SavvySME have some other questions on the subject, so we've helped respond to some of these FAQs below.