Google Business Profile posts, photos and Q&A: what to add every week without running out of ideas

A common pattern is to post for a fortnight, feel everything has been said, and leave the profile to gather dust. You are less likely to run out of things to put on it if you treat it as a diary of work that already happens, not as a writing job. A finished job, a new arrival on the shelf, a question a customer asked this morning: each is a photo or three lines. The rota below gives you something for every one of four weeks, and a rule for what to leave out. To set the profile up in the first place, read how to optimise a Google Business Profile. This post starts after that.

Why does the profile go quiet after a month?

Because it is treated as something to write, and writing needs a free hour that never arrives. The way out is to move the job from writing to noticing: pick three things from the day and point a phone at them. The person doing it matters more than the plan. A supervisor standing next to the finished job has the material. An owner at a desk three kilometres away does not.

A four-week rota

Repeat the pattern with different material each time, so each week has a slot and each slot has a source.

The counter diary that feeds it

Keep one page, paper or phone note, with four columns. Fill a line whenever something happens that a customer might care about.

The last column stops the diary becoming a chore; a line that becomes nothing can be deleted.

What counts as a good photo?

One a stranger can read in a second: a tyre fitted on a car, with the old one beside it, or a shelf of the paint shades people ask for. Add the shopfront as it looks at the hour customers usually arrive, so that a first-time visitor recognises it from the pavement.

Do not use staged pictures that are not of your own premises, and do not borrow pictures of finished work from a supplier's catalogue. Customers compare what they see on the profile with what they find at the door, and a gap costs you the review.

Faces need care. Photograph the team with their agreement, and a customer only if they have said yes. When in doubt, photograph the work, not the person.

Where do the Q&A answers come from?

From your own phone and counter. Keep a running note of the questions you hear. When the same one comes up for the third time, it goes on the profile with a plain answer.

Write the answer as you would say it over the counter: short, specific and in the language your customers use. If the honest answer is "it depends", say what it depends on. If you do not do something, say so; it saves both sides a trip.

Strangers can sometimes answer questions on a listing too, so check the Q&A section when you look at the profile and, if an answer is wrong, reply from the owner account with the right one. Google's current help pages say how this works.

For a trade with regulated aspects, such as health, food or finance, keep answers general and factual and send the customer to the right person for specifics. Rules differ by state and body and change, so check with your own adviser or the regulator before stating anything as settled.

A sewing-machine repair shop in Ludhiana

An invented example. A shop in Ludhiana repairs industrial and domestic sewing machines and sells needles, belts and bobbins. The owner has a verified profile with six photos and nothing since.

The owner nominates Pradeep, the senior mechanic, with one rule: three photos on any day something interesting is finished. Pradeep starts well. Then comes a mistake: a photo of a stripped machine head with grease everywhere, captioned with the machine's make. Customers read it as a shop that makes a mess. One wrote to ask whether their machine would be returned in pieces.

So the rule changes. The photo now shows the machine before and after, on a clean bench, with a line about what was replaced. The questions answered on the profile come from the counter diary: "Do you repair machines at the customer's unit?" "Do you stock needles for a particular model?" By the end of the second month there are seven answered questions and a dozen photos that match what walks through the door, though Pradeep skips the rota in the weeks the shop is busy with festival orders.

What should stay off the profile?

• Offers you will not honour at the counter. If a post says a discount and the till disagrees, the review follows.
• Phone numbers, links or hours that differ from the listing fields.
• Claims you cannot prove: "best in the city", results, guarantees.
• Anything that reads as a copy of another business's post.
• Personal details of a customer, including a name on a job card in the picture.

When is this too much?

If nobody in the business can take ten minutes a week, do less: update the hours, add a photo when something changes, and answer reviews. An accurate profile matters more than a busy one.

Hand the rota to one person

Pick the person and give them the table. Start today. Ask them for one photo of the shopfront at opening time and one question a customer asked this week. The profile is a small but visible part of your wider marketing, and for some buyers it is the first thing they see. If you would like the rota built around your own jobs, see Google Business Profile management, or tell us what you need.