Convert Google brand page to local page

[Tim Colling]

A long time ago, I received some apparently bad advice about what sort of Google+ page to create for one of my companies and so as a result I created a brand page. The problem is, I cannot receive customer reviews for that sort of page (which is a silly restriction, but it is what it is). I plan to convert it to a local page for the sake of being able to receive google reviews.

The change is legitimate in the sense that I DO have local (as well as national) clients.

The existing brand page uses the physical office address for an office that it shared with another company that I owned until I sold that one last December; the company that I sold DID need an office, but the remaining one does not.

I plan to make the local page for the remaining company be a "service area business" page because the company doesn't have a physical office of its own; I operate it from my home office. I don't really need a physical office for this company because all of my co-workers work from their own homes or co-working spaces and they are independent contractors. (I will never again be an employer, especially not in California - but that's a story for another time).

There are instructions from Google that are easy enough to follow for doing this at this URL: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6010825

I've got a few questions for y'all about this:

1) Is there any error in my thinking about this and my reasoning for doing it?

2) Will the difference in office addresses cause a problem with this process? Should I first change the address of the brand page to my home office address or something like that?

Note that I still have the old office (anyone wanna pick up the remaining term on 1900 sq. ft. of office space in San Marcos, CA? <sigh>) but it's vacant and I'm hoping to find a sublessee for it. That office is 12 or so miles away from my home in Oceanside, CA, so I never go in there anymore except to occasionally check and make sure that vacant space is ok and secure.

Thanks in advance for your help and advice!

 

[Priya Chandra]

Hi Tm,

I might be missing something here, but why not just delete the Brand page and start a new Local page for your business? Unless you've got a lot of content on the Brand page that you don't want to lose for some reason, I'd really recommend just starting from scratch.

 

[Tim Colling]

Hi Tm,

I might be missing something here, but why not just delete the Brand page and start a new Local page for your business? Unless you've got a lot of content on the Brand page that you don't want to lose for some reason, I'd really recommend just starting from scratch.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I do have a lot of posts on that brand page. Good question.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I agree with Priya. Take a look at your analytics inside G+ and see if your posts are getting any activity. If they are, you should try and keep the page. But most often I see rarely any traction on G+ business pages so in that case I would go with what Priya is saying.

 

[Tim Colling]

I agree with Priya. Take a look at your analytics inside G+ and see if your posts are getting any activity. If they are, you should try and keep the page. But most often I see rarely any traction on G+ business pages so in that case I would go with what Priya is saying.

Ah, excellent points as well. As you suspected, when I checked that, there was very little traffic on those posts.

Looks like I'll do what y'all have suggested, creating the new local GMB record and deleting the old brand page.

Thank you Priya and Joy!

 

[James Watt]

Before you delete the brand page Tim, make sure you copy and save those posts somewhere. I don't know that there's an API way to export all the old Google+ posts off a brand page, but I'm sure you could find someone to do the grunt work of putting it somewhere. If you've gone to the trouble of writing it already, anything that's still relevant to your audience would be great to repost over time on a more appropriate medium (Facebook, etc) where it'll actually get seen.

 

[Tim Colling]

Thank you for that suggestion, James. I appreciate your help!