Written Guidelines For G+ Local For Multi Location Businesses?

[MiriamEllis]

Good Afternoon Everyone From Rainy N. Cal!

My practice is small, and I have yet to have to cope with a multi-location business since the rollout of Google+ Local. Because of this, I have no practical experience with managing this type of business model. The thing is...I have not been able to find a written guide published by anyone who is doing hands-on work with multi-location businesses.

Have you encountered such a guide? I'm looking for a step by step tutorial that says:

If you have a law office with 3 branches, you should

1. Go to the Places Dashboard and
2. etc.

I find it amazing that I can't discover anything like this, when I know work in the area must be being undertaken daily by so many Local SEOs.

I would surely appreciate if you can point me to something like this, or if you have the practical experience, if you could jot down some general guidelines here. Thanks so much for your help!

 

[Marie Ysais]

Re: Written Guidlines For G+ Local For Multi Location Businesses?

Did you ever find such material? I would like to read it if you did!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Written Guidlines For G+ Local For Multi Location Businesses?

Hi Miriam,

Sorry but I don't know of anything.

As convoluted as G+ Local can be, multiple location businesses just throw so many new complications into the mix that I think it would be hard to map out a strategy that would work for all the different scenarios that could come up. I mean there should be one and it would be great if there was one, but it would be a tough nut to crack.

There is a ton of related info here at the forum but it's scattered in different threads.

I just Tweeted this to see if we can find anyone that maybe knows of a good resource.

 

[MiriamEllis]

Re: Written Guidlines For G+ Local For Multi Location Businesses?

Hi Marie - No, no luck finding anything. I was hoping someone here would have seen something that I've missed, or that someone who has had experience helping multi-location businesses could help. So many of my clients are service-area-type businesses, so I really need some help learning about this other business model, post Google+.

Linda, thanks so much for tweeting this. It would just be great if someone could come enlighten us on this complex topic!

 

[MiriamEllis]

Re: Written Guidlines For G+ Local For Multi Location Businesses?

Darren Shaw of Whitespark okayed my quoting him on this:

- They can use the regular Google Places dashboard to manage their listings
- They can create a Google+ Business page if they want
- but they shouldn't try to merge the two

Honestly, that's about the clearest advice I've come across on what continues to be a very cloudy topic!

 

[Andrew Huskinson]

You need to decide who is to manage the + content and where.

Are you going to have one manager managing the brand?

Is your 'networking' done by a blogger, consultant or a principal?

Are your location managers capable of interacting with the clients?

It would help if you could give the details of a client you want advice for.

The Locations

The personnel and their capabilities and responsibilities with a reporting structure.

You need to decide on the strategy first as you need to be careful how you structure the +accounts. Once you have set off its hard to backtrack as you will have a network of links built up.