Want to help people find out information about your organisation?
Want to bring up key details in the place people most commonly go to find things?
Well, lots of students’ unions are missing two easy things from Google…
1 in 4 of my random sample of unions have not claimed their organisation’s profile on Google My Business.
This can list things like opening times and contact details plus it allows you to publish posts and photos. This info appears when someone googles you and is fairly prominent on the search results page so it’s a really handy tool. Someone could potentially claim it instead of you (though there is a verification process) and it might contain inaccurate information so it’s worth grabbing it!
You can set up or claim as many business profiles as you want so it’s probably worth setting them up for things like your bars, shops and lettings agencies as they’ll help people find them via Google Maps too. If there is a listing already you can just click ‘own this business?’ to claim it. You can add a new listing via the Google My Business website.
Below is Birmingham Guild’s Google My Business listing. Note that the photos include user-submitted ones and images pulled from the web so they might not be all that desirable (a good reason to add your own).
The second tool is Google’s knowledge panels. These are less widely available as you can’t set up or request one, you have to wait until Google deems you worth enough.
A knowledge panel shows more details about a search term and can include things like information pulled from Wikipedia and social media links. You can see a screenshot of KCLSU’s below (though it only appears if you search for their full name, not the initials).
Of the unions in my random sample *that had knowledge panels*, 4 out of 5 hadn’t claimed theirs. If there is a knowledge panel for your organisation, just click ‘claim this knowledge panel’ underneath it to claim it.
I know your to do list is probably miles long but these are two really quick and easy (and free!) ways to help students find out about you and what you do.
If you need a hand with this or anything else comms and marketing-y just drop me an email – jo@25dots.co.uk