What to Post on Your Google Business Profile: 12 Ideas for Local Trades

Most contractors set up a Google Business Profile once, add a phone number, and never touch it again. Meanwhile it's the first thing a customer sees, and it has a feed sitting there empty.

Google lets you publish updates, offers and events to your profile, and they appear on your profile in Search and Maps.¹ Here's what to put in it.

The 12 posts

1. A finished job. The bread and butter. One clear photo, two sentences: what you did and where. "New 50-gallon water heater in a 1970s house in South Austin. Old one was leaking into the garage."

2. A before and after. Same job, two photos. The messiest ones perform best: a rusted panel, a sagging gutter, a cracked driveway.

3. A seasonal reminder. Tie it to the calendar: first freeze, storm season, spring tune-ups, back-to-school. "First cold night is Thursday. Here's the 60-second version of protecting outdoor spigots."

4. An answer to a question you get every week. "Why does my breaker keep tripping?" You explain it ten times a month on the phone. Write it once.

5. What a job actually costs. A range and what changes it. Nobody else will say it, and price shoppers will call the business that did.

6. An offer. Google has a post type for this: it takes a title and dates, and adds a "View Offer" button.¹ Keep it simple: "$50 off drain cleaning through October 31."

7. A service you want more of. If you'd rather do repipes than unclog toilets, post repipes. The work you show is the work you get called for.

8. Your service area. "We cover Round Rock, Pflugerville, Hutto and north Austin." People genuinely don't know if you'll drive to them.

9. A new hire or a new truck. It says the business is growing, and growing means trustworthy.

10. A customer's words. Quote a review, with the job for context. Don't invent one.

11. Emergency or after-hours availability. "We answer nights and weekends" is worth more than any slogan, if it's true.

12. A warning about something you keep seeing. "Three calls this week about the same failing valve. If yours looks like this, replace it before it floods."

What every post should have

• A real photo from the job. Shot on your phone, decent light, tidy the area first.
• A first line that says what it is. People see the first few words before they tap.
• Plain language. How you'd explain it standing in the driveway.
• A button. Google lets you add an action button that sends people to book, call or learn more.¹ Use it every time.
• One idea. If you have two, that's two posts.

A month that takes 20 minutes

Take photos as you go, all month. Then post once a week from what you already have. The work is in remembering the camera, not the writing.

Photos: the part most people skip

• Take the before shot before you start. You'll forget once you're working.
• Take the after shot before you pack up, with your tools out of the frame.
• Shoot in landscape, from about chest height, with light behind you.
• Get three or four so you have options later.
• Skip anything showing house numbers, alarm panels or the customer's belongings.

What this is really for

A Google post isn't going to flood you with calls by itself. What it does is make the profile look like a working business run by someone who shows up: recent photos, real jobs, straight answers. When a homeowner is comparing you against two other names, that's the thing that decides it.

One post a week. Twenty minutes a month. Start with the job you finished today.