Today we will show you how to optimise your social profiles for local search. It is one of the often overlooked steps in making a local business easy to find by people in their local community. The issue with social media is that everyone aims for vanity metrics such as the number of page likes.
However, they have no value if they come from users living in another country. These people are never going to become your customers because they are not likely to pay delivery costs exceeding the price of your products.
Optimise Your Social Profiles for Local Search and Qualified Customers
When you decide to optimise your profiles for local search, you may lose a few points in the vanity metrics. But you will gain something more meaningful: followers who will step into your store or go to your website and order products.
For them, it is important to get the right signals showing that your business:
- Understands their needs,
- Has the right products and solutions for their problems,
- Is close to their home so they can visit the store or receive their orders quickly.
Especially in the current situation, deciding to optimise your social profiles for local search is beneficial. People are less likely to travel far or to order their products long distance, in order to minimise handling.
Let Us Show You How to Optimise Your Social Profiles for Local Search
Now let us take you step by step with the entire process. We will cover the most popular social media networks, so that this article can help as many business owners and marketers as possible.
1. Facebook
We start with Facebook, as it is the largest and most digital marketing oriented platform for small local businesses.
Here, you have two options to optimise your social profiles for local search. The first option is to set your business type as “Local business” instead of “Company”. If you do not operate several locations, the Company profile is not very helpful to you.
If you still want to keep your business type Company, you can go to the About section of your Facebook page and add your full NAP profile, the same you use on your Google My Business listing. As soon as you have filled in your exact address, Facebook will generate a Google Maps section and a Get Directions button. Your followers can tap on it to guide them to your store.
Next, add keywords to your brand category. Go to About ->Category and start typing in your relevant keywords. You will see various suggestions made by Facebook, not all of them relevant. Add the categories that best describe your business. Please note that you can only select predefined categories, not add new ones of your own.
2. Instagram
Since Instagram belongs to Facebook, it is next in line on our list of recommendations to optimise your social profiles for local search. On Instagram, the business name is very important for getting found in searches, just like on Twitter. So, make sure that your Instagram name is:
- Short and catchy
- Relevant for your business name
- Memorable.
You may also add your location name to your Instagram page name, which is extremely helpful for filtering local searches.
Also, remember to fill in your full address in the About section. When users reach your page, they have two options when they tap on your address: copy and paste it in another app or open it with their navigation app.
3. Twitter
For Twitter, things are quite straightforward. You can add your location to your profile, but not your full address. The location consists of your city and state/province/territory name, as applicable.
However, compared to other social networks, the location is displayed prominently on your profile, right under the name and About section. It is also visible in previews, so you may get a lot of exposure to people in your local community.
Also, you can create as many handles (@Name) in Twitter. Thus, you can create a special handle including the location of your store to help people ask about product availability, promotions, and other specific questions.
4. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the best networking social media platforms for all kinds of businesses. Yes, even as a local business owners, you should keep a LinkedIn page, because you may get plenty of opportunities, from a potential partner or investor, to recruiting talent for your business.
Therefore, make sure that you fill in your full address on LinkedIn in the About section of your page. Here, you can also specify the type of locations you own: store, headquarters, branch office, etc. Thus, you can add several addresses and customers will find the relevant one close to them.
5. YouTube
YouTube only allows adding your country to the About section of your channel. However, you can work around this limitation in several ways by adding your location to:
- Your profile name
- Your profile description
- The titles of your videos.
6. Pinterest
Pinterest becomes increasingly attractive for retail businesses since the introduction of Shoppable Pins. These Pins allow users to go directly to the purchase page of the product they see and like on Pinterest.
However, the social network has changed the visible information for profiles, by removing the location (you can still add it in the Settings). This does not mean you cannot optimise your social profiles for local search. A simple workaround to this problem is to add the location in your About section. You have 160 characters available, enough to include relevant keywords and your precise location.
Final Words
We tried to make this article simple, easy to follow and with actionable advice. There is one more tip we would like to share with you to help you optimise your social profiles for local search. This is applicable for any social networks where you have business pages.
Add as much local content as possible: articles, videos and photos. Make sure that you optimise the content for local search, adding the location as close to the keywords as possible and make it engaging for the audience. After all, if your content appeals to your followers, talking about issues and events that directly affect them, they will be personally vested in these stories. And they will develop a sense of loyalty to your business for sharing things they are interested in.