Google Local Feeds - Cover & Profile Photos??

[mirabile]

Hello - I am trying to help a biz w several dozen locations with their Google+ local pages.

However, I'm not sure automation is the best solution: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3370250?hl=en

In particular: Can you stipulate a Cover Photo and Profile Photo via Google's automated feeds?  I see that you can add "images", but not much more than that.

Do we have to manually upload cover photo/avatar info?  If it turns out we have to, IMHO would be totally worth it even if time-consuming, but just trying to figure out the balance between automation vs manual factors.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

I don't think you can specify profile and cover pics through the bulk upload tool (I never managed to) so you are likely going to have to go the manual route. Even so, with 80+ locations it only took an hour or two to upload them all. The bulk tool certainly saves some time uploading a lot of the needed data, but in my experience has a few bugs still.

As to whether the pics should be unique or not depends a bit on the circumstances. We were dealing with a franchised chain and it made more sense to standardize the profile and cover pics across all the stores (so... I would have quite liked to automate this to be honest!).

[RyanPurkey]

You'll likely need a combination of the two. You can bulk upload images in the dimensional range of 1000x1000 to 3000x3000 "We recommend adding photos that are larger than 1000 x 1000 pixels and smaller than 3000 x 3000 pixels." (https://support.google.com/business/answer/6031953) and then select what you want as a cover photo within Google+. See this guideline: https://support.google.com/business/answer/4791112.

[mirabile]

Thank you Lynn for the fast response and clarification - it sounds like we'll have to do a combination of bulk uploads and manual tweaking of profile images and cover photos.  I also wish we could automate this - it's SO important for branding to have a nice cover photo and profile image.  Otherwise your Google+ page can (IMHO) look super generic.  Anyway, thanks for feedback.

[mirabile]

Thanks Ryan!  It sounds like we'll have to go the manual route for cover and profile photos, but we'll also def plan to upload other images via bulk upload as well.