Bad Habit number three in our series roasting the online-presence habits that quietly cost Texas trade businesses money, and then show you the fix. We come in peace. Mostly.
The habit
Somebody asks your hours on Facebook. You reply in a comment. Done, right?
That comment from 2019 is now the only place on the internet where your Saturday hours exist. Google cannot read it. ChatGPT cannot read it. The customer standing outside your locked door at 4:45 on a Saturday definitely cannot read it, because it is buried under 300 posts and a marketplace listing for a used trailer.
Why it costs you real money
Every question a customer cannot answer on their own is a coin flip. Some call. Most do not. They tap the next result, the shop with the website that lists hours, services, and prices, and that shop gets the job you would have done better.
Facebook makes this worse on purpose. Your posts reach a sliver of your followers, the page layout changes whenever Facebook feels like it, and if your account gets locked, your whole online presence goes with it. You are building on rented land, and the landlord rearranges the furniture.
The fix
- One page you own with the basics: services, hours, service area, phone number that taps to call. That is 80% of the value right there.
- Put the same info on your Google Business Profile and keep the two matching. Google checks for consistency and rewards it.
- Structured data behind the page (your web person should know the word "schema") so search engines and AI tools can read your business like a menu instead of guessing.
Keep the Facebook page. It is fine for photos and chatter. Just stop asking it to be your storefront. The megaphone is not the store.
Your hours belong somewhere a machine can read them at 4:45 on a Saturday, because that is exactly when somebody is looking.