A working guide
The GBP auto-post feature — how to use it.
The site can push content directly to Seminole Theatre’s Google Business Profile from wp-admin. This guide covers the three ways it does that: editing business info (hours, description, phone), auto-posting events with a per-event checkbox, and the weekly digest that runs on its own every Monday. Written for the staff member who’s going to actually use it.
What this feature is
Three connected tools, all in wp-admin, no logging into business.google.com required.
The site is connected to the Seminole Theatre Google Business Profile via API. That means you can do three things from inside WordPress that would otherwise require logging into a separate Google dashboard:
- Edit business info — hours, description, phone, website — and push to Google with one button.
- Auto-post individual events — tick a checkbox on the event editor, fill in a title and description, and the site creates a live GBP post the moment the event is published. Editing the event updates the GBP post. Unpublishing removes it.
- Weekly digest — every Monday at 9 AM, the site automatically posts a “This Week at the Seminole Theatre” summary to GBP listing the next 5 featured events. Zero staff action required.
The parallel guide
This guide focuses on using the feature. The Google Business Profile guide covers what GBP is, how to set up a profile, and ongoing management best practices. Read that first if you’re new to GBP; come here for the mechanics of pushing content.
Editing business info
The panel for hours, description, phone, and website.
Where to find it: in wp-admin, go to Settings → GBP Business Info.
The panel loads the current values from Google. Edit any field and click Push to Google.
The exact business name as it appears on the profile. Never add keywords like “Seminole Theatre — Homestead’s Premier Venue” — that violates Google’s naming policy and can trigger a suspension.
The number that visitors see on the profile. Include the country code with a plus sign: +17866502073. Don’t include punctuation.
The URL Google shows for “Website” on the profile. Usually your homepage. Full URL including https://.
Max 750 characters. This is the paragraph Google shows below the business name. The first 250 characters are what most searchers actually read — write that portion as if it’s the entire description.
Why the 750 cap: that’s Google’s hard limit. Anything longer is rejected on push. The plugin will show an error if you exceed it.
What’s NOT editable here
- Address — Google’s verification rules prohibit API-based address changes. Edit at business.google.com and go through re-verification.
- Regular hours — currently not in the panel. Coming in a future update. For now, edit hours at business.google.com.
- Categories — set at business.google.com. Rarely change these anyway.
Turning event auto-post ON
Every event has a checkbox. Ticking it makes the event appear on GBP the moment it’s published.
Steps
- Open the event in the editor (Events → All Events → click the one you want).
- In the right sidebar, find the Google Business Profile metabox.
- Tick “Post to Google Business Profile”.
- Fill in the GBP post title and GBP post description (both required — see Section 4).
- Publish or Update the event.
The moment the event is published (or updated after being published), the plugin sends the post to GBP. Within a few minutes, it appears on the profile timeline.
Confirming it worked
Once the post is live on GBP, the metabox shows a green confirmation line reading ✓ Live on GBP with a reference ID. That’s your proof the API call succeeded.
Which events to auto-post?
Not every event needs its own GBP post. Reserve it for shows worth individually promoting: opening nights, headliner runs, holiday specials, sold-out-risk performances. The weekly digest (Section 8) already covers routine calendar promotion, so per-event posts are for the ones you’d separately advertise.
Title & Description fields
Two required fields when the checkbox is ticked. Character limits are Google’s, not ours.
The bold headline shown at the top of the GBP post. Max 58 characters. Google truncates anything longer with an ellipsis.
Guidance:
- Include the show name and the specific hook.
- Skip the date (already displayed by GBP separately).
- Sentence case reads better than all-caps.
Vince Gill Live at the Seminole Theatre
Sold-out risk: last 3 shows of Grease
IN THE HEIGHTS THIS FRIDAY!! (all caps, punctuation stacking)
Come see our latest performance for a memorable night out (too long, cut off by Google)
The body text below the title on the GBP post. Max 1500 characters. Emojis are welcome. Line breaks are preserved.
Guidance:
- Open with the most compelling sentence — Google Maps shows the first ~100 characters as a preview.
- Include what the audience will experience, not what the show is. “You’ll leave humming the songs” beats “This musical premiered in 2008”.
- Add a clear next step: “Reserve your seats before Friday.”
One paragraph of what to expect (2-3 sentences).
One-sentence call to action.
What happens if you leave a field blank
If you tick the checkbox but leave either field empty, the plugin will un-tick the checkbox for you and show a red notice at the top of the metabox saying “GBP auto-post requires both a Title and a Description.” Any text you already typed is preserved. Fill in the missing field and re-tick to try again.
What gets auto-added
The plugin appends a small footer to your description with the event’s date and price:
📅 Fri, Aug 22 · 7:00 PM
🎟️ $30
You don’t need to include these yourself. The plugin pulls them from the event’s date and Cost fields.
What happens when you edit, unpublish, or untick
The plugin keeps the GBP post in sync with the event automatically. Four scenarios.
Status transitions
Publishing state matters, too:
- Publish → Draft / Trash / Pending: the GBP post is deleted automatically, even if you didn’t touch the checkbox. GBP shouldn’t advertise events that aren’t live on the site.
- Draft → Publish: if the checkbox is ticked when you publish, the post is created.
- Publish → Publish (edit): if the checkbox is ticked, the GBP post is updated with the new content.
Bottom line
You don’t have to babysit the GBP post. Manage the event on the site as you normally would — publish, edit, unpublish, republish, whatever. The GBP post follows along. Un-tick the checkbox when you actively want to keep the event live but stop promoting it on GBP.
Where the button on the GBP post links
The GBP post has one clickable button. Its URL and label are set for you.
Every GBP post the plugin creates includes a call-to-action button at the bottom. The URL and label are picked automatically:
- URL: the event’s page on seminoletheatre.org — always. Visitors land on your event page (full poster, description, cast, sponsors) and click Buy Tickets there to reach Tixr.
- Button label: Book if the event has a Tixr URL in its “Event Website” field. Learn More if there’s no Tixr URL yet.
Why the website first, not direct-to-Tixr: visitors get the full show context before they buy, your analytics correctly attribute the traffic, and any updates you make to the event page automatically improve every GBP post ever pointing at it. The extra click doesn’t hurt conversion measurably.
The manual composer — for one-off posts
When you want a post that isn’t tied to a specific event.
Where to find it: wp-admin → Settings → GBP Compose Post.
Use this for:
- Season announcements (“Our 2026-27 lineup is here!”)
- Venue news (“Renovation complete — main-stage seating upgraded”)
- Holiday closures or schedule changes
- Community updates
- Promotions and offers
Fields
- Post type: Update (standard), Event, or Offer. Match the type to the content — Google shows them differently.
- Summary: the body text. Max 1500 characters.
- Image URL: paste the URL of any image already in your Media Library. Uploads through the Media Library first, then copy the URL.
- Call-to-action: pick the label (Learn More, Book, Order, Shop, Sign Up, Call) and the destination URL.
- Event fields: only shown if you picked Event or Offer type. Title, start, and end date/time.
Click Publish to GBP. The post appears within a few minutes.
Manual composer vs. event auto-post
The event auto-post (Section 3) is for content tied to a specific event on the calendar — the plugin syncs it automatically. The manual composer is for one-off posts that don’t map to an event. Use them for different jobs.
The weekly digest
Runs by itself. You don’t have to do anything to trigger it.
Every Monday at 9 AM, the site automatically composes a “This Week at the Seminole Theatre” post and pushes it to GBP. The post:
- Lists the next 5 upcoming events with the Featured Event checkbox ticked (in TEC’s own Featured section — see the Editing Events guide, Field 09).
- Uses the first event’s image as the header.
- Links to your
/events/calendar page.
What you need to do
Nothing recurring. The cron runs on its own. To make sure the digest surfaces the right shows:
- Tick the Featured Event checkbox on the 3-5 shows you want highlighted that week.
- Uncheck ones that aren’t a promotional priority (they’ll still be on your calendar; just not in the digest).
- Make sure each featured event has a filled-in Event Cost so the digest can show the price.
How to disable it (rarely needed)
If for some reason you want to pause the weekly digest — a slow season, or you’re actively testing changes — the site administrator can set an internal option to skip it. Ask us; it takes 30 seconds to toggle.
Kicking off a manual digest
If you want a digest to fire outside the Monday-9AM schedule — say, before a holiday weekend — the site administrator can run it on demand. Alternative: use the Manual Composer (Section 7) to write a one-off “This Weekend” post yourself.
Troubleshooting
The four most common issues and their fixes.
Check the metabox after saving. If the checkbox is un-ticked and there’s a red notice, either the title or description was empty — fill them in and try again. If everything looks right and still nothing appears on GBP after 5 minutes, contact the site administrator. The error is logged.
Confirm the checkbox is still ticked. If you accidentally un-ticked it during the edit, the plugin interpreted that as “remove this from GBP” and deleted the post. Re-tick and save — a fresh post will be created.
The plugin’s transition hook removes GBP posts when events go from Publish to Draft/Trash. If the GBP post lingers, either (a) the API call failed silently — check with the site administrator, or (b) the event was published and unpublished so quickly the plugin didn’t finish. The metabox will show whether it’s still connected to a GBP post.
Check with the site administrator — WP-Cron requires site traffic to trigger, and a very quiet Monday morning can delay it by a few hours. Also confirm at least one event is marked as Featured Event in TEC with a date in the coming week.
When to escalate
Any of these need a site administrator, not additional troubleshooting on your end:
- Repeated failures with no clear reason.
- The metabox not appearing on the event editor.
- The Business Info panel showing an error when you open it.
- A GBP post that appears to be duplicated.
