Hey there! Welcome to our weekly mini series where we, the Connect Moderators, share tips and tricks on how to enjoy the redesigned Connect to the fullest. Every Thursday, we will focus on one new feature or functionality to help you feel more at home.
My name is Jesica, and my nickname is Jesi. I’ve been a Local Guide since I was 18 — I joined as soon as I could! Since then, I’ve reached Level 10, learned about many things, and got into photography, food of cultures around the world, and accessibility. Today, I’m a part of the One Accessibility team and a Connect Moderator, and I love to host and attend meet-ups in my city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
For me, finding Connect was like discovering a huge part of the program. This place offers so much knowledge, fun, and, of course: Connections. However, there are still Local Guides who don’t know about this great space and are missing out on our meet-ups and interesting topics.
So, this week, I will talk about how to reach other Local Guides, on and off Connect. Let’s get started!
Reaching Local Guides here on Connect
If you are looking for people near you to invite to in-person meet-ups or build your local community, the Location filter on the Topics page is very handy.
You can also try out the Advanced search filters to look for topics that interest you or from a specific area (or both!). You should easily find Local Guides in those discussions and reach out to them by @tagging them in your posts or sending them a private message.
Reaching Local Guides beyond Connect
Now, here’s where it gets interesting: finding Local Guides beyond Connect! Of course, social media is extremely helpful in this case.
Share your content
One way to spread the word about Local Guides activities is by sharing a post, whether a meet-up or a topic. Click on the Share button at the bottom of a post or copy the link from your browser. Then, you can start sharing it around!
You can post the link on your social media. Here are some things I do when posting about Local Guides:
- Be as descriptive as possible and use hashtags, like #GoogleMaps, #LocalGuides, and #LocalGuidesConnect. This makes your post easy to find, and it might also appear on more people’s feeds. Tip: In the same way, you can look for other Local Guides on social media by searching for those hashtags and specific words!
- Try tagging @GoogleMaps and unofficial accounts of Local Guides communities you are a part of, like your country’s. Tip: You can also find contributors by going to the comments on the Google Maps social media accounts.
When sharing meet-ups beyond Connect, it’s important to make it clear that it is a Local Guides-led meet-up. I find it useful to explain what the Local Guides program is and how we will be contributing on Google Maps during the event. For everyone’s safety, please don’t make public the specific location of the meet-up or the virtual meeting link. Only share the information you can find publicly on Connect.
Invite others
For Local Guides to sign up for meet-ups or interact with your topics, they first need to join Connect. That’s when you can use the invite function. You can create personal invitations to send to Local Guides you meet on other platforms or to add to your social media posts.
Here’s how to get your invitation link.
Click on your profile photo, then on Invites.
On the page that appears, you can view your existing invitations and create new ones.
To create an invitation link, click on the Invite button. By default, each link is valid for up to 10 users and expires in 90 days, but you can adjust that.
When creating a link, you will be able to copy it. Don’t worry about losing it, as you can copy it again from the invitation link edit screen. Or delete it, if you need to.
By clicking on the edit button — that’s the pencil on the left — you will be able to:
- Send invitations to Connect via email
- Change the maximum number of uses (from 1 to 10)
- Extend or limit the expiration date
There are many ways we Local Guides like to stay connected beyond Connect. You might have private chats or groups like we do with our local community in Argentina, so remember to also share your links there if you think the group might be interested!
Thank you for reading! If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to reply to this post.
You can find more information about how to use Connect in the Community guidelines section where this mini series also lives. If there’s a specific feature you want to learn more about, let us know below, or check out the rest of the topics in the series:
