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 Ivan Yudhi, and I’ve been a Local Guide since the program was still called City Experts. I was picked to be the first Connect Moderator more than eight years ago. I’m from Indonesia, but have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA, for 15 years. Currently, I’m residing in Melbourne, Australia.
Let’s get started! This week, I will talk about staying updated on the Connect content you care about. This community is a great place to interact with Local Guides from all around the world and learn about each other. It’s a fun activity and can be rewarding, but at times it can get overwhelming with the amount of information that flows constantly. With this tutorial, I want to share a bit about how you can have more control of your experience.
Following other Local Guides
Did you know that you can follow others in the Connect community? Or the better question is, why would you follow someone?
Let’s say that you’re browsing the latest topics on Connect, and after a while you notice that there’s a particular Local Guide that often shares interesting posts. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to easily see their posts? You can do this by following their profile. From the post itself, click on their profile picture, then ‘Follow.’
Next, click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the screen and select ‘Follow feed.’
Here, you’ll see three tabs:
- Feed: This will show all the topics by the Local Guides you follow
- Following: This will show all of the profiles that you follow
- Followers: This will show all of the profiles that follow you
Make sure to check this space often to browse topics from the Local Guides you follow!
Following Categories
But wait, there’s more! In addition to following Local Guides, you can also follow whole Categories and get notified about new topics published there.
Click on the Categories icon and select the category that interests you. In this case, I’m picking Google Maps tips & tricks.
From here, click on the bell icon as shown in the image below and you’ll be presented with several options and their descriptions.
For example, if you pick the ‘Watching’ bell, you will be notified for every new comment in every topic. I would not start with this personally, as the notifications can get overwhelming.
Instead, a good start would be the ‘Watching First Post’ bell — you will get a notification for every new topic created in that category. Feel free to experiment with other types of bells and see which one you like the most!
If you feel that following a whole category is too much, you can also follow just a select topic. Click on the bell icon when you open that topic and pick the ‘Watching’ option to receive updates whenever someone replies. The bell is located on the right side of a topic on your computer or at the bottom on mobile. Again, feel free to experiment with the different types of bells to see which one suits you the most.
Now you may be asking, what do I do after setting all of these notifications? Let’s continue. 
Understanding Notifications
Next to your profile picture, you will notice a bell icon that may have different red symbols at times. That means you have a notification! Click on the bell to see what kind of notification you have.
If you see a blue dot on the left, it means that that notification has not been read yet. Once you click on the notification — which takes you to the relevant topic or page — it will disappear.
You can filter the type of notifications to see:
- All: All notifications available to you
- Replies: When someone replied to your topic or mentioned you on their topic
- Likes: When someone liked your topic
- Messages: Private messages from other Local Guides
- Bookmarks: All the topics that you have bookmarked
- Other: When someone follows you or new topics in a Category(s) you follow
By looking at the small icons on the bottom right of the profile pictures, you can tell the type of notifications you’re getting.
That’s it from me for now. If you have any questions regarding the features discussed in this post, please reply to this topic and we can discuss them together!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this quick introduction! 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:
- Make your Connect profile shine
- Translate what others share into your language
- Get answers from the community with polls
- Stay updated on the content you care about (this post)
- Reach Local Guides on and off Connect
- Style your posts to make them stand out
- Host successful virtual meet-ups
- Host successful in-person meet-ups
- Write engaging meet-up recaps
. I have been wondering many of the new features in new Connect. Now I certainly know more and that will facilitate my adventures with Connect. Cheers