Pictures accompanying Connect posts are supposed to be spectacular, and this one is clearly not - my sincere apologies for that, but there is a pretty good reason: I want to illustrate that things which might sound quite complex (like recording a podcast) are often easier that you might think. The picture here shows the ‘recording studio’ for the LetsGuide Podcast. Yes, that’s all it is: a laptop with an external screen and a microphone connected to it on a desk in a living room.
But let’s not get ahead of things here - the idea of this post is to explain how I got to this point in the first place. My initial motivation for contributing as local guide was simply to have something to do during the walks I was making to get some exercise. As much as I like making walks in nature or in more urban regions, it can get a bit boring after a while. But not if you’re hunting for unlisted businesses, incorrect opening hours or places on Google Maps that do not have a picture yet. And gradually I discovered that it was not only fun, but actually also very helpful for the both users of Google Maps (more or less everyone I know belongs to that group) and for local businesses. Having a good time, working on my health and helping others… the best of all worlds!
While making contributions, I discovered the things that gave me most satisfaction were adding missing places (as Maps users can’t find a place that is not on the map of course) and adding a picture to a place that had none until I passed by. Even today, I still try to give extra focus to those.
As I was gaining experience with ‘local guiding’ and accumulating points and levels I also noticed that sometimes it was not easy to make the ‘correct’ edit to a place on the map. So I started digging deeper into e.g. the help pages and older posts on Connect. At the same time, I found out that some of the guidelines and explanations I came across were not always 100% clear, so I started developing a kind of knowledge base for myself. And that lead to yet another motivation for contributing to the local guides community: helping other local guides by sharing the knowledge I had accumulated. As I had been blogging for a couple of years already, the logical first step was to start writing posts to share bits of that personal knowledge base, and decided to do so under the common title Best Practice. Most of those posts are still around on Connect, but at the same time I have to admit that some are up for revision (as the Local Guides program is constantly improving of course).
By the end of last year, I then wanted to take it to a next level, and as a long-time avid podcast listener, I decided to check if it would be possible and/or hard to make a podcast myself on the topic of Local Guides. The first step was to check on iTunes which local guides-related podcast were available already. The result was very surprising: NONE. This obviously encouraged me to proceed as it meant that my podcast would be the only one in that ‘market’! I started exploring the technical side of creating a podcast and have to admit: that was a bit intimidating. But fortunately, after looking into it a second (and third and fourth) time, it gradually started making sense, and so I started making ever more preparations.
Part of that was of course finding a good name for the podcast (and the website to accompany it). And to my surprise the URL “localguidespodcast.com” was still available! Fortunately I decided to carefully check the information Google provides on its pages, as I then soon discovered that you are not allowed to use the term ‘local guides’ in URLs - and I guess you will understand I wanted to avoid getting in dispute with the Google legal department. My next idea was something like LG Podcast, but then again I also did not want to run into problems with the legal team of LG, the electronics manufacturer. So, I settled for LetsGuide Podcast and registered www.letsguidepodcast.com, to have a home for the podcast.
Then there was a setback. Early 2019, a time when I was already making test recordings, I attended one of the weekly Facebook Live sessions from the Google Local Guides World group hosted by @JeroenM. There I shockingly found out that there was someone else who had had the exact same idea: create a podcast about Local Guides - I am referring to the GoLoco podcast of course.
For an hour or so, I felt my dream falling apart: a podcast was already out there, so what was the point of me adding another one? And to make things worse: when I started listening to it, I soon discovered that it was really well made, and that there was a full team of 5 local guides creating it. But gradually, as I kept listening to the first GoLoco episode, I began to realize that this podcast was actually quite different from what I was planning with LetsGuide Podcast. Whereas GoLoco is somewhat of what I would call a LG-lifestyle podcast, I was planning more of a tutorial podcast, focusing on specific aspects of the LG program.
So I decided to continue, and reached out to @AdrianLunsong of the GoLoco team. He agreed that our initiatives are more complementary than competing and as both of us were planning to release episode on a bi-weekly schedule, we even agreed to publish on alternating weeks. And I firmly believe the LG community is big and diverse enough to have 2 podcasts targeting it.
One of the most exciting moments in the process of getting the podcast up & running was definitely the moment when I received the email from Apple confirming that LetsGuide Podcast had been approved for publication on iTunes. So far 2 episodes have been released and the 3rd is recorded, but still needs post-production (it will be out in 2 days), and are available on iTunes, Spotify, Siticher, Blubrry and SoundCloud - unfortunately not yet on Google Podcasts as that is only open for podcasters based in North-America (hint to the Google Podcast team!).
And, as the list of planned subjects currently contains more than 20 items, I would say… listen to the episodes which are already out there, and stay tuned for more!
