During a bit more than a year I worked for the local Government and I was part of a project called Digitalization 3.0 where we aimed to give online presence in Google My Business to local small and medium businesses in the whole province. It was a very enriching experience where we traveled all the cities, towns and localities in the province. We managed a team of 60 people who, after mapping each city with Google Maps, we would assign them areas to talk to local businesses and help them be part of GMB and verified them on the spot.
When we arrived we learned that many people didn’t have any idea about what Google My Business meant, so we talked them through the entire process. People were very happy to finally be online, and they were eager to be part of Google.
You can see a video of us doing the fieldwork here:
This project was selected as a WSIS Champion by the UN in the action line E-Business in 2018, and I am very proud to have been a part of it! Now my province has all the information needed about businesses for both tourists and locals!
This experience helped me understand the importance of SMBs to have an online presence. Since then, I’ve visited many of these places and they were really happy with the results, and they expressed that they’ve seen a rise in the number of costumers visiting their places.
Although I have now moved to freelance work, I keep updating the places I visit and try to post images and reviews as often as I can, because I think it serves the greater good, and I love seeing small businesses being helped by modern tools.
