I have noticed fellow local guides posting in excess of 3-4 posts a day.
Although all of them are interesting and engrossing, I’d still like to know what would be a decent number of posts that one should ideally add to this amazing community one single day?
For example for I don’t mind posting a topic to the Travel/Food/Photography/How-to/Idea section and an additional achievement that comes in at any time. Posting daily would be ideal.
What would you suggest in general?
What is the golden rule of thumb, what are your suggestions about posting that will bring the maximum benefit to this community?
BR,
Tushar
As an additional note, I must mention that I posted recently asking about the number of photos to add to a review and got a very useful answer from @ErmesT about putting oneself in the place of a Google Map user when posting photos. What would be a suggestion along similar lines…?
In my opinion, at the most one per board can be considered as a decent figure.
However, there has to be preparation.
In photography, we expect some technical aspects of the photo viz. how the user captured that? What was the place, etc.?
Travel should provide sufficient consideration to the place.
The local story must be gripping.
And eventually, we should not ignore the well-known saying. -Any excess is always damaging. “When sandalwood becomes plentiful, people start using that as fuel-wood”.
Regret, I couldn’t quote the original Sanskrit text as the site can’t translate that.
My personal point of view is that a post, for being useful, should be “on topic” considering that we are Local Guide. It means that we provide contents and information. I personally need a week to prepare a post, put the information together, double check everything, prepare the cover, but I don’t post in achievement. Sometimes there are post that are coming out on a few minutes, but if I don’t have a good story I simply avoid to post. We should not post for badges, that is actually what many people do, forgetting that Google will check your contents, not your numbers. So, my answer is: whenever you have a good post. It can be after two days, or two months, it doesn’t matter
I have also noticed how a few local guides obviously are trying to produce quantity rather than quality posts. And along with that trying to boost the number of replies to such post by publicly or privately inviting/prompting others to make comments. But often the comments are of no real value. “Good post” and “Thanks for writing this”. And then the original poster posts individual “Thanks for your comment”-replies. Again not really adding value or relevant aspects. I think this can only be to boost the number of replies to make the post look more interesting. Such replies should be replaced by just giving likes. Leaving the thread more interesting and content-dense for others to read.
It’s not difficult just to ignore and not read what the badge hunters post. But it also happens that the badge hunters post incorrect and unnecessary information. So there might be a need for some action to reduce this problem as implied in the opening posts. Limiting the number of posts might be useful, but removing the incentives to post a lot if low quality lengthy posts and instead encourage fewer posts of higher quality would in my opinion be a good and more effective solution. It is my suspicion that getting picked for a live event is the motivation driving the surge of lower quality content. So removing or reducing this incentive will probably be more effective than just setting a maximum amount of posts and replies per day.
But it is a difficult balance. It is also positive to have a lot of posts and activity going on here on Connect.
@TusharSuradkar , as a reader, I would prefer fewer posts with more sense/information. For example, I get disappointed when opening a “travel diary” and seeing a single photo with a line saying it was nice visiting “that place”. Quality over quantity is true for me.
I thought of the limitation of the number of posts per day but it won’t influence directly the quality which is the main concern. Besides, people live under various conditions. Some may have no permanent access to the internet and devices, so they may take the advantage of short access to post several threads. Strict limitations often discourage more than boost proper contents.
If you want to know a reader’s preference, I’d suggest posting not more than one topic in each of the categories per day to avoid mess and overflow. And only doing it when having much to say, like @ErmesT suggests.
Thanks for bringing our attention to this @TusharSuradkar . I also appreciate your input @C_T . Excesses are damaged whatsoever it maybe. Local guides should get orientation as to what and what a post entails. Especially when it comes to content. You notice people post in photographs without description or location. Photographs of food without recipe etc. If the quantity is good it’s fine,so when there are more quality there will be less quantity. We have a saying in my native dialect that “very often when it’s quality its hardly excessive” quality is always limited
I agree that an opportunity to attend an all-paid event in a distant dreamland definitely leads to a mad but vain pursuit of those magical numbers and badges among LG who have in the past made a humble beginning with honest reviews and feedback on Google Maps.
My following statement could well be out-of-context but I would put the blame squarely on Google for that all-of-a-sudden tempting offer to humble Google Maps users pushing them into this rat-race by revealing that they qualify to be picked for the annual event after reaching level-5.
Nonetheless, I am immensely thankful for your insight and fully agree that to reform the LG Connect community and clean up the clutter of half-hearted articles, they should be discouraged or prohibited altogether.
Thanks for contributing your thoughts on this topic.
They are much appreciated.
I agree it is disappointing to eagerly open a post with a nice photo but no content around it.
I think these kinds of stuff are self-balancing in that such posts also do not get much attention in terms of likes and comments and soon these LGs and their posts fizzle out.
So a thumb of a rule that every LG must follow is not to encourage such half-cooked and half-heartedly written posts unless of course to comment asking for more information or details.
This is a very valid question that you asked here. I am happy to see that so many fellow Local Guides expressed their opinion about this topic.
To summarize, there is no limit, but quality is always over quantity. We should always try to make our posts as detailed as possible, while trying to convey the message we want to express in a clear manner that others will understand. Posting posts for the sake of posting doesn’t bring any value to the community and such posts eventually might become off topic posts that end up being removed.
In addition to that, I am marking @ErmesT 's reply as a solution, so other Local Guides can refer to it. The purpose of this feature is to help Local Guides find answers when searching on the Connect. Please take a look at How do I mark comments as solutions? article.
I’m sorry I missed your post @TusharSuradkar back in May and I just wanted to add my thoughts on this topic. Of course I agree with the other great replies here and to me there should not be any limit imposed on the number of posts BUT they must be of a reasonable standard: one should only post if one has something interesting to say or contribute to the Community thus posts must be of a reasonable quality. Hollow posts should not be allowed and I’ve written about this subject before, see one example here. Another related issue is that of Likes and I have written about this here. Regarding likes, I believe that:
the total number of likes on any given post should only be visible to the author of that post! So if I give a post kudos then I would only see 1 like against that post even though 50 may have liked that post before me! and
Only the likes of the recipient should count towards the receipt of any badges or any other benefit.
Good to have your opinion in this discussion @AdamGT it is welcome
I did not understand your second point “Only the likes of the recipient should count towards the receipt of any badges or any other benefit.”
Isn’t that a fact? Could you rephrase or expand on that?
However, I am a bit surprised that you advocate not displaying the number of Likes or Kudos publicly but actively maintain a leaderboard of photo views, since in my opinion views and kudos are ultimately a receipt or acceptance or acknowledgment of a post or picture for its quality. I don’t see them differently.
The more Likes a Local Guide gives the more badges that Local Guide earns. I believe this is counterproductive and that the number of Likes a Local Guide gives shouldn’t count towards any badges or other rewards and the only beneficiary of those likes should be the recipient of this Likes and not the giver! If this were implemented then the Like giving badge hunters wouldn’t have any personal gain but at the moment they earn badges (e.g. New Friend, Nice Friend, Good Friend, Great Friend, True Friend badges). Then I think we would move closer to quality Likes, the giving of Likes for good content. Yes I would expect and want my proposed rule to apply to all of my posts including both the Photo Views and Star Photo Leaderboards post. I as the poster would see the number of Likes and who the Likers are but not the Like giver would not. As I mentioned the like giver would only see the count of 1…to be more specific, the Like giver would see the blue heart in an uncolored circle and a count of 0 change to a white heart in a blue circle with the count of 1. Hopefully this clarifies your understanding of what I am proposing. Have you read the two posts here and here that I referred to in my reply?
