Did you ever wonder why people post on Google maps? or you ever asked a local guide “why you post photos on maps, or what is in it for you?”, and I guess people have every right to ask these types of questions for local guides and anybody who write reviews, answer questions and post photos, because either they don’t know about it, or simply they are not interested!
Well I like to answer their questions here on Local Guides Connect, and share my story on how I became a local guide
My name is Elia, I’m Lebanese, I came to France in 2016 to get my master’s degree and hoping to get a decent job and start a career and, yeah of course, travel the world to discover new places and to experience new challenges.
You know when you’re in a new country planning to stay for a while (years), you should at least get to know how locals live, their cultures, history, the way they think and do stuff… So, I started to visit historical monuments in Paris and in other regions as well.
One day I was on a trip and I planned to visit historical landmarks in Metz in northeast France, I used google maps to find places and sights and finally I found a highly rated medieval bridge castle from the 13th century, named Germans’ Gate (in French : Porte des Allemands).
For me it was my first European medieval monument, I really enjoyed the castle/gate and took a lot of photos, and back then (2016) I wasn’t a fan of photography, so my photos were simple and sometimes even blurry. Once we got out, Google suggested to add these photos on Google maps at the location of this landmark, I got motivated to add them, because I really enjoyed the place and liked the idea to share with others, it’s like when you get back from a trip and you can’t wait to tell your friends about what happened and the places you visited… etc.
After posting them, the Google Maps app showed me that I still have like 200 points to achieve level 4 and to get officially the local guide badge, plus the title ‘local guide’ itself got my attention, like someone is telling me to be a guide for local landmarks and I’m not even local in France.
So, I thought that what is the best way to be local, especially to a newly arrived foreign student like me, other than posting, reviewing, sharing my experience, and guide others to places I enjoyed visiting and had a good experience.
From this moment on, I decided to contribute on maps and start my local guide journey.
Later on, I discovered that if I reached level 5 I’ll be a beta tester, testing Google’s new features, and not just that, even to give a review or feedback on these features, which encouraged me to contribute more plus I love to give feedback on application’s features due to the fact that I’m a software engineer and I know the importance of testing and getting feedbacks on a product/software by others.
Here are my photos that I posted on that day, and I admit they are not good enough to describe the place, but still, they reached 20k+ views, so I helped guide travelers wishing to visit this place.
The fact that people often look at photos than read reviews to take a general idea on a particular place, got me thinking that if photos like these helped a lot of people, than I should share more photos and even more relevant ones, to help people get more information on places they want to go and that’s what I love to share most on maps.
Right now, I have 500 + photos with a total of 600k + views.
I often share photos about historical monuments, food and museum’s artifacts; like this one below with more than 70k+ views, it’s a photo of Bordeaux’s Cathedral
Furthermore, I find it more reasonable to share on maps and guide others rather than, sharing on social medias (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and get, almost always, the same comments from your friends.
For example, not everybody will be interested with your Instagram photo on a holiday, but instead they will be more interested if you share your experiences in places you visited on that trip like a restaurant, attractions, …
And that’s why I love sharing reviews and experiences, and what better place to do that, than on Google Maps.
See what is in it for me local guides?