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Level 5

Expanding a Local Guides Community Area

Hey Local Guides, I need your advice! 

 

I created a local guides community in the city I'm living in (Torrevieja, Spain) some three months ago. The city is relatively small (100k) and I'm still having 40+ members. Larger cities in Spain don't do much better, rarely exceeding 100 members (except for Madrid and Barcelona). 

 

The question is - should I expand the community and include all cities of the Alicante province of Spain making it the "Alicante Province Community"? There are several cities with 100k-300k population in the province (that I visit regularly). I expected other local guides would create communities in those cities but it's not happening. Even if the communities are created, it is unlikely that they will be very active. 

 

Should I move the base of the community to Alicante (the capital of the province)? What is considered as an "area" in the program? Will the province of Alicante be considered as the "area" where other communities will not be supported? 

 

Thanks in advance for your comments!

 

I attach the map of the area.

Screenshot_2016-09-09-15-22-29-1.png

 

 

Torrevieja, Alicante, Spain
5 comments
Connect Moderator

Re: Expanding a Local Guides Community Area

@AndrewC I'm going to offer my personal opinion, so it might work or not. But I think having a community for the nearest biggest/metro city would be a good start. In terms of size, it can vary as well. For example here in the San Francisco bay area, we can drive through several different cities for a half hour drive. Just making a community for the city of San Francisco itself (7 by 7 miles in size), will leave out many Local Guides living in the surrounding areas. So we usually call it San Francisco bay area, as it also includes the cities located around the bay area. So we see this as a middle ground, considering it makes no sense to create a California Local Guides community (it's too big!)

 

So you know your area better and will be able to gauge participation on that facts. For example if you create a community based on the province Alicante, will some people be left out if you (let's say) create an event at the a particular city? Will everyone have a reasonable transportation time reaching the place? Can the scope of the area be reduced a bit?

 

That's all I have for now. For more info regarding community best practices, you can check out the following article 🙂

 

https://support.google.com/local-guides/answer/6273834

Googler

Re: Expanding a Local Guides Community Area

I'll add one: Your community may be for an entire country or for a city, but it's recommended that you create a community where conversation will flow freely and people will be able to meet-up or find one another easily and where you, as an owner, have some hands-on experience to drive engagement and conversations. Some of the most popular communities are for entire countries, and some are for small islands. 🙂


Note: Due to the volume of private messages Googlers receive, I do not read or respond to private messages. Please post publicly so others may benefit from your discussion. If you require urgent assistance, please tag a Google Moderator. Thank you!.
Level 5

Re: Expanding a Local Guides Community Area

@iyudhi thank you for the detailed response. I didn't expand the area of the community yet. It feels like "the province of Alicante" would be too large (at least 1.5 hour drive between the northern end and the southern end), but the current area is too small to have any serious activity. 

Level 5

Re: Expanding a Local Guides Community Area

@TraciC thank you for the reply! How do the owners have hands-on experience in a country-sized community? 🙂 Could you please send me a couple of examples of great communities, so I could learn from them? 

Googler

Re: Expanding a Local Guides Community Area

@AndrewC You can see a My Map of supported communities here in our Help Center (and in a bunch of posts on Connect, too). 🙂


Note: Due to the volume of private messages Googlers receive, I do not read or respond to private messages. Please post publicly so others may benefit from your discussion. If you require urgent assistance, please tag a Google Moderator. Thank you!.