Community, Good Practice, Good Practice, Inclusion, Marketing, Outreach, Property Admin, Quaker A-Z

Quaker A-Z: X is for X marks the spot (again)

Do you appear on the map?

If someone is looking for your building – does it appear on the map? Hopefully it appears as at least a grey block!

But…

is it labelled?
are there signposts?
have you claimed your charity/building/business on Google maps?
do you appear on local neighbourhood maps?

When I lived and worked in London I always looked at the neighbourhood maps as I left the tube, or got off the bus so often the church or meeting house I was going to wasn’t included.

You may have to pay to be included on some maps, others will include churches and charities for free. It’s worth looking around and asking.

When Yearly Meeting Gathering met at Exeter University, it was pointed out that the leaflet with a map and list of ‘places to worship in Exeter’, didn’t include Exeter Quaker Meeting House. We were assured that the meeting would now take steps to be included in the next edition!

These days people will start to look for a place by searching online. If you want to appear in the Google maps search it helps to have claimed your business.

If you look at this screenshot of Exeter Quaker Meeting House, you can see it has a red teardrop map point.

In the side bar on the left that map point has the address, there’s a website, and a ‘claim this business’ link.

To claim the business you need to complete the online form, receive a postcard at the building and then using a google account you can manage the business. That allows you to upload photos and comments or updates.

“I’ve always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going — in a sense it’s three tenses in one.”

Peter Greenaway Tweet

If you look at this screenshot of Walthamstow Quaker Meeting House you can see the same red teardrop map point.

The name includes the area – helpful if you’ve searched for Quaker Meeting House and can see several results and don’t know which you should click on.

There are photos uploaded by the building manager, and text has been added by the meeting. There’s a rainbow icon to say this is an LQPT friendly place.

Someone looking at the list can even click on the ‘call’ button and be put through to the meeting house.

Although someone might be looking for a venue, the blurb about the building talks about Meeting for Worship and what public transport will get you there.

You can even allow people to ask questions and let the answers be visible – helpful if you have the same questions asked regularly.

Helpfully – the ‘From venue’ message, which is visible in the screenshots both above and to the left, can be edited as a message to tell people that the building;

has closed either permanently as for Edgware (which helpfully sends people to Quaker.org.uk to look for their nearest meeting house,
is closed temporarily for refurbishment with an editable ‘reopening on xxx date’ message,

Or that the meeting has moved to another venue or other useful information.

The updates field is also useful – but isn’t as visible on mobile devices and some searches I’ve found.

Have you signed up for Google Business so you appear authenticated on their map?

Maps are under copywrite

One final point – I’ve seen so many leaflets and documents that have a screenshot of a map added. Maps are protected by copywrite – so you should either look for copywrite free maps, or trace over a street map to create your own version.

For websites add either a link to the map, or embed the map into your website usually on a contact/find us page.

What's with the 'again'?

We used ‘X marks the spot’ back in 2015, back then we were talking about room hire contracts, you can read that post here: https://mindfulbusinessservices.com/quaker-a-z-x-marks-the-spot