#LocalGuides: How to Share More and See More with Google Maps

Reaching new audiences on social media can be challenging, even for the most diligent of Instagram-sharers. Staying on top of your Stories, comments and posts is great for your current followers -- but what about the rest of the world? For influencers, there are ways to share your photos beyond your following that you might not be familiar with, so we thought we’d share just one of them with you.

Google’s Local Guides program is the community of over 60 million people around the world who share their photos, reviews, lists and more on Google Maps. When Local Guides add photos to a location, they can be seen by thousands of people who are deciding where to go and are looking for photos to help. Once your photos and reviews start to get traction, you’ll get emails updating you on their view counts. You’ll also get points for your contributions, which can help you reach new levels, earn badges and maybe earn some cool perks.

We’ve been testing it ourselves and have had some fun sharing our shots with the world. We’ve also made our fair share of lists, or curations of your favorite places that you can make public and share with your friends or followers, like this one for coffee snobs in NYC.

And that’s it! One of our new favorite ways to share our pics. You can check out Google Maps on Instagram here and see what’s happening on #LocalGuides here.

Photo: Miriam Wakim, @meemcw, is a Local Guide.  She posted this pic of Obviously's favorite wine bar, Compagnie. Shot on Pixel.