After our last seminar, Social Media Mania, I received an email from an attendee about how to make a Google Map specific to their business. You know the kind where you have the little blue icon instead of a red one.

Here’s what I wrote her.

If you don’t have an account with Google, then sign up. It’s easy and free. I would recommend you make the gmail account for your company name like yourcompany@gmail.com. This way it can be easily transferred to another marketer down the road.

Once you have an account, go to Google Maps.

There will be a tab call My Maps. Click on it.

Click Create A Map.

Make a name for your map.

Make sure it’s set to Public.

Search for your location.

When it gives the red location spot, click on the it on the map.

It will say “Save to My Maps”

Click that link.

It will say “Which map would you like to save to?”

Select the “named” map.

You’ll have your map.

Then to add it to your website.

Click on “Link to this page” on the far right corner of the map.

There you can get the link or the HTML code to add to your site.

Now here’s something cool. Google lets you edit your business information and I totally recommend this.

To do this, get out of your Maps and then do a search for your business. Hopefully, it pops up.

Then click on the red dot on the map that shows your business location. There will be an “edit” button.

Click that link and set up your business.

At the end, they will call your business to verify you are the owner. They will give you a four-digit code. Put that in and your business will be on the map with more information than just a location.

Now you know how to do it yourself.

Google Maps makes it easier on people to find your location and anything that makes it easier on your customers is worth putting on your website.

Here’s an example.

And here’s one with an actual path from location to location.

If your locations are moving or you want people to enter their information and then it just show up on a map, MediaSauce has done this for customers as well.

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Here’s my two cents about Inc. Mag. And don’t get me wrong – I love the mag – but they are always a bit behind the times when it comes to new media and technology. I really miss Business 2.0 – I can’t believe they shut it down and replaced my 2.0 with Fortune – what a waste.

So with the article, “Tapping The Community Pool” in the latest issue, they basically talk about how Social Communities via forums or wikis or blogs are allowing customers to help answer each other questions about products. Wow, that’s so 2003.

The example they give is a pool company (www.poolcenter.com) that has a large forum with 5000 registered users. They have their techs online to answer any questions about their products but a lot of times other customers answer the question before an online tech can get to it.

I don’t know if any of you have a Treo, but Palm’s entire support is based in community forums and a lot of times you can’t even get a tech to answer you. They just redirect you to another customer’s post on how to solve a problem.

I’m a huge fan of Ning and they have two communities for support – both creators and developers. Both of these are filled with workarounds and tips from other customers.

I’ve always pushed for community development around any company’s service or product. Now I almost always get somebody who will tell me they don’t need a full blown social community – that there is too many already. The funny thing is that this is usually from someone that doesn’t use any social communities. There’s a cartoon out there floating around (I should have saved the link) showing a guy signing up for a social community network. Afterwards he says, “That’s it. I officially have more social networks than friends.”

That’s probably the case for me.

I’ve got Facebook, my church, my wellness doctor, my family, my company, my marketing network, linkedin, twitter, and this damn blog.

Maybe you think that is too many…but I don’t think so. I think we go in and out of social communities all day long – the net just made them virtual and gave them names.

A little future gazing here – but I believe that our social identities will become more and more important on the web to the fact that websites will change when we visit them depending on the profile we are using to visit them. I’m also into siteless web presence for companies (you don’t need a website as much as you need a presence on many, many websites) as well but I’ll talk about that in a different blog.

Wow, I’ve really gotten far away from my topic. What I wanted to say about the article is that they don’t mention how much Google loves forums, blogs and wikis. There’s a whole host of reasons that I’ll explain in the future but Google digs the relevant content, the new content, the old content, all the keywords and a whole host of other things associated with these communities and there’s a good chance your community will pop up before your website.

And if Google can see you, then the world can. They don’t even mention that in the article.

To prove my point, search for me on Google. Don Schindler. A while back this guy with my exact same name used to dominate Google because he was a Scientologist and he wrote a few articles. But not anymore.

So this blog is a little longer than I wanted.

Remember this though, maybe you don’t think a community is right for you now. Well, all I have to say is, imagine how hard it will be to start one five years from now. The web is in its infancy and you could build an established base right now.

And if you need help, MediaSauce (who I work for) can help you out. You don’t have to go this alone and you’d be surprised how inexpensive it is to set this stuff up.

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