Tip Three: Creating maps with CommunityWalk

About CommunityWalk

Another free tool! CommunityWalk is a website that is dedicated to providing a powerful yet simple and easy to use interface for creating informational, interactive, and engaging maps. At a minimum the CommunityWalk can provide you with a mapping location tool for your property. But it can do much more. Because you can add any number of interest points you can use it to support your customer experience. Add nearby beaches, theme parks restaurants even the nearest supermarket. Each point of interest can have pictures, descriptions even sound commentaries.

Rental customers can get a great feel of the local area around your property and also be confident that you as a property owner have researched the area and know your stuff! You can link to the map in a website or send a link when your respond to rental queries. In addition, maps are added to search engines... I have had a number of rental queries in this way, which have turned into firm bookings.

An example map - Cape Coral

The owners of CommunityWalk have spent a great deal of time trying to make CommunityWalk as intuitive as possible. They have a support team and forum but no tutorial for the basics. So here are a few pointers.

Creating your map

Get started by putting your property location in the 'create a map' box and click 'Get started.

The steps are fairly straightforward, but I would suggest that you go for private until you have completed your map. You can publish later.

When you get to your map, it is now positioned according to the starting point you gave earlier.

Adding your property

To add your property click on the "Add your first marker" or "Add Marker" in the menu. You can search with the address or if the place is well known you can search with a key word. Lastly, if you know exactly where it is, just click on the map.

Start adding the details for your rental property. Remember to go though each of the tabs, including the information about your website if you have one. This means that the title will become a link straight to your website.

Save the marker and then you add a picture as well. You can add more pictures later when you have signed up.

Claiming your map - Signup

Next you need to signup, which very straightforward.

Using your map

Once you have signed up, you also do the following:

• Add more photos to your property marker
• Add more markers with different points of interest. For example, it would be useful in this map to add recommended Wine Estates in the local area around the property rental.
• Edit categories so that you can put Wine Estates in its own category

• Edit your own profile with a description of your property
• Share your map by using the 'Share/Export' tab. You can send an email with a link to the map, add links in your website or even use the supplied HTML code to embed your map into your website.
An example of an embedded map.

Related resources

• Winning pictures
• Writing a rental contract
• Email etiquette