The blog archives will show that I’ve long been inter­est­ed in Quak­er out­reach. As I’ve grown more involved at Crop­well Meet­ing in Marl­ton, N.J., this past year I’m learn­ing some prac­ti­cal lessons for hyper-local out­reach that I’ll share occasionally. 

Two non-regular vis­i­tors to Quak­er meet­ing this Sun­day, one a first-time enquir­er and the oth­er a Friend mak­ing a spe­cial vis­it. Both saw our Google Maps entry first. One said that all the pic­tures there made the meet­ing look espe­cial­ly active. Good to remem­ber that for a lot of poten­tial vis­i­tors this is our homepage.

When I was in my wandering-between-meetings phase, vis­it­ing dif­fer­ent meet­ings all the time, I’d often upload pho­tos to Google Maps and update con­tact details as I was sit­ting in the park­ing lot before I left. Some of the Crop­well pho­tos are from my first vis­it a year ago. Adding pic­tures is very easy and is a great way to help places we like look good to poten­tial visitors. 

At Crop­well we’ve also been post­ing events to Google (via Eventbrite, as I under­stand the process) and these also appear in Google Maps.