Personal guides make anyone a tour guide

A few months ago, CityVoter released what we call "personal guides". I don't know if that name will stick, but it is a helpful description of what we allow people to do. They can create a personal guide to where they like to shop or how they spend a rainy day. They can plan trips and organize a night out with friends.

Over the past few months, we haven't really promoted these guides much. We really wanted to see what people would create. In our home town of Boston, we've built a good foundation of guides. While we know there are lots of ways personal guides will evolve, the early indicator is that people are most comfortable and familiar with creating travel advice guides. Here's an example of one of the more popular guides on our site.


This user organized some popular spots in Charlestown into a guide telling visitors in what order to visit these locations and what to do when they get there -- like a conceirge at a hotel.

The personal guide concept is simple: Give people a way to easily organize, rearrange, and comment on all the great business profiles we build during our best-of city contests. When they are done, give them an easy way to share.

The "personal guide" opportunity for local business owners and media companies is huge.

• Business owners get even more free promotion -- and some creative ideas on how to market their business. "Visit us when you're touring Charlestown"
  
  
• Media companies get unique travel advice and local feature content that they normally have to pay journalists to create.

We'll continue to improve personal guides over time. We've received some great feedback already on how we could organize these guides, make them easier to build and more personal for the author, and make them easier to share.

If you want to try it out, please give it a shot and let us know what you think. You'll need a CityVoter account.

A warning to business owners though: We've had a number of business owners who create guides that are self-serving. For example, "Guide to best salons" and then the owner only lists him/herself. The audience on our site will reject this content and it will get harder to find. If we find it, we'll reject it too. The best guides will get highlighted on the site. So, if you are a business owner, and you're an expert in your local area, have fun, but understand the checks and balances are in place to reward stuff our audience really likes.