How To Make an Interactive Map for your Blog Post

How To Make an Interactive Map for your Blog Post

  I make a lot of maps for my business as well as for my blogs and people often ask how I make these custom interactive maps.  So today I will demonstrate just how easy they are to make and insert into your blog posts.

  Creating a custom map may seem like a difficult job at first, but trust me, it is quite simple once you get started.

  Give it a try today.

  These maps are great for just about anything like;

•   Neighborhood maps

•   A map of the showings that you will have for the day.

•   A quick at a glance map of all of your listings.

•   A map of the forest that you are listing or showing today, wouldnt it be great if your client could bring up your blog post and have a zoomable movable aerial map of the property on thier smart phone.

View cadott office map for active rain in a larger map

Here is how it is done...

First open up Google Maps, make sure you are signed in, then go to the location where you would like to make a map.

 Click on "My Places" on the left side, then click on "or create with classic My Maps", I use this old system because it embeds much more reliably than the new mapping tool.

 Next Name and Save your new Map before proceeding any further, and continue to hit the save button as you work on your map, especially if it is a complex map with lots of boundaries or lots of location points.

 Step five is to select the background for your map, I like Satellite, that way you can see all of the trees, houses and beautiful people around the pool.  To do this, click the button in the upper right hand corner, you can also select a few other background options while you are here.

 Next we draw in a few features and put in a few points using the tools in the upper left hand corner of the map.

To insert a point, just select that upside down raindrop, then click on the house that you want to mark, label the point and save it.

To draw in a boundary, select the line tool, click on the first corner of your map, proceed in the direction of your next corner, it will show how many feet you have gone, click on the next corner, and proceed around the property until you are back at the beginning point, double click here to finish your boundary.

 Now save your map again, and we will proceed on to the embedding process.

 Embedding or sharing a map is a very important next step, especially if this is for a blog or a client.

Click the little chain in the upper left area of the map, and here we have the option of sharing a url link with a client or getting an embed link for a blog site.

Today we are going for an embed link, but first click the option to "customize and preview embedded map".

Here we can make sure it is showing correctly and adjust the size, sometimes a small one is OK, but today we will be choosing the large one.

Now copy the code at the bottom of the preview window to your clipboard and we will move on to the next step at active rain.

 Next after copying that precious code to your clip board, go to your Active Rain blog editor and select the little source code button (see picture above), this will open the pop-up window that you see below, just hit control v now and it will be in your blog post.

 Now for a quick preview to make sure everything looks good, hit the toolbar button that looks like an eye.

I hope that you all enjoyed this quick little tutorial, let me know how it works for you and if you have problems, don't hesitate to give me a call, I would love to help you work through any difficulties that you may have.

Happy blogging and happy mapping!