Golden Rules

This – or something like it – is the way to begin both viewpoints and street view tour stops.

It encourages you to describe and explain the physicality of the place so as to make the listener feel as though they’re there.

This is really important because both viewpoints street view tours are essentially virtual, and so you need to make extra effort to connect the listener to the physicality of the place.

When planning the topics of both viewpoints and street view tours:

• It’s better to be specific than general

• It’s better to talk about a particular aspect than give a general overview

• It’s better to talk about something niche than something mainstream

• It’s better for the content to be unusual rather than conventional

When recording the audio for your viewpoints, try to record on a smartphone under a duvet.

Seriously, it’s the best! It absorbs all the sounds, giving a clean, clear recording.

If you can’t get under a duvet, surround yourself with pillows, rugs and sofas, and get away from hard surfaces.

We encourage you to publish viewpoints as often as you wish, whether to entertain your audience and to enrich our public spaces, or to (indirectly*) promote underlying books, websites or projects.

But if you are supporting the marketing of your street view tour by publishing viewpoints, it’s a good idea to follow the 3:1 ratio. This means that for every time you run your tour, publish and promote 3 viewpoints – one when you first publish the event, one a few days later, and one just before the event itself.

*Remember never to refer directly to any of these things in the viewpoint itself. The content of the viewpoint should only ever be about the place.

It’s important that the content of viewpoints is ‘evergreen’. This means that, if someone is listening to it in 100 years’ time, it still makes perfect sense.

To achieve this, make sure that your viewpoint only references the place in question, and doesn’t reference your own time and place.

For example, don’t say:

• “Last year…”
• “Next month…”
• “My street view tour…”
• “In three years time…”