Interactive maps can be attention-grabbing ways to highlight events and issues affecting your community; or to show how your community compares to your region or state. The Nonprofit Technology Network recently offered several examples of how to tell stories with interactive maps. While intended for nonprofit organizations, these ideas can also apply to many community-focused news or information efforts.

NTEN's suggestions fall into two basic strategies:

• Displaying location-specific information about an organization's activities. This could include mapping the locations of the stories you cover, or the local activities of an organization, agency, or company. Markers on the map could include pop-ups with detailed information.
• Displaying geo-specific data that tells a story about an issue, goals, progress and/or impact. This could include:
• Chloropleth maps. Color variations indicate geographic data variations, such as coloring county election results red or blue.
• Clustering maps. Color variations indicate relative geographic density (i.e., population) or intensity (i.e., air pollution).
• Heat maps. A type of chloropleth map, except that data variations aren't tied to recognized geographic boundaries such as the borders of states, counties, cities, or neighborhoods.

Information designer Paul Chamberlain offers these tips for making decisions about interactive mapping projects:

• What story are you telling? "Before you get too fixated on what type of map you'd like, or what tool you'd like to use, take a step back and think about your audience. What do you want to tell them, and how will they find it meaningful?"
• What kind of data do you have? "Is it hierarchical and heavily relational, or more singular and straightforward? Will it change over time, or is it more of a static snapshot? What format do you keep it in?"
• Budget. "Save yourself the time (and heartbreak) of falling in love with an incredible interactive map technique that's beyond your budget by starting with a clear idea of how much time and money you want to invest in bringing your data to life with maps."