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ArcGIS StoryMaps: Creating Immersive Map Tours

About the Map Tour Content Block

The map tour content block is an advanced-level block, and is one of the two content blocks – sidecar being the other – that allows you to create a more immersive experiences for your audiences, letting them interact more with your content. It can mix together any combination of regular content blocks, such as: text, images, video, audio, charts, embed code, the swipe block, express maps, timelines, etc. The map tour displays across the full screen, and is sometimes used as the entire story content space. Map tours have two layout options, guided tours or explorer tours.

StoryMaps Experience Level

To use the map tour block you should already be comfortable with:

  • adding images and/or videos,
  • formatting text, such as applying bold or italics, adding hyperlinks, etc.

Words of Caution

The individual content blocks bundled together into a map tour block cannot be moved out of the map tour if you decide that you prefer to have a certain photo, block of text, or Express Map instead appear in the general content area of your StoryMap. If you want to move any content out of a map tour, you can to manually create those content blocks again in the general story space.

Using the Map Tour Content Block

The Guided Map Tour Option

The guided map tour has two layout options: Map focused and Media focused. These two layouts highlight different aspects of the content by giving more space to either the map or the media. Guided map tour points are numbered in sequential order and readers can scroll through them to see the full list of places.

(Source: ArcGIS StoryMaps Resource Center)

Visual Article Tutorial

Video Tutorial

This 6-3/4 minute video by Professor Nicole Ernst at Harrisburg Area Community College walks you through how to create a guided tour map in your StoryMap, which leads your audience viewers through a series of geographical points in a set viewing order.

The Explorer Map Tour Option

The Explorer map tour has two layout options: Grid and List. This map tour layout can be useful for sets of unordered points because it invites readers to explore the points in any order.

(Source: ArcGIS StoryMaps Resource Center)

Visual Article Tutorial

Adding Georeferenced Images to a Map Tour

This 3-1/2 minute video by the Digital Scholarship Center (DiSCO) at St. Olaf College demonstrates demonstrates how to bulk upload georeferenced photos (photos from a smartphone or camera that have GPS coordinates attached to them) into a new StoryMaps map tour. Use caution when using georeferenced photos in public-facing digital projects so you do not mistakenly reveal personal information, such as someone's home address.

Map Tour Examples

Guided Map Tours

CSUF Examples

Patrick Flanagan & WWI: Part II - Europe, Pre-Armistice

This story was created by CSUF Digital Scholarship Librarian Colleen Robledo Greene. The "Summary" section includes a guided map tour that guides the audience along the path that Private Patrick Flanagan followed after arriving in England on his troop transport ship, and then to and across France, up to the Armistice.

Low and Slow: A Space Claiming History

This ArcGIS StoryMap was created in 2023 by CSUF M.A. Graduate Student (now alumn) Carlos Escobedo III. The "From East L.A to Worldwide" section of his story was built using a guided map tour block. It guides the audience through some of the places in the world where the lowrider culture exists, showing the global reach of that culture.

External Examples

Downtown Street Art & Mural Project

This StoryMap by PBS Wisconsin uses the media-focused layout of a guided map tour to present a virtual tour of protest artwork in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.

Explorer Map Tours

External Examples

Public Art (Greeneville, SC)

This collection of ArcGIS StoryMaps showcases four virtual tours (each a StoryMap) of public art in the city of Greenville, South Carolina. Each StoryMap uses a an explorer layout map tour.