Should You Publish A Blog?

Blogging is Family History: Larry K Cragun     larry@cragun.net    http://larrycragunfamily.blogspot.com/

There is a community of people who have caught the genealogy and family history spirit. They are from all over the world, of all faiths and are engaged for similar reasons. They are writing, searching, and collaborating. This community is most easily discovered on a blog. 

Publishing a blog doesn’t need a webmaster; they are simple and flexible. Be aware though; there are reasons people resist. Here are the common reasons; “someone might read it, I am not a good writer, it’s too hard, I don’t have the time, and I have nothing to write about. 

WordPress.org and blogspot.com (Google) are the bulk of the blogs published. WordPress.org states that 97% of new bloggers quit publishing within 7 days. To avoid this it is important to have a reason and a plan. What is your reason, your goal?

Why blog? For What Purpose? Find cousins, influence family, inform others, Connect to Social Media, Collaborate, a journal for my family to share, preparing to write a book, find research partners, share my research, be a journal of  my research, preserve your research online,  or make a lot of money. Ha Ha, don't do a genealogy blog for his purpose.

Is there a book inside of you? Do you have family research to publish? I suggest that before you go to the expense of publishing a book that you create the book through a series of posts.

My main objectives in this blog are: feedback, collaboration, reach out to unknown cousins, improve some strained historical family relationships my ancestors created, and to come to the front in search engine results like these:

Cragun Genealogy:  Today that search delivers this me on page on 1 as the top three results.

Patrick Cragun: Today that search delivers this site on page one three times: #2, #5, and #6.

 Elisha Cragun, Patrick's son, and my 2nd great grandfather has this site as the #3 result on page 1.

I write about several topics to keep the site interesting and to make it less difficult to come up with articles to post. When I am focused I write at least three times a week. The more you write about your topic the better the search engines treat your site.

Blogs can be public, private, or limited to those you give access. Search engines won’t find your blog if it isn’t public.

Blogs can be free. Free blogs limit you in quality of templates. I use both WordPress and Blogspot. If you plan on making money by advertising you should use paid hosting and not use a free template or as they are called; themes. If you go the paid route you should definitely use WordPress. 

Themes can be purchased inexpensively now; I recommend you look to WPMUDEV.com for themes and support. Pagely.com is my recommendation for paid hosting. On a single blog your costs can be as low as $24.00 per month. Network, multi-user blogs are much more expensive to host.

Rules to be found on the search engines: (What is your blog about, really?) Make the title relevant, have the tagline or paragraph related to the topic, use tags, categories, article title, and some of the text in the article related to the topic of the blog. (The search engines like active sites with fresh content) Publish 3 or more times a week; sometimes for several weeks, to be found on page 1. Don’t steal other content or be banned. (The search engines recognize duplicate articles) It’s ok, even desirable to copy up to 1/3 of another post as long as you link to the original article. 

Some of my favorite genealogy blogs; (reading other blogs on your topic help you find your voice, give you ideas, and get you into the community are
) are: janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/‎, genealogystar.blogspot.com, http://www.geneamusings.com/, and  http://tangledtrees.blogspot.com/.  I list several others on the right sidebar of my blog.

Start simple, just start writing. Photographs make the articles much more interesting. Videos are a great addition to a blog. 

You can change your template at any time. You can start discovering the various widgets that add to the complexity of your blog later. Don’t wait until it is perfect to start publishing. Expect to be a better writer and photographer as you go. 

Blogging is genealogy, it’s a record of what you felt relevant. It’s an opportunity to share. It’s inviting feedback, opinions, and input.

The Purpose of This Blog

Photos from an annual family retreat

As I come up to 175 articles on this blog with about 50 other websites linking into the blog or linking out from this blog one might ask, what's the point?
Is it because it's fun for me? It is that, I do like to write about things.

Is it to leave a history of my life and my family? It in part does do that. There are stories here, Jason says he prefers stories when it comes to my involving him in our family history.

One reason, is to share the many things I am learning here on this family history mission, Kathleen and I are serving for 18 months, here at Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City. I share fun things too, cool things such as this video by Andreas Bochelli, clicking here takes you to that video.

I am writing in hopes that this blog is a site people come back to. In that effort I mix things up: some of what I speak above, some fun things, great photographs, someting sprititual on Sunday, and tips about technology or genealogy.

I know to bring my kids back, I have to make it sort of interesting. I try.

This isn't a genealogy research blog but it links to one for each of my main family lines. The most work I have done, is researching on the Cragun line. That blog is here: http://cragunfamilyresearchblog.blogspot.com/  I am making every effort I can to make that a valuable resource for others that are working on the same families. Later even my children might find it valuable.

The research blog is focused while this blog has a few facets of content.

I also write for Google and the other search engines. I know how to get to the front page of Google without any fancy tricks. Why do I do that? The answer is easy. I want my unknown relatives that do searches to find this blog. Currently about 1/3 of the traffic to this site is from Google.

Some of what I write is easily sent to Facebook and Twitter, or can be emailed. I do a lot of that in my reaching out to family and friends efforts.

I invite comments an feedback. I anticipate some of them may chime in  once in a while on the comments option. Some have. That is good.

As I wrap this up, I invite your comments too if you are so inclined.

Blogging For Genealogy Success

Power Point - Blogging For Genealogy Success Presentation

Social Media And Family History

One of the reasons I started this blog was to connect with family members unknown to me. There are multiple reasons, one being able to collaborate with them on our research.

The blog is a way for people to find you that are using the search engines such as Google. Blogs can be very strong this way.

I also post many of my articles on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook I am taking opportunities to friend those who I can tell are relatives, mostly Cragun families. Thus the blog becomes a part of social media.

This week two cousins have found me. One asked me some questions on Facebook about my grandfather and his possible involvement in a mine. I have information on that. I am posting it here and going to answer him on Facebook, by referring him to this article.

Another Cragun left me a note that one of the articles I published helped him find an ancestor. Pretty Cool. I am glad you found my blog and that it helped you, Leon Cragun.

Here is to my Cousin Cecil Cragun and his question:

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am inviting those

with a same relative to be a guest contributor to this blog.