Have You Considered Blogging For Genealogy Purposes?

Riverton Family History Library

There are many benefits to blogging for genealogy purposes. Kathleen and I will be sharing many of them September 15, 2012 at the monthly Saturday Family History Seminar.

Our presentation will discuss reasons to blog, how easy it is, and the various objectives you might have. We share our successes in meeting some of our goals. We will have a hand out that covers our discussion which we hope will be extremely valuable. We discuss the 5 reasons, really 6, not to blog and the 10 reasons to blog.

Our class will explain how Google and other search engines treat our blogs, and how to be found on page one of Google, a big asset in bringing people to your site with common research of family interests.

We presented this a couple of months ago at the Salt Lake City Family History Library and received great feedback.

The seminar will begin at 9Am with a keynote speaker (always good) and then two one hour break out classes. There are usually 4 different classes per hour to select from. Ours will be one of those.

We invite you all to attend these monthly sessions, and would love to see you in our class.

One class cannot teach all that one needs to know. We understand this and expect to provide the attendees handouts and other resources we will provide possibly every thing they need to execute a blogging plan that works for them.

And..... for those of you back home in the Pacific Northwest - come on down!

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.

Spammers Make Me Turn Comments To Moderate

When someone leaves a nice comment and plants a bunch of links to their websites with that comment they have only one objective, which is to promote their sites. The nice comment is fake. They are called spammers.

That happened yesterday on this blog.

I, therefore, deleted the comment and changed the settings so I must approve a comment before it goes live. I thought on our topic of genealogy people would not abuse the value of having the instant gratification of seeing your comment go live immediately. I might point out the my wife told me this would happen. I hate how she is always right.

What the person was doing was hoping to plant links on my blog. It would drive traffic to his sites and give him more strength with the search engines. Don't use this method to drive traffic. There are legitimate methods, this isn't one of them. Had the spammer left a comment of value, I would have gone to his blog. Were it relevent to my goals, and were it a site I liked, I would have linked to  it.

We teach how to blog for the search engines in our Free 4 part Blogging for Genealogy class.

Even though I now have comments moderated, in the future I will try and push your legitimate comments live promptly. Lar

Actually, I think if he had only placed one URL in the comment I wouldn't have had such a problem.

Opening a Flickr Account

I am convinced, after almost a decade of blogging that Flickr is one of your best friends. >
You can store your own photos in Flickr and you can use some of the, in fact most of the photos in Flickr. You are to give the author credit for that photo. After several procedure changes Flickr ended up with a simple solution. >
If you place the photo in your blog using the HTML Provided by Flickr, it has the necessary credit within the HTML. It sends a message to the owner of the photo that their photo is used by you. If you double click the photo after it is placed in the blog it will take you to the owners account. Photographs give life to an article. My style is to search in Flickr for something to do with a topic. Actually I go to my wife Kathleens Flickr account first. She is an awesome photographer and has so many photographs in her file I can often find one that fits the mood of my article.>
To give you an example of how I work, on May 2nd of this year I wrote an article about The Mormon Church having a culture of service. I went to Flickr and searched several words without finding a photo I liked. I searched "service", "needy" "helpless" and "old" before I thought of retirement home, where I found the photo I liked.

Blogging for Genealogy Class 1

Blogging for genealogy class full powerpoint

View more presentations from Larry K Cragun is on a family history mission .

These are the slides from the Blogging for Genealogy Class yesterday. Thanks to all who attended, it was truly a fun time for Kathleen and me. 

If others want a class from us, you can just let us know as we love doing it.

I am in the mode of championing blogging for genealogy for the reasons I mention in a previous article.

I am hoping to connect in any way, especially in sharing our reserach and blogging is a great way to do that. 

The Social Media Revolution

How To Setup A Genealogy Blog WIth Google Blogger

Kathleen  wants me to point out that since the class that we are teaching is in a computer lab, it will be much more productive (FUN) to make sure everyone has the experience of having at least a test blog and getting to do something with it.

I previously asked you to review the slide show in the "What is the purpose article of a couple of days ago". With that thought in mind let's have you set up a Google account if you don't have one, and even go the extra mile and setup a blog.

For those of you who either just drop in and see this post or those who didn't get the blog done for class, I will be posting on line so you can simulate the class or catch up. Our second lab class, next Friday will be actually expanding on your blog.

Now those of you not sure you want to do this, humor your awesome teachers and try it out. Our first class will probably get you so excited you won't sleep that night. You are supposed to smile now.

This video may be enough. Some of you will have a blog in just minutes. Do what you can.

Before you set it up, go back to why you might do this. In the slide show I end by sharing why I am writing this blog. For those reasons I want the search engines (Google for example) to love my blog. I am hoping to attract family members and people researching my lines to find me and to return often. I am looking for collaborators. One of the best reasons is to make it into a research blog. We will discuss that in depth in a class and a later article.

Research blogs are more facts and straight forward than one trying to attract an audience.

I named my blog and used the space below it as I did, for Google. I am thinking I might have been wiser to use the word Genealogy rather than Family History in my blog name and title as the world uses Genealogy more often. I am getting great search results for family history and fewer good results searching with genealogy in the search. For example: today I am on page 1 for the search Porter family history and am on page 2 for Porter Family Genealogy.

So if you decide to set up a test blog, you will have to give it a name. Google considers what the URL has in it and the name of your blog as a part of it's measuring how it treats you when people search.  Other things count to which we will discuss in a class: the title of your articles, the labels (tags) you give them, and the content matching the title and blog name for example.

It's a test blog right, so pick any name. Just remember if you do something cutesy like Kathleen's Kitchen sink, and you want it to be optimized for the search engines, you will have been a little better off not to have been cute.

OK, whether in our class or just dropping in - go setup your Google account and blog.

Blogging For Genealogy Purposes

Next week Kathleen and I will be teaching the first class in a four class series of blogging for genealogy. We have, as many know, taught hundreds of professionals how to successfully blog. The class will be taught in the Family History Library Lab on the 1st floor. The classroom will hold 29 students.

Blogging for genealogy is a terrific endeavor. It can bring families closer together. It can be a great asset for doing genealogy and family history research.

The first thing I will ask the class, and therefore I ask you to consider is, what would you want to accomplish were you to blog a genealogy - family history blog.

Now before you shut me out on this topic I have two things to say: 1- Blogging is easy 2- Not being a great writer is not a problem. Besides that it is fun, and content is everywhere every day.

We will have handouts at the class and I will post what we taught so the students can return here to review the content and perhaps to even the visitor to this blog that might be willing to do this on their own. Of course, if you want to travel to Salt Lake, email me and we do have 10 seats left. The first class starts Wednesday the 1st.

The following short power point illustrates that you can create a power point and publish it.

The power point is short, take a look and ask yourself why would you blog? In the class, I'll be asking.

What is the purpose?