Genealogy Blogging

Dave Barton

Link to the DAR

Harriott Benedict Wickham Barton1890-1981

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Harriott Wickham1915-1920

What is Blogging?

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What is Blogging?

“Blogging is graffiti with punctuation.”Elliott Gould in Contagion

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Genealogy Blogging

• What is Blogging

• How to Blog (Wordpress)

• Genealogy Blogging

• Telling a Story

• Marketing Your Blog

• Why Blog?

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A Blog Is . . .

A blog (a truncation of the expression web log)is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first).

Wikipedia

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Types of Blogs

• Personal Blogs

• Microblogging: i.e. Twitter

• Corporate or Organizational Blog

• By Genre

• By Media Type

• By Device

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Blogging Platforms

• Blogger

• Tumblr

• Wordpress

• Others

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Blogger.com

Largest blogging site (number of subscribers unknown)

Established 1999 Owned by Google

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Tumblr

Second largest blogging site (172 million hosted sites)

Established 2006 Owned by Yahoo Questionable Content Security

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Wordpress

Third largest blogging site (75.8 million sites)

Established 2005 Owned by Automattic Hosted vrs. Open-source software

Wordpress.org – www.wordpress.orgWordpress.com – www.wordpress.com

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Wordpress.com

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WYSIWYG

Wordpress.com

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WYSIWYG"What You See Is What You Get".

Dashboard

• Themes How your blog looks

• Posts A journal in reverse

• Pages Static web pages

• Links What supports and illustrates your story?

• Comments Reader feedback

• Widgets Side column content

• Stats How is your blog doing?

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Genealogy Blogging

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Blog About What?

• Good Advice: http://www.thearmchairgenealogist.com/

• Tech Support: http://www.ancestryinsider.org/

• Gravestone Matters: http://digitalcemeterywalk.blogspot.com/

• Heritage Help: http://www.britishgenes.blogspot.com/

• Shop Talk: http://sanduskyhistory.blogspot.com/

• Story Time: http://www.climbingmyfamilytree.com/

From “Top 40 Genealogy Blogs in 2013”, Family Tree Magazine http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/Top-40-Genealogy-Blogs-2013

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“I Don’t Have the Time For This!”

Tell a Story

• Climbing the Family Tree by Ancestor

• Telling a story chronologically

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Common Family History Format

Organized as a Family tree by generations.

Telling the Story ChronologicallyPlatt Benedict

Sally Benedict

Clarissa Gallup

Henry Buckingham

Jonas Benedict

Lucy Wickham (Preston)

Henry Buckingham

Sally Benedict

Lucy Wickham

David Benedict

Platt Benedict

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Point of View (POV)

The relative position from which one sees an object.

Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary

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Literary Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction (also known as literary nonfiction or narrative nonfiction) is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives.

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Literary Fiction Biographies

In the cold, nearly colorless light of a New England winter, two men on horseback traveled the coast road below Boston, heading north. A foot or more of snow covered the landscape, the remnants of a Christmas storm that had blanketed Massachusetts from one end of the province to the other. Beneath the snow, after weeks of severe cold, the ground was frozen solid to a depth of two feet. Packed ice in the road, ruts as hard as iron, made the going hazardous, and the riders, mindful of the horses, kept at a walk.

Nothing about the harsh landscape differed from other winters. Nor was there anything to distinguish the two riders, no signs of rank or title, no liveried retinue bringing up the rear. It might have been any year and they could have been anybody braving the weather for any number of reasons. Dressed as they were in heavy cloaks, their hats pulled low against the wind, they were barely distinguishable even from each other, except that the older, stouter of the two did most of the talking.

He was John Adams of Braintree and he loved to talk. He was a known talker. There were some, even among his admirers, who wished he talked less. He himself wished he talked less, and he had particular regard for those, like General Washington, who somehow managed great reserve under almost any circumstance.

John Adams was a lawyer and a farmer, a graduate of Harvard College, the husband of Abigail Smith Adams, the father of four children. He was forty years old and he was a revolutionary.

John Adams

by David McCullough

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“Sufferers’ Land”

“Sufferers’ Land” is a history of the settlement of theFirelands from the founding of the town of Norwalk,Ohio in 1817 by Platt Benedict to the final PioneersReunion and founding of The Firelands HistoricalSociety in 1857.

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What’s Next

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Marketing

Getting out the word about your blog

Getting Out the Word

• Family & Friends

• Other blogs

• Social Media– Facebook

– LinkedIn

– Twitter

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Getting Out the Word

• Genealogy Message Boards– Rootsweb http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

– Genforum http://genforum.genealogy.com/my/

– Yahoo Groups

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Why Blog?

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Why Blog?

• Tell your story.

• Connect with cousins

• Research

• Invitations to Contribute

– Genealowiki: http://www.genealowiki.com/bin/view.cgi/Benedict/PlattBenedict1775

– Wickham Cemetery Project

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Genealogy Blogging

• What is Blogging

• How to Blog (Wordpress)

• Genealogy Blogging

• Telling a Story

• Marketing Your Blog

• Why Blog?