Copyright Julie Goucher, May 2020

Blogging can be a really enjoyable pastime. It is the ability to write to the ether and a way of sharing information, whether that is sharing about books, ancestors, hobbies or keeping an online journal. One thing that is possible to do is publish posts, but at the same time keeping them private.

On the right hand side of the writing posts page there is a box marked status. Here you can choose when to publish the post, essentially you can schedule for a point in the future.

Next is the facility to publish as a public page, or a page to just admins and editors or password protected, meaning that the page would be live, but only those with a password could read it. Obviously if you chose to not share the password, then it is private and available to just you.

By definition, the concept of blogging is to share with others. As you write posts and publish them there is also the ability to link to Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. If you follow me on Twitter you will see posts that have published on this blog, you are then able to ReTweet (RT) the post which is the spirit of blogging. If you follow me on Facebook then you will hopefully be alerted to when a post is published, because it will appear in your newsfeed.

In addition to that, there is the ability to enable readers to follow this blog by the posts appearing in your email or on your blog reader.

The basic principle of blogging is to engage with others and to achieve that engagement to use social media to do so. Twitter especially has a good following of genealogists and there is the ability to connect with many others by searching the #genealogy, #familyhistory, #surnames, #AncestryHour. Ancestry Hour is an online event, taking place on Twitter between 7-8 pm (UK time). Once you have a Twitter account, you can search for the #AncestryHour and see the discussions and collaborative spirit of the genealogical world.

Comments via your blog are also welcoming and it is quite disheartening to write a post and then no one comments. Your mind fills with pondering’s – did people think it was a dreadful post, were there mistakes? STOP. Your blog will be just fine, they are easy to write, the hardest bit is just getting going!

Write, publish and share; build up a following of people and know that once it is out there the search engine’s will pick up the posts and therefore eventually appear in Google search results. Members of the Guild of One-Name Studies can add their blog to their study profile page and to the page in the wiki. For those of you reading along and wanting to get a blog set up for their study or general genalogy, you can leave a comment, let me know your name and the URL and I will find space for the list on this site and help you on the way to the genealogical ether! I have a few sites already flagged!

If you do not write about your study how will people know of you? You have nothing to loose, by trying and remember, baby steps and blogging is more like a marathon than a sprint!

This is part of my Blog Writing Series. Next we are going to look at Blog structure.