Is Genealogy Blogging Dead?

Is Genealogy Blogging Dead?

Blogging has made it possible for anyone to share their genealogy with a wide audience. No longer did family historians need to publish a book or write an article for a genealogy society publication. But the landscape is changing. Many are asking the question "Is genealogy blogging dead?"

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Asking the Question

Two long-time genealogy bloggers, Thomas MacEntee and Julie Cahill Tarr, have both posed the question recently on their blogs.​ Thomas recently announced that he is no longer going to post the Genealogy Blogging Beat or adding new blogs to the Geneabloggers list. (See his full announcement here.)  Julie has observed that many of the blogs she followed a year and a half ago have gone inactive.

Although Thomas stated in his post that he doesn't think genealogy blogging is dead, the question is lingering on social media. To figure it out, let's take a look at the blogging space.

Genealogy Blogging: A Condensed History

Back in the early days of genealogy blogging, there were "blog carnivals" where people would write on a certain theme. One blog would act as the host or hub and link to the others in the carnival. Participants were encouraged to link to each other as well. They were fun, but they were also a lot of work for the host.

Then there were the "awards." Someone would design a small graphic like "Awesome Genealogy Blog Award!" and "nominate" or "award" it to 5 or 10 blogs. They would do a post with links to those blogs with the expectation that those 5 or 10 blogs would award 5 or 10 other blogs. It was basically a blogging chain letter.

Carnivals and blog awards started fading away around the time that social media, especially Facebook, became popular. However, people and organizations continue to blog.

My Experience As a Long-Time Genealogy Blogger

I have had four genealogy-related blogs. I abandoned one. One evolved into a different one (the one you're reading now), and the last one (nostorytoosmall.com) is still out there, but I'm not currently posting to it. (It dear to my heart and I'm not ready to say I've abandoned it.)

The one I abandoned was very specialized. It featured cemeteries from around Ohio. I started it around the same time that I went back to school – which is not the best time to start a blog. I loved the subject matter, but just didn't have time to write.

Thomas and others I've seen discussing this have mentioned a downturn in blog traffic (the number of visitors to a blog. Traffic to my No Story Too Small blog continues to get traffic, though certainly at a lower level than when I was actively posting there. However, this blog's traffic is up from a year ago and continues to trend upward.

So how does a blog continue to get traffic?

A Change in the Landscape

Social media and blogging

Facebook has probably done more to change genealogy blogging than anything else. As Thomas MacEntee noted, genealogists are comfortable on Facebook and do a tremendous amount of sharing there.

Early on in the rise of social media, some bloggers were concerned that their blogs would wither and die because of the "competition" from Facebook. It is true that people only have so many hours in the day and if all of their time is spent on Facebook, there would be no time left to read a blog.

Bloggers who were concerned saw blogging and social media as an "or" – two things that were mutually exclusive.

Social Media As a Complement, Not As Competition

Blogging today is different than it was even 5 years ago. Long gone are the blog carnivals and awards. But there are more subtle changes in the blogging world that need to be addressed.

Blog traffic (at least to genealogy blogs) is generally driven by two things: search engines and social media. If you want Google to show your blog posts, you need to be using words that people would use in their query. (Writing about your great-grandfather Mortimer Adams? Use his full name in your post rather than only referring to him as "Grandpa Mort.")

The big change, however, is social media, especially Facebook. There are 1.9 billion users on Facebook. Bloggers can and should harness some of that!

#Genealogy bloggers should harness the power of the 1.9 billion users on Facebook.

Click to Tweet

Blogs are not the same as social media. People do not consume long-form text on Facebook. (Do you remember the old "Notes" feature in Facebook? How many of those did you actually read?) People consume things there that they can digest quickly, that pique their curiosity, or that entertain them somehow.

I wouldn't post this entire article on Facebook; nobody would read it. But what I will do is post on Facebook, with an image, a link, and a short caption to get people curious and, ideally, click through to read the full post here.

Even the social media space has changed. Images are critical now. A Facebook post without an image won't be seen by very many people. Want people to pin your post on Pinterest? You better have a good image with it.

(Note: I'll be talking more about this subject at the Federation of Genealogical Societies annual conference in Pittsburgh on August 30. I hope you'll join me there!)

Blogging Isn't Dead; It's Just Different

Blogs have strengths that cannot be duplicated by Facebook. The first is the ability to be found by search engines like Google. (Unless a Facebook post or status is set to "public," search engines cannot find it.) Blogs give us so much more flexibility in terms of content. They also have a much longer shelf-life than a social media post. (I've had people contact me years after I've done a blog post; that doesn't happen with social media.) For setting "cousin bait," blogging cannot be beat.

As bloggers, we need to remember that we cannot just post it and forget it. If we want to drive traffic to our blogs, we need to account for the change in the landscape. We need to harness social media (and use best practices for getting the most out of it).

There's nothing saying that you have to continue blogging. It's ok to stop if it doesn't fit your needs or your enjoyment. However, we shouldn't give up on blogging just because Facebook seems to be king. Social media hasn't killed blogging. If anything, it has given it a new lease on life.

Is Genealogy Blogging Dead?

Social media has changed genealogy. Is genealogy blogging dead?

Posted: May 5, 2017.

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  • Great post, Amy!
    I also wrote about this topic on Into the LIGHT in my post, “Where Have All the Readers Gone”, back in September 2016. I noticed the change in readership because of the obvious decrease in reader comments on my blogs. Please click on this link to read my post: https://justthinking130.blogspot.com/2015/09/where-have-all-readers-gone.html

    I think FB and the other social media outlets are great, but my concern is that content left on them will probably not come up on searches, etc. in the future — you know when our descendants are searching for info. 🙂 I also truly miss the comaraderie we used to all share via the comment sections on our blogs.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

    Renate

  • I enjoyed this article, Amy. I’ve only been blogging for three years, and a lot has changed since I started. I don’t believe it’s dead either. It’s just different.

  • Here! Here! blogging ontinues to evolve and live. I prefer to call my blog posts “articles” and think of my blog as an on-line publication because I think the word “Blog” is so silly-sounding that it leads people to think it is inconsequential. But as someone who has been writing those whatever-you-call them for a dozen years (a travel/books site first, and four years ago starting the genealogy/food site), I agree with everything you have said.
    As for the anecdotal evidence of blogs dying–they always have been notoriously short lived because they are so easy to start, and eat up words and ideas so fast, that the dabblers become discouraged and quit. Those with something to say, who take the time to learn how to reach people keep going. I recently read an appropros quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Don’t write because you want to say something; write because you have something to say.”

  • Amy, I believe I first found you on FB. Probably in one of the genealogy groups I follow. It isn’t an either/or matter.

  • I agree with you and with Vera and Nancy and Renate. I am hopeless in trying to keep up with what is going on with Facebook sites, even those of my children. I do manage to read many of the genealogy blog post that come my way, though. On my own blog, I try to write stories that may have some use or application to others’ research. Hopefully they are also entertaining as well. There are weeks when I wonder what I can write about but there always seems to be a subject that comes up that I have experience with that I think other people might be interested in. So the beat goes on! Hopefully I won’t run out of ideas or stories in the near future.

  • Very good article! I follow your blog here as well as a few others for the fact that I learn different and (most times) better ways of researching for information. I am not a fan of Facebook, although I do have an account, and I do not use any other social media. I am too busy living my life to spend it sharing inconsequential tidbits about myself with people who really do not care one way or the other. That said, I to find good links to new blogs I can use on Facebook. I truly hope blogs do NOT disappear completely as they are one of the few things online that I truly enjoy!

  • I get a tremendous amount of traffic to my blog – but not on a daily basis. I feel bad for new bloggers that they will have no platform to showcase their blogs the way we did with Geneabloggers. I’m not sure that the “daily blogging beat” or “genealogy blogging events” are relevant anymore, but I do think blogs themselves are.

    Blogs are critical to my business. Once I am on a tour and the blogging starts, allowing people to see what we are up to, I get people signing up for future tours. Blogs have a much further reach than a Facebook post. And I can always have my blog made into a book for preservation – not so with Facebook post.

    I often post a couple of photos and a quick run down about them on Facebook but then write a longer, more detailed blog post to better explain the story behind the pics.

  • Essential point, Amy. Nowadays just uploading a blog post, no matter how useful or entertaining it is, isn’t enough. The way to increase mileage and momentum is to promote it on social media.

  • Very good analysis. For cousin bait blogs, genealogy blogging is far from dead. Many older relatives prefer not to use social media. They find my blog when they use search engines, because I list full names of ancestors. More than a couple, actually, have connected with me via the blog. So blogging is far from dead, it’s just evolving in this new environment. And I agree with Vera, considering my posts as “articles” in which I explain “how to” techniques, comment on brick walls, and share good resources. FB and Twitter are excellent extras but my blog is the place for cousin bait as well as in-depth articles.

  • Amy, I am quite new to reading your blogs but I really do enjoy them. You have shown me ways to do genealogy research on my family tree that I had never read before. As you said, people don’t have much time to spend on reading blogs all day. The genealogy blogger mentioned people’s blogs but not what their subject was so I have not been inclined to spend a lot of time on reading something that possibly won’t interest me. Please keep doing what you are doing.

  • Oh Amy! Thank you so much for your post. It’s awesome! I love what you said about genealogy blogging being different, and not dead. Yes, social media is complimentary. I share my posts all over social media. It’s so important to do that.

    I also wonder how many people read our blog posts in a reader like Feedly, rather than clicking over to the actual blog, thus possibly skewing our true readership numbers. As I peruse Feedly for my weekly Fab Finds posts, I usually will click over to the actual blog, so the author gets “credit” for me reading their post. I wonder how many others do that.

    Thanks again for your encouraging post about genealogy blogging.

    P.S. I also wonder if other genres of blogging (ie. tech, food, mommy blogs) are also experiencing this type of change. Hopefully it’s not just in the genealogy blog niche.

  • I just started subscribing to genealogical bloggers via email and I’m loving it! Please don’t stop blogging. I’m new to genealogy and find all the content interesting, informative and helpful. I’m an avid Facebook user, but I can’t count on Facebook’s algorithms to include all the content that I enjoy reading.

    Sandra Hull

  • I do look for your posts faithfully, Amy, and I recommend them to friends at the local genealogy club, because they’re so often sound advice and methods that we haven’t considered. Most of us in the club have been around the genealogical block a few times, and still you offer new ideas, like your posts about photographing a cemetery and DP.LA. Like you, I’ve been disappointed to see favorite blogs wither and stop. Is it all about the number of hits falling too low to bother?

    I’m never sure about a particular blogger’s preference about receiving comments. James Tanner, for example, doesn’t seem to want them, according to what he says in his blog, and definitely not about last month’s posts.

    One thing that has caused me to pull a particular blog out of my list of favorites is shilling for conferences that I can’t attend. There’s nothing in them for a month before and a month after except shilling (to use the polite word). It just emphasizes that the blogger has been bought by free tickets and other freebies. The shilling isn’t for the speakers with fresh ways of looking at a research problem, either. Instead, the bloggers talk about the “level of energy and excitement.” I can get that at home by going to a square dance. (We have some keen dancers in this neck of the woods.)

    As Vera says, bloggers should write because they have something to say, and I love the ones that do– like you, Amy.

  • Cousin bait – that’s why I started one of my blogs, and it’s been very successful for me. The other blog is specifically to inventory page by page a very large detailed [sometimes boring] scrapbook of my great-grandfather in the 1800s. Blogs lend themselves to various purposes. I’m wondering what the next greatest social media form may be-?! Cheers.

  • An interesting blog. What I like most about blogs is that they are archived and printable and there when you need to refer back to them, not all, but many are good resources to have. What I like least about social media and especially, Facebook, is that it is difficult to read, full of advertisements and just try and find an article you have read, or have inadvertently switched away from. I just don’t like the constantly changing feed on Facebook. FB is good for communication and links to articles and blogs, but for good reading blogs are best
    .

  • I write a blog for our descendants, trying to feature just one person in only a few paragraphs, in each post. I’m not particularly interested in using images because I trust that my family is intelligent enough to read an article without them. If/when I quit blogging, it will be because I’ve run out of ancestors to write about. That is close to happening on two of the four “lines” I pursue, but I still have some in the third line and a lot in the fourth line. Until I’ve accomplished my goal, I’ll be blogging, even if my readership dwindles to just one mildly curious person. I also print off my blog posts and plan to donate them to my local library.

    Blogging is done for different reasons and high readership is not necessarily one of them.

  • A n excellent article, Amy, and I agree with all you say. I have never been a Facebook fan, but followed all the pundits who said bloggers should be on it. So last year, I set up a page for my FH blog and feel I have increased my page views. But I feel Facebbook is very much “here today, gone tomorrow” and lacks the benefits of a blog platform. Like Vera I often describe my blog to non IT people as akin to my personal magazine where I write “articles, snippets of information and feature photographs”. In summary I do not believe that blogging is dead.

  • I am always encouraging the oldest seniors in our society to put their information online. I think a blog is perfect for family stories and narratives. If it isn’t put out there where it can be found in the future it could be lost forever. The thing I love about blogs is they “survive”! Thanks for pushing our thinking.

  • Thought provoking article, Amy–especially for those of us who are still blogging! I did notice Julie’s article, as well as Thomas’ letter. Those seem to contain warning signs of times to come.

    However, I think this issue contains much denser data than shows on the surface, and we need to take care in fingering these finer strands of input. I try to follow the larger blogging world, not just that of genealogy bloggers. Well over a year ago, a former CEO of a major publishing company was sounding alarms over this very possibility–the demise of blogging. Then, again, people have also gone on about the demise of print material (books, especially) in the face of other media. Still, there will always be people who prefer the world of books, and likewise I think the world of blogging will continue to have their niche.

    For one thing, in that same era in which you described the disappearance of blog awards and carnivals, Google, one of the main search engine companies, re-set their parameters to penalize any online content which gave the appearance of providing links merely for the sake of links–in other words, pumping up their rankings for Google search results by appearing to receive a greater number of links back than usual. Awards and carnivals, while in the genealogy blogging world well-intended, likely fell into that category and were instantly abandoned in the blogging world. I suspect there are other overarching reasons for the shift in blogging’s online fortunes along the way, as well.

    Personally, while I am a Facebook subscriber, I avoid using it; the constant ads and changes to privacy policies annoy me. I feel more productive when I don’t use Facebook–except for the rare instances in which Facebook genealogy sites have boosted my research success. Yet I understand that integrating a sound social media policy can boost my blog’s readership.

    However, this isn’t a blog-versus-Facebook issue. I found your article today, by the way, thanks to your tweet–and find the Twitter subscribers I’ve hand-selected to be a more excellent way to curate best reads in the genealogy world, both for digitized resources and print media. I suspect there are other social media resources which can also better augment a blog’s readership.

    Oddly, my own experience has shown my blog readership to have increased over the last few years. In addition, my blog’s analytics show me that I get a healthy amount of referrals from other blogs–by that token, can actually tell whose following is more robust. A downside to referrals from Facebook, versus bloggers, is that the URLs provided to track back will show me the exact post in another blogger’s work, but will stop dead in their tracks at the front door of Facebook–so I never know which kind soul at Facebook put in a good word for me.

    I think blogging is an entity which is coming of age and finding its own in the world. Like Vera, I suspect we will need to re-conceive of ourselves as writers of articles rather than simply “bloggers.” Our art form will take shape as it adapts to the changing realities of the Internet, search engines, the reading public, research needs, etc. I firmly believe there is still a readership out there–and am constantly pleased when the introductions to the blogging world I make to members of my genealogy classes turn out to be helpful. Like the proverbial tip of the iceberg, while many readers may be falling away, others have yet to be introduced to the world of blogging. We can still run with that.

    I just finished teaching a short series on blogging at a local college’s program. The potential I saw among my students to provide the reading world with pertinent niche content was inspiring, but like anyone else, they will need to not only write and produce their blogging product, but they will need to find their own readers.

    Still, blogging is like money in the bank–an investment in content which, over time, will grow and produce returns. As some others commented, I get hits from people who find my three- to five-year old posts just today, thanks to search engines. For genealogists, that kind of cousin bait is priceless, both for the writers and the readers of blogs. Our published words–put up “in the ether” without any gatekeeping barriers to public access–become part of a time machine, as long as we have both Internet access and the search engines to facilitate being the precious needle found in the haystack.

    Rather than bemoan the “death” of blogging, I think it would be immensely more useful for those of us still in the blogging world to explore–perhaps crowdsource–ways to productively change to maintain that pertinent edge in an ever-evolving world of research. Best wishes to you, Amy, as you introduce these thoughts to your class at FGS!

  • Hi Amy I read your posts faithfully I always learn something from every article I read please keep up the good work. Thank you so much keep up the good work.

  • Hi Amy, I recognize that social media are important to promote our blogs and I enjoy the dialogue that we have there, either on Twitter or Facebook, but I would never post any articles on Facebook. Would the copyright be theirs or mine? And you are right, I go to Facebook to look for new items to read when I have a minute but these are actually links to blogs! Hope yours will last a long long time 🙂

    • You shouldn’t post the whole article on Facebook; that would be infringing on the blogger’s copyright. However, posting a link to it is perfectly acceptable — and usually encouraged! (Or do you mean does Facebook own what you post? The answer to that is no, but they do have the right to redistribute it within the parameters that you allow — that’s how the news feed is set up.)

  • This cycle actually reminds me of a crafting cycle. People are extremely excited about something and everyone tries it, in this case, blogging, then they get bored and move onto the next big thing. Scrapbooking is a great example too. Right now researching family history is huge but will it stay that way? In the end we are left with a few people who truly love it and will continue on.

  • Thank you Amy. I agree with everything you said. I started blogging almost 15 years ago and I still enjoy writing and reading what others have posted. Facebook has its place but you don’t find many well-crafted stories there.

  • As a blogger since January 2011, I agree with everything you said. Although I don’t believe Facebook is king. One by one, people are leaving it, disappointed with the limitations, the drivel and advertisements. More people over 40 use it than those younger than 40. I hang onto my account only because I am administrator to a writers’ group there. My older teens are on Instagram; they never bothered with Twitter and seldom visit their Facebook accounts. Their friends are the same.

    Checking my stats to see where the traffic is coming from, I see a lot through search engines, Twitter and Facebook. I also get a lot of shares, so that drives traffic to my blogs. I never share my genealogy posts to Facebook; others do. So even if you’re not on Facebook, you can get traffic from there.

    My goal with my genealogy blogs may be different than others. I only want to get the information online, so if someone is searching for a specific piece of information, they’ll find it through search engines such as Google. I’m not concerned about traffic, yet it comes anyways. I post it, leave it and people visit.

    I keep 3 genealogy blogs, a writers’ blog, a writer’s page and a few other minor ones. I prefer blogs over Facebook for many reasons, one being one of the points you made: readers can find posts from years ago, read them, comment on them and use the information. Blogs are permanent. Facebook is here today, gone tomorrow with regard to posts.

    I’ve been hearing that blogging was dead for the past five years; this isn’t new. It’s right up there with the claims that we’ll be a paperless society (remember that in the 1990s?) and that eBooks will kill paper books. Blogs have a long future ahead of them, and from my point of view, there is no end in sight. I follow many blogs that are still going strong, and new blogs are always coming online. Maybe half of them will go dead within a year, but the others journey on.

  • I began my first blog back in, IIRC, 2004…while in school, I let it lapse and last year, when I needed a way to start writing about my family’s history, I began a new one. I know that I try to get around to other people’s blogs every few weeks – I go on a reading blitz. I love the depth I can get into on my blog that won’t work on Facebook or Twitter. Your blog, Amy, has been so helpful in so many ways – your work is an inspiration and your advice, top-rate. I do come here from our Facebook posts as well, but you’re on my list of bloggers to read at all times. And I’m including blogs, including yours, on the list of Genealogy Tools I’m creating for my library’s genealogy page (I’m also the webmistress). So, all that said, I don’t think genealogy blogging is going away anytime soon.

  • I truly hope the blogs do not disappear as a thing of the past. If I do not read each blog you send out, be assured that I have them bookmarked and saved for future reference. My work with my family genealogy is intermittent, only when I have time. So saving your blogs and those of others are there to use and refer to when I am working.
    Thanks to all bloggers

  • Another great article Amy, so many great points. And in general terms I say if it’s longevity that you’re after for your history and stories, you can’t beat a blog. But for interaction, a Facebook group or page can work well. And there’s no reason why you can’t do both.

  • I do hope that it’s not dead, Amy. I have been working hard since Julie’s earlier articles, and have been developing a proof-of-concept for embedding family trees into blog-posts — this being a valuable tool for both visualisation and navigation. My blog content is already highly varied (is there a prize for that?) but my next blog-post will include an interactive family tree: one that can be clicked on to see biographical details, links to related blog-pots, etc. Until now, I had been painstakingly drawing tree segments by hand in order to include them as images in related blog-posts. It strikes me that writers of genealogy blogs are simply not given the type of tools they need, including support for such basic things as tables and endnotes.

    • I look forward to your new tools Tony, and agree that blog writers could use more tools to share content easily. I’m writing in WordPress but don’t even try to include anything other than text and images. I’ve been looking at footnote plug-ins, but wouldn’t a suite designed for genealogy bloggers be useful?

        • Thanks for this, Tony. I’ve used Typepad, Blogger, Squarespace, WordPress.com, and now self-hosted WordPress and there are always limitations. I look forward to checking out your posts.

          I think the blogging platform is good for long-form (and shorter) general writing, maybe genealogists just push the limits. :>)

  • Thank you, Amy, for continuing this conversation in a blog rather than on social media. I’ve been blogging for nearly twelve years and agree that things have changed dramatically. So many readers have moved their commenting to short-form platforms on social media that it’s not as easy to enjoy a “conversation” between writer and reader. Yes, blogs are different, but I don’t think they’re dead, yet.

  • I write a little genealogy blog and have a few followers. I write it mostly for the fun, to give out information, and to help form my own family story. I agree that Facebook is the leader in social media, but I am sure that will also change. I use it to call attention to my blog and have noticed some of my readers link my postings to their Facebook account. You made some very good points and I am always looking for ways to branch out and improve my blog and writing.

  • Glad to have your assessment of the lay of the genealogy blogging land, Amy. I’m a relative newbie (been blogging for four years), so much of the dramatic changes longtime bloggers experienced were well underway when I started. Therefore, the changes aren’t unsettling to me.

    I look at blogging as another tool in my research kit. I’m not writing for the masses. My livelihood is not dependent on readership just my success in breaking through brick walls.

    I write to 1) process my own research and 2) leave bait for cousins. I’m writing for a niche audience that will, hopefully, advance my research. Social media helps me on both counts and aligns nicely with my big-picture mission. As you suggest, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

    • What Michael said.

      I write for me, my family, and anyone else who may be doing similar research. I write to express my joy at finding something new; and my frustrations with brick walls or certain online genealogy sites. Except for the annual A to Z challenge, I don’t write daily but usually post something at least once a week.

      • You bring up something that I see a lot of people do when they start their blogs: blogging daily. That is a sure recipe for blogging burnout! Very few bloggers in any field blog every single day.

        Finding a rhythm that works for you — like you have with blogging weekly — helps with the sustainability of a blog.

  • I’ve only recently started on Facebook and am not familiar to blogging. How does one find geneology blogs?

    • One way is to look at Thomas MacEntee’s Geneabloggers list at http://www.geneabloggers.com/genealogy-blogs/2/ . You can also use your favorite search engine to look for specific topics that you’re interested in. Take a look for the blogs for genealogy societies, historical societies, and libraries in the areas where your ancestors lived. Those often have interesting posts.

  • I am glad that you are still going to blog. I enjoy reading your blogs and learning more about genealogy. I find it nice to have a reliable genealogist to follow and learn from and maybe one day consult with for my midwest research. Amy I do enjoy your down home style and being able to relate easily. Thank you.
    Dennis

  • I completely agree with your spot on blog! Just because it’s continuing to evolve, doesn’t mean it’s dead. Facebook & other forms of social media are a terrific way to generate extra traffic! I’ve had some of my blogs picked up thru FB & shared by various genealogy related group & associations. Creating even more traffic. I created a FB page, The Dead Relative Collector, which is the same name as my blog. Where I can share my blog posts, as well as other blogs by others that I find interesting.

  • Great post and comments! Blogging is not dead, and I think Thomas MacEntee has had to make choices and changes and must justify those changes, thus that statement.

    I have been blogging four years today on a subject that is not “directly” genealogy, but without genealogy and genealogists my blog would be nothing. Genealogical research is integral to my writing about what are often family businesses.

    I post only on Georgia photographers, as well as other photography-related posts – book reviews, etc. My posts have resulted in invitations to speak at conferences, to write for nationally-recognized photo museums, and more. And those appearances lead to posts.

    I am continually contacted by families and descendants of the photographers I write about, who usually get to my blog via Google searches – I add key words to each post. We exchange info and that too, leads to other posts.

    I do not use Facebook, but I do use Twitter regularly, and my blog posts link to LinkedIn and Google + (not sure about the latter bringing any traffic my way).

    So, keep up the good work, Amy. Many of us appreciate it and want to read those posts!

  • An interesting read. Having started my own genealogy blog nearly a year ago I feel I have only scratched the surface as to what I can talk about. I will continue to do so as I enjoy writing posts that will both inspire and help people to discover their family history.

  • Over the years, I have collected a lot of old magazines & newspapers. I recently started scanning information that would help people in their genealogy research (weddings, obits, etc). I also post random things that people might like, sometimes just fun pictures from the past. I try to put names in the body of the post so the search engines will pick them up if someone is doing a search. I hope it helps someone, provides some missing information, or someone finds a fun picture of a relative that they didn’t know existed.