12 September 2011

Why You Should Create a Blog

Creating a blog is easy. It may also help you to break down brick walls and make connections with others who could help with your research. Creating short posts about various ancestors, mentioning names, dates, places, and other details helps others to find your information.

There are people interested in their genealogy who don't post to message boards, don't create trees at Ancestry.com, Geni,com, or the other sites. They simply put some names in the search box at Google or another search engine and see what comes up. Your "trees" on one of the tree sites probably won't come up.

Your blog just might. Some people will see your information and use it without contacting you. And others will contact you--just like at any other site.

In the last month, I've had three relatives contact me simply because they found an old blog post of mine.

Consider creating your own blog. You can post weekly or monthly--daily is not necessary.

6 comments:

  1. Yeaaa for BLOGS!!! I had researched my Moore Family for 32 years before learning the names of my Great Grandparents, Jack and Minerva Moore. I really began making progress and headway when I researched my grandfather's siblings.

    My great grandfather Nathaniel Jackson Moore (Jack) was married twice. Once to Rebecca Burleson and then Minerva Cain. In doing research, I found one of my great uncles who claimed he had a sister Georgia Martin. Did I miss a sibling I thought? In going back through the land records, I did not find Georgia but I found another interesting tidbit.

    Arthur Lee Moore was from the first marriage. I knew about his later life but not much before 1910 when I found him in the census. In the land records it stated, "here comes Arthur Moore with his wife Lizzie." I checked the marriage records and found a marriage record for Arthur and Lizzie. I then found them in the 1900 Census with two little girls.

    I knew the chances of me ever finding any descendants were slim to none. But I posted it on my blog for others to see the importance it was to research siblings.

    Last November, I received an email from Lizzie's great great grand-daughters. All because I posted it on a blog.

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  2. I agree! Having a genealogy blog lets me talk about my research to others who have the same interests (and stop boring my family who sometimes get sick of my stories!). Plus it is a great way to share and learn.

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  3. Right! Just recently was able to give a woman pretty good info that her ancestor was in a particular place and time. She found me through my blog post:)

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  4. For a novice, where is a good place to learn how to create a blog? It sounds like a wonderful solution to share with my family and for other researchers.

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  5. I have been seriously toying with the idea of creating a blog for the last couple of weeks...I think I will take this as a sign I should go ahead and do it. Not sure it will be any good, but I think it is worth a shot...and like you say, I may never know what will come of it down the road.

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  6. I agree with what you said about starting a blog. I finally got up the nerve to start one a couple of months ago after thinking about it for over a year. I've really enjoyed writing family stories. Plus, my family doesn't have to listen to me blather on about the details of my research. I can just write about it on my blog. I wish I hadn't waited so long to get started!

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