Why You Should Start Your Own Genealogy Blog

Researching your family’s history and genealogy is a lot of work that ought to be shared. But with a busy schedule, writing a 400-500 page book about your findings might not be realistic. However, starting a genealogy blog might be the perfect alternative for you. If you’ve considered starting your own genealogy blog, here’s why it’s a good idea:

Write a Little Bit Here and There

Blogging is great because there are no rules; it’s your blog and you get to make the rules. If writing just a paragraph or two at a time works best for you, do it! There’s no need to knock out your entire findings all at once. As you write each week, even if it is just one or two paragraphs, all your posts will add up to many pages of great stories, findings, and research over time. The key here, though, is to start!

Easily Read by Younger Family Members

You may have learned through experience, that your younger descendants (kids, grandchildren, nieces, and/or nephews) have a shorter attention span when it comes to genealogy. Shorter, easy-to-read stories are a great way to get your youngins involved and in the know. A blog is easily accessible, especially by this generation, and they can easily subscribe to it. You can also quickly share posts on Facebook and other social media outlets.

Make Connections via Search Engines

Thanks to today’s technology, each post that is published on your blog is searchable through sites like Google and Bing. This allows others to make connections with you that are researching similar topics or the same family lines. This opens the door to more findings, yours or others’. Of course, most blog hosting sites will give you the option to be private or not searchable, if you so desire.

Edit Your Work

As you write out your family’s history on your blog, you may discover some unintentional mistakes, errors, gaps, or wrong assumptions made during your research. This is good! This allows you to edit your work to ensure that it is accurate and precise. If you find that something is missing or wrong, you have the opportunity to do more research. Don’t let something like this stop you from posting, however. Just include that you’ll be conducting more research for those missing pieces in the future and you’ll post them as soon as you find what you’re looking for.

Knock Down Brick Walls

There are many success stories out there where a story was posted by a home genealogist, and by just putting their stories out there, they were able to make a connection from a distant relative who read the post and contacted them. This can open a whole new world of information about your family’s history, knocking down potential brick walls you’ve hit.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

At some point, life may get in the way for a bit, and you need to take a short break from blogging. The good news is that even though you’re not actively posting, your blog is still out there sharing what you’ve discovered with others. Your family’s story is still being shared. Another bit of good news is that when your busy life slows down, your blog is still there, ready for you to add more bits of information.