At my old church, we used to host quite a few non-religious {secular} community groups and meetings in our facilities throughout the week. It was part of our community outreach. And, invariably, our Bibles would end up missing from our meeting rooms. Now, this infuriated some church members because they really couldn't get past the whole stealing-at-church-thing. And I get that. And so did our priest's wife who also worked at the church and was always {and still is} full of some powerful wisdom.

And as we were talking about the theft and the reactions to the theft she mentioned that it's just part of our outreach and that if they needed the Bible so badly that they'd steal it, then let them have it for goodness sakes. {She's from Monroe, Louisiana so you should infuse THAT dialect and additional syllables into her words too. Awesome.}

And that particular conversation memory is the exact reason I changed the original title to this blog post from Blogging Genealogy: Stop Image Theft. 

When we first start blogging our family history, there's a kind of pressure to blog...

every

single

day.

But? Is this really necessary?

What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization {SEO} is an internet marketing strategy where a site author or blog author understands how a search engine lists websites {including blogs} in their search engine results page {also known as SERP} so they can increase traffic to their site or blog or both.

For example, a website {or blog} who wants to rank higher in the search engine, researches what criteria a search engine {like Google} uses to rank websites on a search results page. Many times, these criteria can include the following:

A better editorial calendar & blogging flow for family history bloggers.

When I previously introduced an editorial calendar for those blogging about genealogy, it was aimed towards those who are blogging for genealogy-related businesses reasons, for those who were blogging for genealogical societies, and for those who were blogging their family history {specifically Cousin Hunters}.

And that's a broad spectrum.

Too broad.

Now that I've refocused Blogging Genealogy.com on cousin hunting bloggers {or family history researchers}, it's time for a more specific editorial calendar and blogging workflow.

Several readers/bloggers have commented to me recently about how much they really like using the Blogger platform over the free hosted version of Wordpress for a variety of reasons [personal preference, really], but they really didn't care for the templates. And that they much preferred the minimalist designs that are more characteristically found on Wordpress blogs.

And I agree. I like the clean uncluttered looks of the minimalist designs. However, this hasn't always been the case. Sometimes my artistic side [Read: the one that enjoys creating designs in Photoshop Elements] takes over and I get this uncontrollable urge to redecorate my blog, changing everything.

However, on one such day, I stopped and thought about what I was actually doing. 

If you don't have a smartphone or if you have never tried to read a blog with your smartphone, you don't realize how hard [Read: nearly impossible] it is for your readers to actually read your blog posts.

According to the recent Pew Report on Mobile [Sept 2012] , more and more people are using smartphones to access the Internet.

And you might be thinking, "Well, Caroline, most people access my blog through an RSS reader like Google Reader and that's already optimized for mobile so why should I even bother with making sure my blog is optimized as well?"

Of course you do. ;)

Previously, I've shown you ways to lead cousins to your family history blog by using words. However, today, I'm going to show you how to lead cousins to your genealogy blog by using images.

[And let me just interrupt myself and encourage you to use at least one image in every blog post. It's more pleasing to the eye because it breaks up all those words. I can't tell you how many times I've landed on a family history blog and was disheartened by all the words. Don't get me wrong. I love to read. But?

After reading a blog post on Copyblogger.com today, another blog post called ,  "Actually, Blogging *is* Dead," by Brian Clark was suggested to read.  And since I've even heard this comment in our own industry recently AND since I absolutely do NOT agree with it, I clicked through and read it. And?

I took a break from BloggingGenealogy.com for a while trying to decide what I wanted to do with it.

You see, with my video tutorial subscription service plans on 4YourFamilyStory.com, I was indecisive as to what to do with this blog.

Keep it, or move on? Where did it fit in with my business plans? Or did it even fit at all?

And?

Be Personal and Friendly When Blogging Genealogy
There's a lot of buzz online right now {mainly marketing buzz} about how important it is to be personal.

Especially on our blogs. And I wholeheartedly agree.

However, it's not a new concept. Far from it. Some salespeople learn rather quickly {At least the successful ones who stick around for the long haul} being personal with their current customers and their potential customers yields better results.

But why is that?