I have just read the Big 04 post from Wendy of Jollett Etc. where she reviews her four years of blogging, when I suddenly realised that in August I reached my 5th bloganniversary - and I almost let it pass me by.
Looing back at the past year or so, made me ask myself the question " Is there a Life Expectancy to a Blog?
When I began my blogging journey in August 2010, I thought I would exhaust my own family history material in about eighteen months, but here I am still, thanks to Geneabloggers - the many prompts and support of online colleagues. In my early days I was a avid reader of my blog statistics, but that went overboard when I discovered spammers were playing havoc with my page views. Now I rely on comments to gauge how successful I have been in awakening interest.
But like Wendy, I feel I have got into a bit of a blogging rut, with Sepia Saturday the only prompt I write regularly for - and even there I feel I am repeating material rather a lot. Writing for Sepia Saturday in some ways spoils me, as there is such a great tradition among contributors to comment on each others' posts, that in contrast it can be a bit disheartening when other writing receives little or no acknowledgment.
Photographs are in short supply for other branches of my family, and I must admit I have got too used to the idea that a good post must feature photographs, especially when Geneabloggers now focuses on Pinterest to promote responses to its daily blogging prompts.
But to look on the positive side, what have I achieved this past year?
- I too completed my fourth A-Z Challenge and already have ideas for 2016.
- Much of my blogging time has been spent on setting up and contributing to a new blog for my local heritage group in the Scottish Borders - Auld Earlston. I have enjoyed this challenge very much and am working hard to build up an audience. It has been gratifying to receive a request to join the One Place Studies Group. The bonus here is that I can use some of this material on my personal blog - two hits for one lot of work must be good news!
Last year I refreshed my blog appearance, responding to a prompt from Alex at Family History Frog - this year I think content should be my focus. So:
- Dust down my other research on other branches of the family and hone in on my writing skills to create interesting posts, even where they do lack photographs.
- Make more use of the resources on Geneabloggers. My Reading List and number of Followers have remained static for some time, and as Wendy commented on her post, many bloggers fade off the scene. So I must pay more attention to new blogs and broaden the ones I read and comment on.
So yes, I think there is yet life left in my blog - so do keep watching this space!
Happy 5th Blogiversary Sue!
ReplyDeleteRegarding your concern about a lack of photos to include in your blog, I have used PicMonkey.com to create a logo for some of my blog posts if I don't have a photo. Here's a link to one of my blog posts as an example: http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2015/03/leaving-norway-iver-iverson.html
Congrats again on 5 years of blogging!
Jana - I could not ask for a faster response to my post. Thank you for your kind comment, and your constructive idea of creating a logo via Picmonkey which I had not heard of before. I like your logo on your Norwegian Ancestors, and must explore this idea further,.
DeleteCongratulations on 5 years of blogging! I feel very like you do about my recent blogging - I seem to only do Sepia Saturday regularly and I've about run out of new photographs for that. I did like my A-Z challenge and have a few partially written posts I need to finish up and post. I think I am in my 5th year but I would have to check.
ReplyDeleteKeep going, Kristin, as you feature such interesting posts on an area of family history I know very little about. They are so welll worth reading.
DeleteHappy 5th Sue! That is quite the milestone.
ReplyDeleteI too have wondered how long I can hang on. I enjoy writing the stories, but have a very limited number of photos and had nearly zero stories passed down to me. I keep hoping to lure more family out of hiding and hope that they will feel compelled to share at least pictures of some of the family goodies they may have (such as photos and memorabilia.) I've tried to measure my success in terms of new family connections and the things I've learned because I blog.
Sadly I let my blogiversary pass by without notice because I was out of town.
Thank you, Michelle, for taking the time to comment. Re the lack of photos, I like Jana's suggestion above as a way of adding some graphics to a post. . Nearly alll my blogging has focused on my mother's ancestry. I have very little from my father's side, with his parents and grandparents very shadowy figures and only a few photographs and no memorabilia, so I find it challenging to make out a story from their lives. On the positive, I have made contact with three distant cousins through my blog and I too have learnt a lot from the blogging experience. Good luck for your blog future!
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