Family History Episode 39 – How to Start a Genealogy Blog, Part 2

by Lisa Cooke | Jul 8, 2014 | 01 What's New, Beginner, Blogs, Family History Podcast, Social Media

Family History: Genealogy Made Easy
with Lisa Louise Cooke
Republished July 8, 2014

Listen to the free podcast in your favorite podcast app.

https://lisalouisecooke.com/familyhistorypodcast/audio/fh39.mp3

Download the Show Notes for this Episode

Welcome to this step-by-step series for beginning genealogists—and more experienced ones who want to brush up or learn something new. I first ran this series in 2008-09. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.

Episode 39: How to Start a Genealogy Blog, Part 2

This week we continue to explore the world of family history blogging, a terrific way to share your findings, connect with other researchers and long-lost relatives, and pass on your own research experiences. In the last episode The Footnote Maven advised us on how to get started blogging. In this episode I interview TWO more successful genealogy bloggers:

• Denise Levenick, author of The Family Curator Blog and alter ego of “Miss Penny Dreadful,” who writes on the Footnote Maven’s Shades of the Departed blog. Denise will tell us about the origins of her Family Curator blog, and why she feels motivated to write it.  And she’ll also share some of her top tech tips!
• Schelly Tallalay Dardashti, author of the Tracing the Tribe blog. She’ll tell us how she got started blogging, and what really got her hooked on it. She’ll tell us about her process for posting articles and how much time she spends blogging, and will dispel the myth that you have to be technically inclined to have a blog.

This episode is your personal genealogy blogging training with some of the best in the biz!

Denise Levenick: The Family Curator

Denise, a native Californian, has worked as an editor and journalist since publishing a neighborhood newspaper in grade school and has taught both journalism and literature in Pasadena schools for 19 years, so it’s no wonder that she took to blogging.

Here are some highlights from my conversation with Denise:

• She says that “each of us is a family curator with responsibility.”
• Use a free downloadable software program called Transcript. I found the most recent version available and described online here.
• She mentions a blog called Family Matters on the Moultrie Creek website.
• Denise mentions Evernote, free software helps thousands of genealogists keep their research organized and their sources (online and offline) at their fingertips. Want some help using Evernote for genealogy? Click here to read some of my top tips.
• She also mentioned Scribefire. (Update: Scribefire is now a web browser extension.  Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/scribefire There is also GenScribe here: http://genscriber.com/genapps/start)

Schelly Talalay Dardashti: Jewish genealogy specialist

Schelly Talalay Dardashti has tracked her family history through Belarus, Russia, Lithuania, Spain, Iran and elsewhere. A journalist, her articles on genealogy have been widely published.  In addition to genealogy blogging, she speaks at Jewish and general genealogy conferences, is past president of the five-branched JFRA Israel, a Jewish genealogical association, a member of the American Jewish Press Association, and the Association of Professional Genealogists.

Highlights from the conversation with Schelly:

• “You don’t have to be a techie to blog!”
• She mentions using Feedburner for headline animation. Feedburner was bought by Google; learn more about headline animation from Google here.
• Schedule blog posts in advance for your convenience.
• Got Jewish DNA? She recommends testing through Family Tree DNA because they have a critical mass of Jewish DNA samples already in their system.
• Genealogy conference recommendation:  The Southern California Genealogy Jamboree.