Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Family History Through the Alphabet – S is for … Coincidence

Each week I agonise over what my topic will be for the letter of the week. S has been no exception; I have been sitting here dithering and multitasking being distracted from the task at hand while the answer has been staring me in the face in the form of a nearly completed powerpoint presentation that is open on my task bar.

S is for coincidence - the topic of the Powerpoint is "Social Media for Family Historians" - a presentation I am preparing for a gig at Wyong Library next week. So my topic for this week has to be Social Media.

In my talk I'll be covering these points:

¡What is Social Media?
¡What does one need to engage via Social Media?
¡Social Media Categories
¡How can Social Media help my genealogy/family history research?
¡A closer look at Blogs, Facebook, Google+, Twitter
¡How does one get started in Social Media?
¡How does one manage Social Media? 

Like any good presenter I am defining my topic before launching into my spiel. These are the definitions I will share:

¡SEO Zodiac – Social Media is simply people having conversations online
¡
¡Online Schools – Social media is technically a means for social interaction through the web
¡
¡Answers.com – The online forms of communicating to the masses, which include blogs, microblogs, social networking sites and podcasts

¡Webopedia – A term used to describe a variety of Web-based platforms, applications and technologies that enable people to socially interact with one another onlinebe covering these 

And these are the categories of Social Media I will highlight:

¡Blogging - Blogger, Posterous, Weebly, Wordpress

¡Bookmarking - Delicious, Evernote, Pinterest , 
¡Commerical sites - Ancestry, Geni, MyHeritage, etc.

¡Genealogy Community Projects - Genealogists for Families Kiva Project
¡Genealogy Networking Sites  - GenealogyWise
¡
¡Microblogging - Tumblr, Twitter - (140 characters on Twitter)

¡Office packages with online collaborative functionality  -  Google Docs

¡Photo Sharing BillionGraves, Find a Grave, Flickr, Instagram, Picasa

¡Professional Networking Sites Linkedin 

¡Sharing Sites for Books, Documents, Presentations - Librarything, Scribd, Slideshare 

¡ Social Networking Sites - Facebook, Google+, Second Life 

¡Video sharing   Vimeo, Youtube 

¡Wikis - Familypedia, Familysearch Wiki

If I was to continue with this post I would just be preaching to the converted as you, dear readers, have demonstrated your commitment to Social Media by reading this post. 

Hopefully by next Wednesday afternoon there will be a group of family historians from Wyong who share our passion for Social Media.

During the course of this blog series I have mentioned Social Media in these earlier posts:

Family History Through the Alphabet – B is for …Billion Graves
Family History Through the Alphabet – E is for …Evernot
Family History Through the Alphabet – K is for …reaching out 
Family History Through the Alphabet - R is for  ... Online (Reading that is)











5 comments:

Alona Tester said...

It really was there in front of you wasn't it. ;-)

While I am 'into' social media to a degree, there's still an awful lot I could learn from attending your sessions. So I really need to book my spot when I'm also at a place where you're speaking.

Cassmob (Pauleen) said...

They will be dazzled by such a range of information...there's so much to learn (sigh). What about Lost Cousins (in the commercial section) or doesn't it fit the social networking side of things?

GeniAus said...

I'll have another look at Lost Cousins, Pauleen. It's a great resource but I'm not sure if it's a social medium.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Jill... I so much enjoyed this post, especially your strategy of beginning with a "definiion".
Flipped me right back to all those teacher "staff meetings"/ "professional development" conferences and my own "presentations" where we always began in this way and rightly so :-) ... Cheers, Catherine.

Dot Elder said...

I notice that in your definition that you mention Podcasts as an online form of communicating to the masses. I find Podcasts an invaluable source of information and a great way to communicate with other Family Historians.

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