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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:

  1. 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.

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  2. 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?

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  3. 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.

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  4. 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.

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  5. 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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