Have you fallen out of love with your family history blog?
Has it been awhile since you last wrote a
blog post? Are you ready to give up
and walk away?
Thousands of family history blogs are living on the Internet
today, with more coming to life daily. Unfortunately, many of these blogs become
abandoned by their owners not long after they start. Generally blogs become neglected because the
author is bored and has lost interest, or they set themselves up for a blogging
schedule they just can’t maintain long term, and the author faces burnout.
If you have one of those blogs or find yourself losing
interest in your blog then today’s post is going to help you breathe new life
into your tired family history blog.
First don’t beat yourself up if you’ve lost interest and
abandoned your family history blogging efforts completely. It’s still not too
late to revive a delinquent family history blog. If your blog never went
through periods of renewal and rejuvenation, I would be worried.
How do you revive a family history blog? Change! You’re bored and so are your readers,
change is in order!
Allow Your Content to Evolve
Don’t fear change, it’s
the fresh air you need to keep your blog exciting and new.
Consider Relaunching Your Blog
Relaunch your family history blog with a new focus and a new look. It just
may be the change required for you and your readers. A fresh look can increase traffic/subscribers
and stimulate your passion for family history blogging again.
Here are a few approaches to relaunching your family history
blog.
- Redesign your blog but keep the content the same, sometimes you just need a little redecorating to relight the passion, change up the colours, the fonts, pictures, try a new template, a new logo.
- Consider altering older content/deleting least relevant material and tweaking the rest.
- Relaunch your family history blog with a new look and completely new content – a major overall may be in order. Sometimes after blogging for a while you need to rethink your direction. All well known long-established companies face a rebranding from time to time to keep things current and relevant in the market-place, a blog is no different.
- Maybe a fresh start is in order with a new domain, new website design and redirect traffic so you don’t lose readership. Perhaps you’ve outgrown your current blogging platform and you feel limited, it might be time to tackle a new blogging platform that offers more options.
- If your blog has gotten too big, with a lot of topics, it can get messy almost like a garden in need of some pruning. Focus your blog topics, separate the ideas into their own blogs, giving each topic a greater focus, dropping topics that are going nowhere and expanding the ones that get the most hits. This can help you build wider audience appeal.
- Invite other family members or fellow genealogists to blog alongside you, sharing the workload and giving your blog a fresh set of eyes and voice. Having someone work alongside you can inspire and motivate you.
Keep in Mind
Traffic
doesn’t happen overnight. Promote on
social media, list your blog in Geneabloggers
and let the community know you exist.
Don’t
get hung up on comments. A blog can function and thrive quite well without
comments. These days many discussions about blog posts take place on Facebook. The
true test is in your visitors.
Keep
the content flowing on a regular schedule. It doesn’t have to be every day
or even weekly. Pick a schedule you can manage and stick with it.
It’s never too late to revive an old tired
family history blog, take a few minutes to examine your priorities, find a new
focus and develop an action plan.
Consider taking our Family History Blogging Course, learn to brief new life into your blog writing.