For National Family History Month, Geniaus compiled another one of her popular geneamemes as a cyber activity. As usual I can’t resist her geneameme challenges so here are my responses to her Bloggers’ Geneameme.

1. What are the titles and URLs of your genealogy blog/s? I have two blogs – my first is on my website and is called SHHE Genie Rambles which is fours years old this month and the second is Diary of an Australian Genealogist which was two years old last month.
2. Do you have a wonderful “Cousin Bait” blog story? A link to a previous blog post might answer this question. I became total believer in blogs as a means of finding long distant relatives after I wrote my Letters Home: My Irish Families in March 2010. This one post allowed me to make contact with descendants of my gg grandmother’s siblings who I would never have found without them reading my blog after doing a Google search on the family name and place they came from in Ireland. The comments say it all.
3. Why did you start blogging? Is there someone who inspired you to start blogging? When I retired after 35 years working in government I set up a small part time research and consultancy business with a website and a blog facility in August 2009. I didn’t know much about either but I soon came to see the advantages to blogging both in business and also for my own family history research. Now I can’t imagine life without writing blogs or reading other blogs. They’ve almost replaces newspapers and magazines for me!
4. How did you decide on your blog/s title/s? Deciding the name of your blog is the hardest part I think. SHHE is the acronym for my business name and Genie Rambles is short for my ramblings on all things genealogy. Diary came about because I was showing people how easy it was to use Blogger and I created Diary as an example which took on a life of its own. I always liked reading Anthony Camp’s Diary of a Genealogist in the UK Federation of Family History Societies print journal (back in the last century) so I thought why not an Australian version.
5. Do you ever blog from mobile devices? What are they? No only from my laptop as I much prefer a full keyboard to work with. It’s much quicker and easier for me.
6. How do you let others know when you have published a new post? I use various social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and there are regular subscribers and sometimes my blogs are on shared by cyber friends.
7. How long have you been blogging? Oops I answered that question in question 1.
8. What widgets or elements do you consider essential on a genealogy blog? I think letting people make comments is very important, especially if they are long lost relatives. It should be easy for people to sign up to follow your blog and also to share it with others. I also like to see something about the writer and who they are and why they are doing it.
9. What is the purpose of your blog/s? Who is your intended audience? There are two real purposes – the first is to share my knowledge of genealogy and family history with others and the second is to connect up with others researching my families.
10. Which of your posts are you particularly proud of? I’m fortunate to go to many genealogy conferences, expos, cruises and I like writing up reports of these events for those who can’t get to these events. I include information and links so that they can get some idea of what I learnt and experienced.
11. How do you keep up with your blog reading? I used to use Google Reader before it went the way of the dodo, now I have a reading list within Google Blogger. My old list was very ambitious so my new list is more selective but it does depend on how busy I am.
12. What platform do you use for publishing your blog/s? Diary is on Google Blogger and my website is WordPress. I haven’t tried anything else.
13. What new features would you like to see in your blogging software? I’m not very techno but I would be happy to adapt any new technology that was useful and suggested by my blogging friends.
14. Which of your posts has been the most popular with readers? These are usually related to genealogy expos, conferences or cruises that I have attended. I find they have the highest reader statistics.
15. Are you a sole blogger or do you contribute to a shared blog? Sole blogger although I am a member of Geneabloggers.
16. How do you compose your blog posts? It depends eg during National Family History Month my posts were mostly related to that or I contribute to specific challenges like ANZAC Day or other bloggers’ theme challenges. Diary is more an ongoing record of what I am doing with genealogy events and my own research and genealogy news that I want to share with others.
17. Do you have any blogs that are not genealogy related? If you wish please share their titles and URLs. No my whole life is genealogy (sad but true)
18. Have you listed your blog/s at Geneabloggers? Yes it’s a great way to find out what other blogs are out there.
19. Which resources have helped you with your blogging? I’ve always liked writing and don’t really use any resources as such. Reading other blogs often gives me inspiration and ideas re style and use of images etc. I probably should use more photos.
20. What advice would you give to a new Geneablogger? Just do it! Blogs are searchable by Google and you are almost guaranteed that some relative will find you one day. If not, at least you have written up some of your family stories and shared them with others.