Coordinating Publicity

Question

I'd like to use this question to help coordinate the publicity of GFH during beta.

We need everyone to help where you can. The goal is to get the word out to as many different people as possible about this site. I'm not going to give you specific wording, because it's best if everybody provides their own short personal message of what they want to say.

A few examples to follow:

1. Press release - use your own version of this as an announcement to send to societies or groups.

2. Blog post - use your own version of this for newsgroups or your own blog.

3. For your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc). Members of my G+ circles can see my actual example here), otherwise see a copy in my answer below.

Never use the same wording. That way they index uniquely on Google and people will run into them with different searches. Make it personal, you to them.

Everybody: please post to your own blog if you have a blog genealogists follow, and into your social account streams if you network with other genealogists. The key metric is that if you don't think at least 20 genealogists will see your post, then don't bother.

Places to Contact: We want to you to contact any societies, newsgroups and genealogy bloggers that you know and work with and that know you. Ask them to pass the information about GFH to their members or readers. Make the message personal to them, and they'll very likely be happy to pass it on.

We shouldn't spam societies, groups, newsgroups, or the internet in general, so we should coordinate the sending so only one person contacts each one. We should contact them once now. If you think another nudge is worthwhile, then contact them once more in about 2 months just before the end of the beta.

In order to coordinate this, please edit this post and add the places that have been contacted to the list below. If they post something, a link to it would be nice.

Thanks. Together, we're creating a great thing for genealogists.

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Genealogy blogs contacted
- GeneaPress, Oct 22, lkessler
- Genea-Musings by Randy Seaver, Oct 22, lkessler
- Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter by Dick Eastman, Oct 22, lkessler
- PollyBlog by Polly Kimmitt, Oct 24, duncan, Polly has not posted anything yet
- Geneabloggers by Thomas MacEntee, Nov 3, lkessler
- GenealogyToday by Illya D'addezio, Nov 10, lkessler, Illya has not posted anything yet
- The Huffington Post - Megan Smolenyak, Nov 10, lkessler, Megan has not posted anything yet
- Family Stories by Carolyn Pointer, Nov 10, lkessler, Carolyn has not posted anything yet
- Dear Myrtle, Nov 10, lkessler, Myrt has not posted anything yet

Newsgroups contacted
- Linkedin - Genealogical & Historical Research (5,726 members), Oct 27, Jeni
- Linkedin - Family History Detective (293 members), Oct 27, Jeni
- Linkedin - Genealogy...Beyond the brick walls! (609 members), Oct 27, Jeni

Societies contacted
- Francis Cooke Society, Oct 24, duncan, nothing posted at website

Genealogy Conferences
- 3rd Unlock The Past Genealogy Cruise, Feb 10-19, 2013, louis to publicize
- Who Do You Think You Are, London England, Feb 22-24, 2013, need a volunteer to lead publicity
- RootsTech 2013, Mar 21-23, 2013, need a volunteer to lead publicity
See also: Q&A “pushes” around Who Do You Think You Are Live and RootsTech

Answer 1

I posted on Linked In groups: "Genealogical & Historical Research", "Family History Detective", and "Genealogy..Beyond the brick walls!" and have had positive responses. If you belong to other groups in Linked In you might consider posting to them. Or, you could add comments about this site to what I posted as a couple people have done.

Answer 2

Anyone with a talent for publicity feel like contacting http://familyhistorydaily.com/?

Answer 3

If you don't have a Google Plus account, you can't view my social network example, so I'm reproducing it here:

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Genealogy & Family History Q&A Site is Now Public

After 20 days in Definition phase, and 31 days in Commitment Phase, and 7 days in Private Beta, the Genealogy & Family History Q&A is now open to the public. Everyone is invited to:

https://genealogy.stackexchange.com/

This is the place you go to get answers to your Genealogy problems you have from experts and genealogy enthusiasts from around the world. Ask detailed questions about how to do something, how to solve a problem you’re having, or what puzzles you in your research. You’ll get answers that will help you.

If you are an expert, then we want you here as well. You’ll find challenging questions to answer and people to help. You’ll learn things outside your expertise.

Questions such as:

• Should I use the modern (what it is called now) or historical (what it was called) place name?

• Dealing with family secrets?

• One tree, or a bunch?

• How should I deal with conflicting information?

and my own personal favourite:

• What is the Russian town in this census listing?

The site is now in Public Beta and will continue to grow as more people join up to ask and answer questions.

The site is free to register and join and is unaffiliated with any genealogy company or service. Once Beta is completed, the site will be handed over to its participants who will elect moderators to ensure that it grows and remains relevant and useful.

Genealogy has always needed a good Q&A site. Finally, here it is!

Try it out. Tell everyone you know.

https://genealogy.stackexchange.com/

Note: There is also a Twitter feed from the site: https://twitter.com/StackGenealogy

Answer 4

Is this Q only for things like blogs or is it also for things we can do with the existing site to increase it's public awareness?

If the latter, then I think one thing that can be done is more questions, particularly ones with surnames, places, sources. This will increase our hits by people looking for the answers to their questions and then make them more likely to ask questions of their own. Using how-should-i-distinguish-siblings-named-identically as an example, they might hit on the name MEDWELL. That particular question is not likely to have the answer to their question, but they find this site and then ask their question here.

A related avenue of more questions is meta question now-or-at-a-future-point-will-we-allow-a-form-of-peer-review-in-the-spirit-of. It appears people are for doing this, but not on genealogy.se and not at this point. I think it is appropriate (if you agree or disagree - let your opinions be known on that question) and I think doing it would be a kind of publicity in it's right. Those types of review questions would have more surnames, places, sources and therefore increase the traffic to the site - which is the ultimate goal of this site.

Another related answer (ie more questions would help increase hits and be a form of publicity) but it has a negative score at the moment as not the thing to focus on.

If the answer is inappropriate for this question (ie this Q is just about blogs/socieites/etc and not about self-publicity thru google hits) then I can delete this answer.