Editorial Calendar-How I Use It-Tuesday’s Tip

Do you use an editorial calendar to help you manage the content of your blog? I did not use one for the longest time after I first started blogging. I actually did not know what an editorial calendar was and I'm not sure where I got the idea to start using one for the first time. But now I cannot imagine trying to plan and organize my blog posts without using one.

You can look up the correct definition of an editorial calendar and you'll probably find several. However, for my basic needs I define it as a calendar to help manage what content I intend to post to my blog and when I want to publish that content.

There are several different forms or types of an editorial calendar. A popular type that I have seen and read about, especially for genealogy bloggers, is an excel spreadsheet. There are others that are plugins for your blogging platform, there are even companies that produce editorial calendar type software that you can pay for. I have tried the excel spreadsheet and also tried using my to-do list, toodledo.com. However, none of those really worked that well for me. The spreadsheet was just another document I had to open and maintain. The to-do list approach kind of worked and I still use it a little to manage posts but it didn't give me the overall picture I needed to see what I was going to post. So, I turned to google calendar.

I already use google, as do a lot of people. I have a few different accounts; one for the family, a personal account, and one for genealogy. Each account comes with a calendar and you can set them up to share/edit from your other accounts. The picture above shows my google editorial calendar. It does what I want and need an editorial calendar to do and I didn't have to spend a dime or make another document.

The calendar gives me a visual snapshot of my intended content for my blog. I can see where there are holes so when I am scheduling content I don't post too much in one day and leave other days completely blank. I’m spreading things out and trying to keep the blog fresh with new content and not dormant for too long.

The calendar lists all the posts that I've completed and intend to complete. When you add an event into the calendar, you have color coding options and you can also assign it a specific time (obviously because it is a calendar). I use both of these to help tell manage posts.

• Red = I have not started writing that post yet.
• Yellow = I have started writing but not complete.
• Green with a time = Post is complete and scheduled to post on that day and at that time.

The red and yellow stand out more because they have no specific time assigned to them, that event is an all-day event. I like that because it makes them much more visible; staring me in the face saying "finish me".

I said that I have different accounts on google so I just use the calendar that comes with my genealogy account as my editorial calendar. I use my other google account calendars as regular calendars. For instance, the family account is where we put all our appointments and commitments. What is good with using your google calendars and sharing them is you can view more than one calendar at a time. The picture below is an excerpt from our family calendar with my genealogy calendar activated - both calendars are visible. I like this because I can see what posts I need to work on alongside any family commitments we may have which makes planning the time to work on posts a little easier. This calendar is not that full right now but wait a month or so when scouts and sports start up for our kids - I'll be very thankful I have this setup.

If you only have one google account or you don't want to use two separate accounts, you can still have separate calendars which work just like mine. Google allows you to make additional calendars within your account. Here is a step by step if you don't know how to do that:

1. Open your google calendar
2. On the upper right corner, there is a cog wheel with an down facing arrow, click that.
3. A menu will open, click on settings, you will now be in your google general calendar settings
4. On the upper left, there are tabs, click on the calendars tab.
5. The first section shows 'My Calendars', this is where any calendars that you currently can view and edit will show up. Go under that and click on 'create new calendar'. This brings up the new calendar setup.
6. Name the calendar, type in a description if you want, make sure the calendar time zone is correct and then go to the top or bottom and hit 'create calendar' again
7. You are sent back to your normal calendar view and on the left side of the screen, under the heading 'My Calendars' your new calendar should appear. You're done.

Now you can see and edit all your calendars at one time. If you want to hide one of the calendars, say you just want to see your blogging calendar, then go to the "My Calendars' on the left side and click on the calendars you want to hide. Click on it again to view it.

As I said, I did not use a editorial calendar at first but now it is a must-have for me. There are several different options to explore when creating one for you, google calendar is just the option that works best for me.

Do you use a different type of editorial calendar? Do you have any suggestions for how I use mine? If so, please leave a comment and let everyone know.

Thanks for reading and keep diggin' for that family.

Chris

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© 2014 copyright, Christopher Shaw

Research Prioritization and Focus

Over the past several weeks or so I have done a little research on several different ancestor lines. I have touched on my wife’s paternal lines; Rogers and Capen.  I’ve also done a little on her maternal lines; Nisgoda and Gierig. My plan, however, was to be working on my maternal side; Pakledinaz and Lucas. Then, of course, my sister was visiting for a little while so I also dabbled down our paternal side; Shaw and Canter. My sister is actually doing the research for this side of the family but I am the one that does the writing for the blog so I have to stay in step with the information she has. That is a lot of different lines to be researching in just a few short weeks.

So, I have come to the conclusion that dabbling in every ancestral line a little bit here and a little bit there does not get anything done (duh!).  Here are the problems I have encountered over the last few weeks and I attribute every one of them to my lack of prioritization and focus:

1. My research is scattered and I am not keeping up with my logs. I have specific research goals and a plan, but with all this jumping around between lines – I lose sight of the goal.
2. I have hand-written notes about more than one ancestor on the same sheet of paper and I cannot tell which note belongs to which ancestor.
3. I have so much going on with different lines that when I have time to sit down and do some actual family history duties, I do not know where to start. And on more than one occasion this has led to nothing actually getting done.
4. Confusion sets in when I am thinking or talking about a certain ancestor – I have gotten two ancestors in completely different lines mixed up with one another.
5. I run into the same issue when I sit down and hammer out some blog post ideas or the actual posts. I have so much running through my mind with the different lines that I do not know what to post about next – so nothing gets posted.

I know I have to get better at how I use my time for each line or I am just going to keep spinning my wheels and will not get any serious research done. I have actually been thinking about this for the last week or so with several different ideas flashing through my brain. However, I think what makes sense me and allows research and focus time with all our family lines within a given year is to break my time quarterly, like this:

January – March = Shaw/Canter (my paternal side)
April – June = Nisgoda/Gierig (wife’s maternal side)
July – September = Lucas/Pakledinaz (my maternal side)
October – December = Rogers/Capen (wife’s paternal side)

This does not mean that I will ignore the other lines if it is not their quarter. I will still be open for new leads or new contacts but I may not act on them right away. For instance, this quarter is Pakledinaz/Lucas, if I come along some information on Capen, I will take note of that information in OneNote (my note taking software) so it is saved for when the Capen quarter comes up. I cannot think of any lead or piece of information that would be so time-sensitive that I would have to drop everything and pursue it. If a cousin or other researcher contacts me I am not going to ignore them. This is the only scenario that I can think of that may make me stop everything and focus, for a short period of time, on another line.

Have you found yourself in the same boat? How do you divide your time between the different ancestral lines that you research?

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Photo, Confusion by Zielanella, courtesy of Funny Images on Flickr.

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© 2014 copyright, Christopher Shaw

Ipad For Genealogy–Part 2 FREE Stuff

I started off with Part 1 talking about calendars and you can read that here.

For this post I am going to talk about FREE stuff when it comes to online or cloud storage.
Everyone likes free stuff.

I have been a longtime user of Dropbox and just not for my genealogy stuff; I use it for everything that I want to access across my digital platforms. However, the Dropbox free account only offers 2GB of storage (with referrals you can get more) and I have been pushing that limit. So, I have recently been exploring other options to add to my free cloud storage because I just don’t want to pay for it. So, here is what I am doing and how I now have 32GB of free cloud storage.

1. Dropbox (2GB). This is my goto storage just because I have been using it for so long and am comfortable with it and it plays very nicely with everything. However, like I mentioned, it only comes with 2GB for the free account. I am pushing that limit.
2. Google Drive (15GB). Since I use Google, I have free storage with them called Google Drive. I have not really used this too much in the past and I really don’t know why. However, I‘ve linked my storage to all my devices and will now play with it. My initial thoughts is this is where I will store word processing and excel spreadsheets that I need to update on a fairly routine nature. Research logs, biographical sketches, research notes, etc… Google drive is the the goto place so you don’t have to buy Microsoft Office. I’m beginning to like it a lot.
3. SkyDrive (7GB) by Microsoft. I’ve had this for awhile but did not like it in the past because it seemed glitchy and didn’t seem to play nice with others. The primary purpose of this was to sync Microsoft product specific information and I didn’t use Microsoft stuff for portability, I have Apple stuff for that. However, Microsoft has updated something and it is working a lot better and more like the other cloud storage products. After linking my account and downloading the app it seems to be a great place to store things that you want to have access to but may not update – static pages of information. I am a den leader for one of my boys Cub Scout dens so I am using this for all that information. Seems to be working great so far.
4. SugarSync (5GB)– this is the newest to my cloud storage apps. It seems to be very comparable to Dropbox, just a very different interface but not too difficult to work around. I am using it the same that I use Dropbox just with different stuff; I put all my schoolwork and military history research sources in here. The hardest part of SugarSync was actually getting the free storage, it isn’t obvious on their website. You have to first download the desktop application and then create an account from there. You then get the option to accept their free account – although it keeps defaulting to try and get you to opt for the paid version. But, 5GB of storage is perfect for what I need it for.

So, there you have it – I went from 2GB of free storage with Dropbox to 32GB of cloud storage in just a couple of days. It may seem inconvenient because stuff is located in different folders or apps, but it only took me a day or so to get used to where I put stuff – I don’t even have to think about it now.

Do you use free cloud storage? Did I miss a good one? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Chris

P.S. I will be making periodic updates to this post to let everyone know how each is working out.

Technorati Tags: Ipad,Cloud Storage,Genealogy,Family History

iPad/iPhone for Genealogy and Research - Pt. 1

I am assuming that I am not alone when I confess that the search for technology which will make my life easier is an addiction for me. I'm convinced that there is some form of new technology that will improve every part of my life and my workflow. I can spend hours researching different technology which will improve my workflow and make me a better researcher, more organized, a better time-manager, etc... you get the picture.

So, I figured I would try and pass on some of the apps and other technology stuff that I use in this digital research age.

The first thing to talk about is the general stuff everyone gets with the iPad/iPhone - the synchronization of your calendar and emails.

I have an iPad (obviously, or I probably wouldn't be writing about using it for research and genealogy) and I also have an iPhone as does my wife. We use gmail as our main email provider and have a family email address in which we also use the calendar. Before we got our istuff we did not use the shared google calendar very much since we had to be on a computer to look or add anything - it just wasn't very convenient. Once we both got our iPhones the convenience was there so I synced our gmail accounts and we were able to share a calendar real-time. I can update from my iphone while at work and within a minute or so my wife sees the update to our calendar. But, it is more than a real-time sharable calendar.

Probably like most, I have more than one email. I have the family email but I also have a personal email and also one for my genealogy. These are all gmail based and all attached to my istuff so I can review and respond to emails anytime. I also use the calendars associated with these different gmail accounts. I use one for my blogging editorial calendar (I'll talk about this in another post) and I also use another calendar for my day job. Using my istuff to link all these together, all my emails and all my calendars are with me whenever and wherever I go - very convenient and very portable.

If you are using some of this istuff and you do not have your calendars and emails synced up, I would highly recommend it and it is really easy - any google search will bring up instructions on how to do it.

Like I said, I use google for mail and calendars and find it really easy - if you use some other calendar and email provider with your istuff let me know how it works in the comments.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for another post about how I'm using the iPad and iPhone for my research. Keep diggin' for that family.

Chris

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What to Keep and What to Toss…

The following is a post written by my wife, Michele.

When our oldest started Kindergarten (2 years ago) and started coming home with all different kinds of art projects, self made Mother's Day cards, writing journals and tons of newsletters from the teacher, I decided to keep it all and sort it at the end of the school year. Bad idea! The end of the school year came and I had a 1 foot stack to sort.

1st grade came and I decided I would sort out right from the get go. But what do you keep? Only the art projects? All the perfect spelling tests?

Now we have twins that just started Kindergarten and the process continues x 3. Again the question is what to keep and what to toss?

I have nothing left from my school days except for my report cards. I think I would have liked to see an art project I made or maybe a writing sample from Kindergarten or 1st grade...my yellow blankie that mysterious got lost in a move when I was 6 years old. Those are things that I would like to share with my kids now to show that mom was really their age once and did the same things.

But will my kids want to see those things, too? Will they want to share them with their kids? Will they appreciate it or will they just roll their eyes when I hand them their box of stuff once they're grown up? Will they care that I kept the baby outfit they wore when they came home from the hospital?

I guess for now, until I can figure out what to keep and what to toss, I'll just stick with the beaming smiles I get and the proud look in their eyes when I hang every little scrap of paper they made that says "for mom" on the walls around my desk.

Leave your thoughts on ‘what to keep and what to toss’ in the comments.  

Michele

I want to thank my wife for jumping into this posting idea and sharing her thoughts and what is on her mind.

Thanks for reading and keep diggin’ for that family.

Chris and Michele

Technorati Tags: Kids Keepsakes,Family History,Keepsakes,School,kids,parenting

Note Taking

I just read a post over at Elyse’s Genealogy Blog about using Microsoft OneNote and have to put a plug in for it. Along with her I have been using OneNote for classwork and am now playing with OneNote to see how best to use it for my genealogy notes. One thing that I do like about OneNote is that there are plugins for Firefox (my preferred browser) that allow me to right-click any webpage and send it right into OneNote. Makes saving information so easy. I can’t wait to read more of what Elyse says about OneNote.

Thanks for stoppin by and keep diggin for that family,

Chris

Photo by: MEDEA Malmö