Remember Your Audience

When speaking with relatives about genealogy, most have their eyes glaze over or give a low groan. Jennifer is going to start asking all of these questions about relatives because she is nosey or is going to put the family secrets or family blemishes or all out family craziness in the genelaogy. I actually had an aunt tell me not to discuss my uncle's "blemishes" in my genealogy reports, afraid that my genealogy was nothing more than gossip and a way to make the family blush. Oye!

It took me awhile to figure out how to get my family involved and excited to be involved in my family research. Remember your audience, know your audience and you will succeed. For example, Genealogy Wise announced a contest yesterday that as I have read in throughout the site isn't exactly making a lot of members all warm and fuzzy. I think this is a case of GW forgetting the audience. In my humble opinion, GW has grown so fast because of their basic features. The format is similiar to FB, but easier than FB to use. Genealogists are here to network with others. Not play games, add as many friends as possible, or desire to have a bunch of html comments on their pages. I believe most of us are here to network with others, learn more about genealogy, and help each other. We are not here to socialize in general. For those of us interested in generally socializing we have FB or Twitter or MySpace to do so. GW is hearing grumblings from the membership because they forgot their audience. In an effort to expand the site as fast as possible they have stumbled and possibly turned genealogists away from the site and have put a little pimple on their reputation all because marketing forgot the audience or just doesn't understand the audience yet.

When I first began asking my relatives for information, I forgot my audience. I sent family members questionnaires about their lives believing that if it was for genealogy they would want to share their lives with future descendants. I forgot that not only do I barely know any of my relatives since I didn't grow up near any of them, they are all private individuals. They do not want to discuss their failed marriages, even if I did only ask for the date of divorce. They took my probing as being nosey, not as me trying to continue my grandmother's work. So, I took a different approach. I know that my relatives all have one thing in common and that is love of certain members of the family that they love to talk about. For instance, my much older cousins who had time with my paternal grandmother and knew her better than I did love to tell stories of their time with her. I focused on them to get information on my grandmother and instead of them viewing me as being nosey, they wanted to educated their younger cousin on this beautiful, amazing woman. I ran down the family tree matching different aunts and uncles with deceased family members that they miss terribly and want to share the stories that those deceased relatives shared with them.

By breaking the ice and getting closer to my living relatives by sharing their passion for our deceased relatives I was able to start collecting information about my living relatives. They no longer viewed me as the nosey relative trying to get the dirty download on the family, but as an equal sharing their passion for times and relatives they were interested in and passionate about. It took me over a year to figure this out, but getting to know my audience before pouncing on them to get information would have been a better step in my research. I know now that when I find a distant cousin I first get to know him or her a little before starting to overwhelm them with questions about ancestors. Remembering my audience has allowed me to further my research and break through brick walls.