Accepting the challenge of the 30Tips30Days from Sarah Cordiner, I bravely stepped in where pilgrims fear to tread: the Live Cast program.

A Live Cast is a self-made broadcast, that’s you going live on screen, in a video sent out to your social media sites or directly to YouTube. It can be done in Zoom! It can be done directly from Facebook or YouTube! Or it can be directed to multiple sites with Streamyard. This week I explored the various methods of ‘streaming’ and although I felt more comfortable in Zoom, I now prefer Streamyard.

Live Cast is a term that describes the process of broadcasting real-time, live video footage or video feed to an audience accessing the video stream over the Internet. Google Quote.

What is the #30Tips30Days challenge?

Our brief is to plan to stream a live cast every day for 30 days, providing one Tip to help others in our favourite topics or area of expertise. I chose the topic of Family History Research, (naturally) and divided this into some sub-categories to start my planning:

• Why Genealogy Matters?
• Finding Your Ancestors
• Essential Habits for Genealogists
• Writing your Family History Stories

Note: One week in and I have accomplished 9 Live Casts.

Meanwhile, I am following my own advice as I launch my 52Ancestors52Weeks challenge, and use my tips to motivate myself and become better at being a Genealogist and therefore prepare an engaging set of Stories for my Tribe. First one of these is done!

Our goal is to ‘grow’ our influence, impact and income by:

• increasing our social media followers
• increasing more leads and enquiries about our services
• increasing our email list and potential contacts
• increasing our course enrolments in our Learning Management tools

IT’S WORKING!!!!!!!!

Lessons Learned: Week 1

In everything I do and learn to do, I make a point of sharing my lessons learned with others. Here’s what I learned in the first week of the Live Cast challenge:

1. Planning the ‘what‘ is essential – map out what your Live Casts will contain and keep records of their titles, content, thumbnail images and location. Thanks for the template Sarah.
2. Preparing the ‘where‘ is crucial – setup your own live casting area (a quiet space at your desk in your office) with good lighting in front of you, notes if you need them, screens open for sharing if appropriate, a web cam for video and a microphone for better audio.
3. Practicing the ‘how‘ is vital – lose the fear and jump into the experience, using your preferred method, immediately. The daily practice of live casting means that your confidence grows each day and the task becomes less daunting. I started with the known and moved to the unknown methods. (eg from Facebook Live to Zoom to Streamyard)
4. Focussing on the ‘who‘, your audience – provides the motivation to be authentic, be yourself and be helpful. Know which group of people who will find your tips useful! Pitch your presentation at a level that will be optimal for them.
5. Finalising the Live Cast elements – ensures the potential for a greater reach in social media. This process includes:
   a) adding the right tags and making the Live Cast Public and ensuring that the Live Casts can be replayed in YouTube;
   b) adding actual URLs, and appealing thumbnail images, in Facebook posts.
6. Finishing the process with promotions to your followers, ensures that you maximise the impact of your Live Casts. This process is made so much easier by using Streamyard, where the live cast is directed to multiple places all at the same time.

If you are interested in viewing these Live Casts and the progress I am making each day, please follow my Family History Preserved Playlist at YouTube.

If you are keen to explore Family History Magic and join others who have recently enrolled in these Free Online Courses, please access from here:

Family Story Magic

The Family Story Magic course gives you the confidence and the tools to write your Family History stories.

Featured in this course is the free Ancestral Cards Template and Workbook. Join the Digital Storytelling Online Facebook group to share your progress with others.

Blogging in the Past Lane

Blogging in the Past Lane means posting stories about your Ancestors into your blog. You don’t need to be a genealogist or even a family historian, you may just want to preserve the stories of your family for your family.

This short course will provide you with an easy to share process of writing your family stories using your computer, tablet and easy to use software.

Family Historian Bundle

Or if you would like to take advantage of this month’s offer, the Family Historian Bundle, you can get the above free courses as well as three other courses in my academy at a much reduced cost.

Thank you to all my followers and subscribers, for your continued support, you are valued!

You are invited to keep up to date with my Genealogy projects in 2021 by subscribing to this blog.

If you are keen to share some of your progress in this blog, please let me know using the Contact link on the About page.