After giving the “Tracing Family Roots:  From South Dakota to Sweden…and Back” talk I was asked,  “What do you plan on doing with this?”  At the time I had no plan, but the question stuck in my mind.  So here’s what became, “What next?”.

Before making a trip to Sweden to learn more about my great-grandparents, I discovered my cousin Anders Engstrom through a posting I had put on the Gnarp, Sweden Facebook page which led me to a plethora of Swedish family connections.  Well, I took the “Olof & Brita…” story (now called, “Tracing Family Roots…From South Dakota to Sweden…and Back”) and cut it up into 25 segments consisting of 1-3 images and a paragraph or two of text.  Beginning January 2, I posted one segment every day for 25 days.  The Gnarp Facebook page has 2,900 subscribers.  My Beresford math tells me if I’d do that for 25 days there would be a potential of 72,500 opportunities for someone in Sweden seeing the story.  Facebook does not have a way a telling you how many actually look at it unless they “react” (like, heart, comment, etc.) in some way.  My online marketing experience tells me many might look and a fraction will react.  So far, the reaction is nearing 1,000.

Facebook by it’s nature is a ‘short-form’ medium.  My experiment was to use the short-form medium to tell a long-form story.  I haven’t drawn any specific conclusion from all of this other than if I should ever go back I now have quite a few new Swedish acquaintances and large family whom I never knew existed before this whole project began.

Click here to review this story as it was told (internationally) in 25 segments.