The first SEVEN results point to Katharine Graham’s memoir of the same name. In the copy of your site, you can explain your services, but what do you do for SEO? What keywords are you choosing to get your beacon blinking in the world?ĪLERT: If you’re a diehard fan of the term “personal history,” go type it into Google. Or maybe you’ve got your business up and running and you want to make sure the people who need your help are finding you (something we talked about with Derek Lewis on our podcast). A place to hang out your virtual shingle.

b) eliminate the term altogether, and opt for something else, like “life story writer,” “legacy professional,” “professional memoir writer,” etc.īut what’s fairly easy in person is much, much harder online.Īs a new personal historian/life story writer (or videographer, or audio specialist, or web content creator, or tell-your-life-in-a-graphic-novel’ist…), one of your first steps will be to create a website.a) call yourself a personal historian, then quickly (before the eye-glaze) tell them what that is, or.Sure, if you’re talking to someone in person, you can either Well, if you’re just starting out in the field, not having clear, understandable terminology can be a stumbling block. Heck, they’ve probably never even heard the term. Not only that, but there’s a whole mess of people doing this kind of work who do NOT call themselves personal historians. What I’ve discovered is that the only people who know what a personal historian is are…other personal historians. The appeal of how flippin’ cool this work is overrides any fumbling with titles.Ī recent conversation with colleague Peta Roberts (host of the wonderful Storyical podcast) showed me that I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Thankfully, when they understand what I do, the terms don’t matter. Now my elevator speech includes the words “memoir writer” and “writing-life-stories-for-people-who-want-a-book-but-who-aren’t writers.” It’s a little less clunky when I’m in conversation with people, but honestly, not much. Worse, it doesn’t send a clear message to prospective clients-or the world at large-of what we do. Let’s face it, the term “personal history” isn’t the greatest. Should we call ourselves personal historians if we want clients to find us?

Association of personal historians inc.