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J.T. O’Donnell is a nationally syndicated career strategist and workplace consultant. In addition to her book, 
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New here? Employee Evolution is a blog written by Ryan Healy. Ryan is a Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist, the webs #1 social network for young professionals. Ryan speaks with organizations on best practices for recruiting and retaining Generation Y and how to effectively use social media to reach your target market. To contact Ryan, please visit our contact page.
I’m working with a sharp group of Communication majors from the University of New Hampshire right now. Honestly, their enthusiasm each week for the assignments I’ve given them as part of the unpaid internship they’re participating in has been fantastic. So, imagine my surprise at a recent team meeting where I had asked them to research, compile and come prepared to discuss a list of popular blogs read by their peers. The conversation went like this:
Me: “Okay, so what are the top blogs college students are reading?”
Them: Silence.
Me: “What’s up? Did you have trouble with the exercise?”
Them: “No. We just couldn’t find any blogs that they read.”
Me: “What? Why?”
Them: “Well, everyone we asked said they don’t read blogs because they are just silly rantings by people about their personal lives.”
Me: “Are you kidding? But we’re planning to create a blog as part of this internship project.”
Them: “We know, we needed to talk to you about that J.T. – Can we call it something else? Because all our friends said they won’t read a blog and it’s kind of embarrassing to say that’s what we are working on.”
I was shell-shocked. You see, I only stumbled across the power of reading and writing for blogs in the last year. The truth is, it was actually Ryan and Ryan from EmployeeEvolution.com who got me hooked. Thus, while I can see how blogging isn’t fully embraced by the older generations yet (Gen X and above), I never considered that the younger generations might actually be AVOIDING them.
The session with my team turned into an hour-long tutorial on the upsides of reading and contributing to blogs. By the time we were done I was convinced they had ‘seen the light’ and would be ready move forward, but instead, they said something to this effect:
“Okay J.T., we see how the blog we’re creating is going to benefit students and recent grads, but that makes us even more certain we’ll have to call it something else. Trust us.”
And I do trust them, so we decided to all separately brainstorm alternative terms for blogging about career development. The problem is, I’m coming up short. I reached out to friends and family, but nobody’s given me squat to work with. As I mentioned, these interns are really talented, so you know they are going to show up with some great terms when they get back from Spring Break in Acapulco next week. (They promised they’d work on this while they were there – I should believe them, right?)
So, can you all help me? I’d be grateful for some ideas so I don’t go to our next meeting without at least one decent term.
Anyone?
Well, if “blog” is unacceptable, “journal” probably is also a no-go.
Here’s a few terms that I came up with:
eMag - electronic magazine. Not particularly accurate, but unused and symbol-neutral.
Thoughtbook
J/log - journal/log. Same meaning as blog, but more neutral.
Poor Richard - nod to Franklin’s old almanac
That’s all I can think of right now…mind’s not working quite right. Hope that at least gets your creative juices flowing!
I hate having to tell people I’m a blogger. They don’t seem to take me seriously if I say that. I might say I’m a web publisher.
I like Ben’s eMag idea. That might be too techie though for some people. How about “Online Magazine?” I think it’s an apt name for them. Posts can be equated to articles. People “subscribe” to your blog just as they would subscribe to a magazine.
Even the format of copywriting on blogs mimics magazines.
By calling them magazines, you create in the mind of the person something they’re familiar with. When people think “magazine” they think “a collection of informative and entertaining articles focused on a particular subject.” Boom! That’s a blog.
So, Online Magazine. I publish for an online magazine. Sounds cool.
what about an eForum? Blogs that get great discussions going could be considered forums. The topic is the blogger’s entry and all of the comments are the discussion.
My two cents, call it what it is. A blog is a blog and I think the term will resonate well with the students of today. Of course, I live in Silicon Valley and blog is a cool term around these parts. Good luck!
I am not a huge fan of blogs either, I view this site as a type of e-magazine related to a topic I am interested in. The “bloggers” as they have been identified, I call simply writers. Isn’t that what they are?
They have an opinion, put it in writing and wait for the world to respond to it. This happens on a more imitate pace than typical print articles in say a weekly interest magazine.
The other key to blogging “writing on the web” is the freedom to have your own opinion, not only for the author, but for the public. Any response either constructive or not it is still awesome to know someone can relate.
I’m with Sophia lets call it “2 cents”
I like “blog” too and I can’t believe that I feel old at 24 because the new young’ins think it’s un-hip. Going off what Chris says, how about eddies or eds for editorials? Or Oppies or Ops for the opinion aspects. That’s all I’ve got on a Friday - good luck!
Wow, you know I never thought of this.
I mean, yah, I’ve got friends that blog, and all they do is gripe about how their egg salad was warm, and their boyfriends ignore them.
And I’ve got a blog like that (on myspace, none the less!)
But I also have a serious blog, where I talk about one particular subject, and (do my best) stay focused on serious issues.
The eMag sounds good, but I don’t think that’s what my blog is, you know?
Maybe we should work instead to get rid of the stigma that blogs are just rants?
Hi JT,
What these students are saying is absolutely right. College students don’t read blogs, or at least they didn’t when I graduated two years ago.
But actually this isn’t true. College students read blogs all the time, they just don’t think of them as blogs. Examples - Gizmodo. Lifehacker.
So I don’t think you need a fancy name for your blog. Just call it a website that offers resources for recent grads. It’s the truth, and it brings people to the site. Then tell them that it gets updated every day by college students like them, and teach them about subscribing by feed so they can receive the updates regularly.
“Blogging” does get a bad rap, but from starting my own blog I’ve learned that once friends figure out that you aren’t just writing about the drama in your own life, they respect it and start reading regularly. And since then a bunch of friends have approached me asking how to start a blog of their own. It’s really just about education and getting past that “Dear Diary” image everyone has.
Good luck! It sounds like an awesome project.
Outside of Silicon Valley blogs are not “cool.” Not being cool is OK, but its not OK if people don’t come to the site because they think its not cool, traffic is important.
Know who your audience is and pitch it accordingly. For example, I tell older people that I have a blog, and they think Im one of those tech savvy twentysomethings they keep hearing about. But I tell people my age who I know are not in the “blogosphere” that I have a website. If they ask what kind I tell them its a career advice site.
I also like the Online Magazine reference. Before I started Employee Evolution, I didn’t know anything about blogs, but one of my “brilliant” business ideas was to start an “Online Magazine for Young Professionals.”
What do you know….it’s actually a blog.
The other thing that should be noted is that the blogosphere is dominated by Gen-X, not Gen-Y. So I think older generations have embraced blogging more so than Gen-Y.
The real challenge is to make people realize that blogging is cool, if you do it right. Everyone who has a blog should be an evangelist for the importance of blogging and the blogosphere.
Oh, one other thing, now that I’ve read other people’s comments. I tried to call my blog an online magazine when I started it, and people were really confused. Because it was a blog, not an eMag. That’s why I think you should deemphasize the blog part at first and just call it a generic term, like website.
Sophia’s right: a blog by any other name is still just a blog, and I think it’s a better strategy to educate people that blogs are cool, rather than try to come up with a new name for them.
I think that it has a lot less to do with age, than it does your career. I work in PR and have become very involved in the blogosphere as a result of the job. Meanwhile my boyfriend is a civil engineer and thinks I’m crazy when I talk about the number of blogs that I read, not to mention Twitter. I agree with Ryan, that we all have to be advocates for the importance and value of blogs. Have an alternate name if you want, but don’t shy away from calling it blogging.
There’s blogs and then there’s blogs.
The type of blogs I don’t really read are like this.
TEN MORE DAYS UNTIL I GET TO SEE MY BOYFRIEND !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The other type of blogs are defined by their content, and they are much more serious and less personal. While the name may be associated with both types of “blogs” there is quite a difference. “Blog” covers a wide swath of territory, but there’s not a better name for serious blogs. There are two options as I see it.
1. Call it a blog and get over the fact that your peers think it’s not cool. (I think it’s cool and I’m in college.)
2. Come up with some other name for it that no one has associated with the activity. Then every time you tell some one you’re “emagging” you’ll have to explain what the heck an emag is. You know what? You’ll probably end up saying, “well it’s kind of like a blog . . . “
Great comments and observations here. I think coining a new term can be confusing and personally e-anything tends to rub me the wrong way… I’ve gotten over the fact that you can publish all different types of things in all types of formats on the Internet, so attaching an ‘e’ to the front of a word isn’t so appealing.
I agree with Jessica, Ryan H and other comments about not shying away from the blog term. Let’s reclaim it from the type of blogs that Michael H is describing.
I think come up with a catchy name and then explain to people it’s a blog about X…
Good luck!! I look forward to reading the BLOG
Hi all,
I just wanted to say thank you for these fabulous comments.
Another thing my team told me was that college students are severely adverse to signing up/subscribing to anything using their e-mail address. They hate SPAM and said that a lot of the friends they talked to said they wouldn’t bother subscribing to it because of that.
@Rebecca - I hear you about feeling old. On the first day of the internship, I actually had to explain to them what a ‘facebook’ was on college campuses years ago and why Mark Z. chose to name his social media tool that.
@Michael - we actually did try your #2 suggestions - here’s what we got:
blearning
bleducation
bloccupationing
Please don’t laugh too hard - now you know why I wanted to post this on EE for help!
We are absolutely going to be the equivilant of an e-mag, but I see the point some you have made about even bothering to call it such.
@jwschiff -I’m very biased for a few reasons, but I do think the name of the site is cool and will hopefully draw readers in so we can educate them on our purpose, as you suggest. The interns love the name and said it got really positive comments from those they mentioned it to, so that may end up being our biggest asset in promoting it.
Blogic?
B-logical?
Like Michael pointed out, blogging is still sort of overshadowed by the “dear diary” websites of early blogging days. But with the way professors and other professionals (like J.T.) are encouraging it, eventually we’ll catch on.
When I was in college a professor of mine tried really hard to get our class to blog, but most of us shrugged it off. Now I’m seeing college students come to Brazen Careerist and blog because it’s required for their curriculum. Great idea in my opinion.
I think eventually if we just stick w/ the term blog people will catch on. Blogging is still evolving, but as we’re beginning to see it appear in mainstream media people will be less reluctant to get involved. And still, some people will continue to steer clear of it all together because they’re too stubborn to give it a shot.
When I mentioned in the office that I had “favorite blog” I was pretty much laughed at … on a communication team.
I understand your dilemma. These people were younger (Gen X to late Gen Y) and understood the importance and potential value of blogging in their communication efforts, but still, the term seemed humorous.
I can offer sympathy, but unfortunately, I have no suggestions. Best of luck and keep us posted!
Coming up with a new word (prefixed with b- or e-) sounds far more silly to college students, kids, and adults alike. Don’t re-invent the wheel.
I’d have your interns do some deeper research. ESPN has blogs but they’re simply online sports writers’ columns (and I know college students read them). PostSecret (one of the most popular sites amongst college-aged females) is a blog. The NYTimes has blogs, BBC has blogs, Anderson Cooper has a blog, celebrities have blogs and musicians have blogs.
I think you should stick to ‘blog’, nobody is going to start understanding the name better unless more people use it. Next best idea? Online magazine or publication.
JT,
Being a new blog reader I can agree that the word “blog” can have a negative connotation and you should change the name to something more appealing. (especially when the only blog I ever knew of before I found newly corporate, EE, and Brazen, was my former classmate’s blog where he so candidly wrote about his burrito eating habits and binge drinking abilities)
With this I would suggest changing it to something like a “Career Tutorial.” We used this with our finance career oriented student organization meetings and saw a huge increase in turnout for our meetings. So even though we all love blogs and get a lot out of them, not everyone is as open-minded and need to be eased into the concept of sharing ideas/concepts/perspectives about important issues with credible sources. I think we need to start somewhere with some before we introduce them to “bloghood.”
Being an old fart boomer who likes to think Gen Y is the new Boomer (ooh, that ought to cause a riot)…I am amazed that this perception of blogging abounds. Gen Y knows a lot about what social media or social networking can do for them careerwise (FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), but even those things are often viewed as “what I ate for breakfast” toys.
The biggest missing piece, IMO, is having patience for educating the people you’re trying to reach and enroll. They will come around if you consistently encourage awareness about what it will do for them:
Community
Conversation
Interactivity
Voice
Platform
Personal Career Benefits
In the about page of EE, there are blurbs about the founders, serving as thumbnail online portfolios in a very real sense. In this light, blogging is a venue for saying goodbye to the standard resume, and instead directing people/employers/buyers to your conversation, your community and your continuously evolving offer.
Ultimately, the missing piece with those you are trying to reach is education and being patient with their resistance. They’ll get it when they get what’s in it for them.
2 cents
This is very insightful for me, and I’ll share a short story that I hope lets you understand why.
I was talking to my friend about blogs, why I read them and why I continue to write one, and she was totally on the side of “why would I care to read other people’s rants?”
I realized then that she associated blogging with ranting, something you see happen with many blogs, but which doesn’t qualify all blogs since those I choose to read tend to have very good food for thought, and I also make a concerted effort to not turn a blog post into a rant.
When asked to describe a blog, “online journal” is a term I’ve often used, but now I realized that term is just as boring as “blogging” has become “ranting” to my friend. Are we seeing an expiry of the “cool” factor of new terms like blogging?
Are you addressing the root problem by trying to find a new name for blogging?
Will terms like “twittering” become associated (if they aren’t already) with ranting as well?
I know “facebook” is fast becoming associated with Spam with its proliferation of unwanted application invitations for many of my friends. One of the biggest misassociations that permeates the local Trinidad industry is that “IM’ing” is associated with time-wasting, although the world over it is the means by which many business stay profitable and operational.
I think a new name for blogging may be the start, but the association of the word, and keeping it associated with positive ideas, will be the real challenge for your team.
How about online column? I think a lot of people would enjoy saying they’re a columnist. It has a journalistic feel. Instead of saying I’m a blogger for this website, they can say for example, I’m a columnist for Employee Evolution.
I agree with the “website” contingent. I never say i am a blogger, I just say I have a website. Everyone understands it and likely put a neutral or positive connotation on it. I think creativity is great, but too many of the words didn’t create any discernible mental image. Regardless of what it is called, I can’t wait to see the finished project!
JT,
This is a really interesting thing, because when I spoke to a student group - a public relations group at that! - a few weeks ago and mentioned blogging, I sort of got the blank stare and crickets thing as well. I think the honest truth as to why college kids aren’t blogging is that most of them are spending time on social networks. Hours and hours scrolling through photos of their friends, etc.
But - take heart! When I mentioned the name of my first blog, one student perked up and exclaimed that she’d run across it in some research for a class project, and was surprised that it was my website, because according to her it was a “pretty big deal” - and I could see that somehow, now that she had the proper context for the professional advice I blog, my esteem was raised in her eyes. I think a lot of college kids think of “blogging” as the “minutiae of daily life” style posts that get ten or so hits a day – and comments only from your “real life” friends, etc. But what this community of passionate experts provides is another thing altogether.
So I guess I’m saying that as far as perception of college kids and blogging, content is king. I don’t know what they would call it, but if you’re providing quality content - and probably more important, networking that content where they are, in their preferred social networks, you will find them.
Good luck with this project!
I have a blog and I still have a problem telling people that’s what I do. When I mention to anyone that I run a website, I tell them that it is an “advice site” - career advice, relationship advice, etc. If I say “blog” it somehow sounds wimpier, less professional than “advice site.”
Interesting issue. I think it is pretty important to leave the prefix “e” off whatever name you come up with.
Calling it a “website” might be better than calling it a “blog” in this context.
So my suggestions are:
* Daily review
* Magazine
* Website
* Online resource
Two Suggestions:
- Call it “Web-log”
- “(The) Update(!)”
Best wishes for the project!
A blog is a tool. A hammer is a tool.
The problem is not the name. It’s the people who have nothing to their business but a blog.
A person who builds houses is a “Building Contractor”, not a “hammerer.”
I am Gen Y and not everybody I know reads blogs. I have a musician sister who doesn’t understand the purpose of a blog at all.
But for those of us who are online for work and otherwise, we treat blogs the same way we treat other types of online content.
I still feel weird when I tell people I am a “blogger.” It doesn’t sound serious because the word is silly. But if I say I have a website that I manage and I write content about marketing, social media and so on, that sounds better. In my opinion, blogs are websites, but you just have to get used to the way they are set up and read, where the newest content is on top and the oldest on bottom.
Changing what they’re called won’t change the fact that some are (mostly) “just silly rantings by people about their personal lives.”
The same criticism was leveled when “home pages” came into vogue. People saw them as the desperate attempts of others at relevance. Truthfully, that’s what a lot of web pages were (and still are).
The word “blog” - for better or worse - has stuck.
How about just “Web Publisher” or “Article Marketer”? Synonyms are wonderful things.
the emag has already been thought of: ezine is electronic magazine. (in my oppinion the lamest term on the internet that has nothing but negative surounding it. if you have a news letter please don’t call it an ezine)
Ok now for solutions: first this is a tough one, but possibly there is room for a new term here. here are a couple that came to my mind:
interactive writings or interwrites
dynamic speach or dynaspeach
dynamic ideas or dynamideas
interactive ideas or interideas
idea pad or ipad
what you think?
How about re-presenting to the students this way: “Collaborative writing project that uses professional blogging platform to publish on the web. Integrating readers and content authors onto a social medium that encourages interactivity through commenting and subscribing.”
That should help.
Call it an “online magazine” - I see this question a lot on Yahoo Answers…”I want to start a magazine online, how do I do that?”
I always recommend a blog since this is mostly what a lot of mainstream magazines are doing these days. Plus blogs are easy to update. Their content is set up in a blog format, but they don’t say its a blog…it’s just the magazine’s website.
So in a sense, blogs like Perez Hilton, Boing Boing, Go Fug Yourself, I Can Has Cheezeburger…are essentially just web magazines updated on a daily/hourly basis.
I would just reframe it as an online magazine using blog software to add content. Making a magazine sounds more exciting anyway…
They could even do a cheap printed version to get the word out. The best magazine that does a great job in blog format is Make Magazine.
Good Luck!
The challenge here is people lump people who publish content via a blog: bloggers.
I have never liked the term blogger. it puts you in a box. What I do is share knowledge, insights, best practices, news, etc. This does not make me a blogger. A blog is just one of the many tools i use to publish and communicate with. I use a blog, podcasts, youtube, twitter, friendfeed, blippr, ustream, facebook, etc.
I share thoughts differently depending on the media type that I am engaging via.
The new word for blog: ThoughtStream
Actually this bring up an entirely new idea around the evolution that we are seeing around different media types.
We have framed out a service that pulls all this together and acts as an aggregation point so that people can consume all of these media types in 1 central place. More on this later. (we have elves in the basement coding as we speak).
Cheers and happy blogging… ummm thoughtstreaming?
Rodney Rumford
Publisher: FaceReviews.com
Thanks to everyone (especially Guy, for twittering about the post!) for sending me more thoughts on a new name for blogging. The interns and I have continued to struggle with what to call it, and actually are now considering a contest once the blog launches to have readers decide what it should be called.
When we began soliciting content from our social networks, most people didn’t want to ‘blog’ about their careers. Yet, when we told them we wanted them to ’share their work experiences’ in a short story and gave them a simple framework to do it, they were fine with it.
I look forward to the launch of the site so we can see what works best.
Magazine works, or “Zine”. Most people don’t even realize that some of the most popular blogs are blogs, several good examples have already been mentioned. The point is that it has to have a title that lets the user know it will be current, so hey, why not tabloid? “Bloid”?
@Rodney Rumford
But regardless of what online service you use to communicate these things, aren’t you still LOGging via the WEB? Hence “WEB LOG”? Like it or not, a person who uses the web to maintain a log (or journal or whatever) is blogging. And, by so doing, that person is a “blogger”.
Why fight it? Nike is a silly word to, but it hasn’t stopped them from making billions. And, as you mention, blogs like BoingBoing et al. are quite successful and yet don’t shy away from the “blog” moniker.
It’s just a word.
I have lots of friends who read blogs who don’t even know they are and too would make fun of blogs. To them they are just web sites. They don’t differentiate, you have to learn to think like the majority of people do sometimes…
I have used the term “column” for a while. I am in the midwest and write a blog for a specific industry. i don’t know if it’s because of my customer base or region, but people don’t know what a blog is around here. If they’ve heard of a blog they have a negative impression of it’s content.
I did actually have one 40-something say “Oh…a blog…like what Barney talks about on How I Met Your Mother.”
Yes…just like Barney!!! Gotta love some N.P. H.
Haha ^^ nice, is there a section to follow the RSS feed
This is the way things should be, get off what we are on now
I have a few sites I go to, but the quality is always the best here!