Dear Medium: What the hell is a Life Hack? And 4 other words I had to learn to be a 21st Century blogger
I’m a 40 something guy trying to market my business. There were a million ways I thought would help get the word out. From radio to television to print advertising, I thought of it all, so it seemed. Then somebody mentioned blogging. My response was something like “isn’t that for 25 year olds to communicate when they max out their monthly text service?” So I sat in my office, turned up my NWA on Pandora, grabbed some carrots and hummus, and started doing research.
I had no idea that there is an entirely different language to blogging and social media. Some words are brand new to me, others are familiar but do not fit into my biased, dinosaur-aged context. I wasn’t even sure if the word “blog” was a verb or a noun, or both. I have since begrudgingly embraced my new BLOGCABULARY (that’s my new word for the vocabulary of blogs). You’re welcome world.
1: LIFE HACK: When I first saw this term on Medium, I wondered why people were using it in a positive context. Last I checked (and according to my favorite reference Urban Dictionary), a hack is “a person who is a professional at doing something but does crappy work”. Not exactly a term I’d use to give somebody tips. Unbeknownst to me, adding the word “life” before hack now means “a strategy or technique adopted in order to manage one’s time and daily activities in a more efficient way”. An exhaustive search of the history of the term led me to Wikipedia where I learned it was computer experts who are responsible. Shocking.
2: BLOGOSPHERE: Say what!? A quick survey of the non-blogging adults in the room generated a variety of answers. From “blank” to “circle”, nobody had a clue what a blogosphere was. According to the internet, the blogosphere is how blogs exist together as an “interconnected community”. Duh.
3: HASHTAG: Why do my kids keep flashing gang signs followed by some random series of words that don’t make a complete sentence? What started out as a symbol used by Twitter to group common search topics is now a staple of mainstream social media communication. Strategic use of hashtags can maximize exposure for your business or idea. #howdidIfigurethisout
4: PING: Usually followed by the word “Pong”. A great tabletop party game much like the game of tennis. It was the source of considerable beer drinking during my fraternity days in college. Never mind that was 20 years ago. Apparently in the “blogosphere”, it is used to inform search engines that new information has been posted. Hmm. Sounds useful.
5: TAG: You’re it! Right!? Not quite. Gone is the childhood game we used to play to get attention from the cute girls. Now a tag is used as a tool to link a blog to a certain subject category. I can’t figure out why I’m not getting hits with my blogcabulary tag…
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