Hi all, I've been thinking of possible blog ideas, and I want to run my best idea by you guys.

I'm a Ph.D. student in marketing, and I study consumer behaviour. Never mind my specific research interests, I generally study how people use money (cash, credit cards, gift cards), and how they choose one thing from a selection of many (e.g., choosing Campbell's soup on a shelf instead of other brands).

I know there are quite a few marketing/consumer blogs out there, the biggest of which is Consumerist.com (of which I'm a big fan) and perhaps Freakonomics but I think my blog would offer something different.

Since I'm a graduate student, I thought it would be nice to bring the "academic" world into the Internet/blog world. That is, in each post, I would reference a particular academic journal article, and tell the "public" how it applies to the everyday shopper, and how you can be a better consumer.

You think this is good?

Coming from a Sociology/Mass Communications double-major, I'm fond of your idea. My concern, however, is that academic journals are generally a turn-off, by merit of their language alone. The style in which they are written is rather esoteric, so you'll need to engage in a lot of simplifying to make your posts readable and appealing to a general public.

Originally Posted by Jane Baker

Coming from a Sociology/Mass Communications double-major, I'm fond of your idea. My concern, however, is that academic journals are generally a turn-off, by merit of their language alone. The style in which they are written is rather esoteric, so you'll need to engage in a lot of simplifying to make your posts readable and appealing to a general public.

Right, of course. That's what I intend to do. I'll simplify the academic articles, but not condescend, but give examples that everyday consumers/readers can relate too.

I know this is bound to fail, because I would be very interested in reading it! Any time I like something, that means the public won't. I'm sort of an odd case that way. But I'd be quick to grab an RSS subscription, and I'm sure I'd find myself commenting often.

Funny John.

Eugene I think the idea is good. I can't guarantee you'll succeed, but the idea is certainly worth trying.

I think the most important thing you'll need to balance is the academicness (is that even a word?) of the subject matter with the non academicness (if the first one isn't a word this one can't be either) of your readers. Not that you want to dumb things down, but there might be times when it will be tricky to maintain the balance. It sounds like you're aware of this though and achieving that balance is what your after.

One thing you might want to do once the blog is going is to get feedback from your readers to find out who they are. It may turn out that it's more academic types who are interested even if your goal is to make academia more accessible to the general public.

Let us know when the blog is up. I think you may find a few subscribers among us.

I think Academic Qualifications helps to generate some sort of ideas. You can try out for sometime because you never know what could happen if you got many interested visitors of your article and stuffs. So try it out and it will be better. Lets hope. C.Davis

I think that the Idea is great - just stick with it and write, promote, write, promote. It would be a great blog since You are a graduate student.