At work, Millennials may be the new kids on the block, but they’ve got a thing or two to teach older colleagues.

The 18 to 29-year-old age group also known as Gen Y has a completely different take on work than older generations. They’re more prepared, productive, focused and technologically literate, and older workers would do well to emulate them.

That assessment comes from Penelope Trunk, a careers expert, blogger, author and one of the day’s leading interpreters of how Gen Y thinks and acts at work. Trunk first parlayed her expertise on the subject into a book called Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, which became a springboard for a blog and more recently a Gen Y social network, also called Brazen Careerist.

For older workers to get ahead on the job, they have to stop acting their age and adopt a completely different mind set, Trunk says.

Read the rest of this post at SecondAct.com: To get ahead at work, think like a Millennial.

Last week, freelance writer Kerry Dexter included WordCount in a list of 15 blogs to explore. She was continuing an experiment started by another writer/blogger friend who included Dexter’s blog in her own list of 15 ‘Lovely Blogs, after that blog had been included in someone else’s list.

Now it’s my turn.

When it comes to blogs, I regularly read a mashup of subjects I write about like technology, HR, Internet security and business, and blogs about what’s happening in the media industry – as you can imagine there are more and more of those these days. I also read a handful of blogs on writing, blogging, marketing and social media that influence my own writing and blogging.

Since I started using Twitter, I probably read more posts on random blogs than posts on blogs I subscribe to – but that’s a subject for another day.

Without further ado, here are the 15 blogs I read almost every day:

Media industry

• Romenesko – Hands down the most informative blog for what’s happening in the newspaper and magazine business.
• NewspaperDeathWatch – Another strong chronicler of what’s happening in the newspaper business, written by newspaper industry and social media expert Paul Gillin.
• PBSMediaShift – With the tagline, “Your guide to the digital media revolution,” host Mark Glaser is turning this into a multi-sourced must-read for what’s happening in digital media.

Writing and freelancing

• The Urban Muse – Susan Johnston, aka The Urban Muse, is the freelance writer I wish I was when I was starting out – smart and accessible, not above sharing her frustrations, foibles and successes.
• The Social Writer - Motley Fool writer Tim Beyers uses his blog to explore how writers can use the latest social media tools in pursuit of freelance happiness.
• Seth’s Blog – An old-school online marketer, if it’s possible to call anyone associated with interactive marketing old school, Seth Godin’s been around since Web 1.0 and it shows. With the tip of his bald head peaking out at readers, Godin’s like a Buddha, spouting short daily aphorisms on sales and marketing. Freelancers are in the business of selling, whether we like to think of ourselves that way or not, so why not draw inspiration from a master.

Social media

• ProBlogger – Instructive but not preachy advice on blogging. Whatever blogging difficulty you’re encountering – building traffic, looking for topics, getting readers to comment, etc. – chances are Darren Rowse and crew have covered it, from multiple angles.
• Mashable – Do I read this to stay current on what’s happening in social networks for the paid writing I do, or do I read it for the tips to get more out my own social media use? Probably a little bit of both.
• TwiTips – Not an everyday read, but definitely the first place I turn when figuring out something new on Twitter. (Note: I’ve written a guest column here.)

Business and technology

• Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist – If you read me you know I have a train wreck kind of fascination with Trunk. Yes she’s wildly inappropriate at times, but also an incredibly compelling blogger who tackles issues other people wouldn’t dream of, like her post connecting abortion and careers, which to date has received 370 comments.
• YourHRGuy – What’s not to like about Lance Haun – he knows HR, he brings a Gen Y perspective to workplace matters, he writes well, he’s in Portland, and he’s into sports and making sports analogies about HR issues.
• TechCrunch – Love him or hate him, Michael Arrington’s group-edited blog is the CNN Headlines News for Silicon Valley.
• ReadWriteWeb – Another group-edited blog covering the tech biz. While it might not have TechCrunch’s sizzle, or bite, it’s become another go-to source for breaking industry news – and anything with so many writers based in Portland is OK in my book.

Just for kicks

• The Cohens in DK – If I’m being totally honest here, some blogs I read just for fun. One is my sister’s about life as an expat wife living in Copenhagen, which will end soon because her husband’s been recalled to the States for a new position. This is as good an example as any I’ve come across of excellent writing from an amateur writer/blogger, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my sister.
• My daughter’s blog from college, which she started so she wouldn’t have to email or even call home about her adventures or, God forbid, friend me on Facebook. Sorry, this one’s not meant for public consumption so I’m not including the link.

I’m no fan of chain letters, so I won’t ask anyone to pick up the mantle and blog about the 15 blogs they read most often. But if you’ve got a couple favorites, feel free to share them here.

Penelope Trunk has a blog, book and company called Brazen Careerist. I have never seen her in person or interviewed her on the phone.* I have no idea how she is as a CEO, mom, daughter or ex-wife.

But this I do know. While she name drops, over shares and brags in a subtle, indirect sort of way, she’s also one of the best bloggers around- maybe because of all those things. So if you blog, and especially if you blog about careers, tech or start ups, you have to read Penelope Trunk.

Why is she so good?

1. Penelope Trunk understands what makes people read blogs. Her blog is nominally about careers. In reality, she uses it to carry on about all sorts of work-related topics, including her adventures starting a company, recollections of jobs past and now that she’s divorced, forays into dating life. So even though her blog has a subject, it’s big enough to encompass a lot of things. That makes it fresh and interesting reading.

2. She’s not afraid to have an opinion, even if it goes against conventional wisdom – especially if it goes against conventional wisdom. If it seems like she’s taking a stand that’s contrary to popular thinking just to be contrary, well, she probably is. But she does it to make people think about a subject from a different perspective. That’s what good columnists, writers and bloggers do, get people to look at an issue from a different perspective in order to get them to act differently as a result.

3. She always links back to old blog posts, which is great for building traffic because it sends people to other pages on her site, which have links on them that lead to other pages and so and and so on. If you don’t link to your own material on your own blog you should. Then link to lots of other blogs, especially blogs that are bigger and more popular than yours, which if you do it enough, will lead to even more traffic.

4. She’s a good storyteller. Yes, she seems to have had nine lives and written about all of them, and shares too many details of her marriage, divorce and sex life. But people eat that kind of stuff up. She uses narrative devices like dialog and what-happened-next story structure, which sets her apart from blogs that ramble on without making a point or are written in a too dry, newspaper inverted pyramid style.

5. She loves lists. Even when she’s not doing a list blog, she writes posts in list form because she knows blog readers love lists. Thanks Penelope, I did this post as a list just for you.

6. She manages to work subjects into blog posts that get picked up in search engines – like sex. Take the post she wrote earlier this week on how to write a good blog post. It had absolutely nothing to do with sex, but she managed to squeeze in a reference in the very last word of the very last line – that’s brilliant.

All of that explains why Penelope Trunk is making money blogging while a lot of other bloggers don’t, and won’t – ever.

And it’s why even though I roll my eyes at the latest crazy thing Penelope Trunk writes, I keep reading.

Who are your must-read bloggers?

* While I’ve never interviewed her, I’ve mentioned her in a few previous blog posts like this one and this one and she’s left a couple comments.

The best posts are heavy on context. But that’s just the beginning. To make sure they’ve got that pulled together look before you send them out the door, they should also have:

A catchy title – A clever headline will capture more attention than a dull one. Just make sure it accurately reflects what’s in the post.

A visual – Adding a photo, line drawing, logo, video  or other type of art that creates white space and visual interest, which increases readability. Creative Commons has a database of images and other creative work that can be re-used for free.

Links – Include URLs of blogs posts on the related topics, either written by you, which is good because it’ll drive traffic to your older blog posts,  or someone else, which is also good because when your readers click over to that someone else’s blog they’ll wonder who you are and come visit and that’s the first step to making a connection with like-minded bloggers.

Keywords and tags – A tree falling in the wilderness doesn’t make any noise, and a post on your blog that nobody knows about won’t make any noise either. You don’t have to be an SEO pro to add tags. The design themes some bloggers use do this work for them. If you’re looking to bone up on SEO, you’ll find some good resources in ProBlogger’s 2005 series on SEO for blogs.

Promotion – In addition to tags and keywords, it’s good to have a few mechanisms in place to alert regular readers to new posts. You can tweet about posts on Twitter and use other social networks like Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. Here are some other strategies for driving traffic to your blog.

One thing good blog posts don’t have – spelling errors. I don’t care what Penelope Trunk says, blog posts with too many typos are a turnoff. And not everyone can afford to have an editor proofread their posts. So before you hit the “Publish” button give your post a once over or run it through a spell checker.

But I can’t do Twitter. At least not yet.

There’s only so many hours one person can devote to online social networks, and only so many social networks to keep track of, and right now, I’m drawing the line at Twitter.

Call it social network overload. Using social networks is a great way to stay connected with friends and colleagues. And as I’ve written before, it’s helped me find sources and led to writing assignments. But it’s easy to cross the line from awesome productivity tool to awful time suck.

A lot of writers I know have joined Twitter, the micro-blogging site where you write “tweets” about work or life in 140-letter increments and sign up to read other people’s posts. Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist blogger, is a fan. So are a couple dozen of the freelancer writers I hang out with at Freelance Success, the subscription-based message board for professional writers. Some writers use it to help promote their books or blog. Jen Miller, a New Jersey freelance writer and author of The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May: Great Destinations: A Complete Guide: Including the Wildwoods explains how she’s using Twitter to promote the book in this article on Mediabistro.com, the Website for freelancers (NOTE: You need to be a Mediabistro member to read the story).

I already spend at least an hour a day on my social networks and this blog. I can’t see how I could add Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, GoodReads, RedRoom, or any of the half-dozen social networks people have invited me to join without cutting into the time I spend doing other work, like researching and writing articles.

Researching this, I found posts dating back to 2004 from blogger complaining about social network overload. The names of the social networks may have changed since then, but it’s the same problem. It’s also an issue some of the best-known minds in the business are grappling with. If you have 55 minutes and $15 to spare, you can hear what Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson thinks about the future of social networks and the media in this video clip from the recent Mediabistro Circus conference.

No doubt there are tools out there that could help me streamline my social networking activities – if anyone knows of good ones, let me know. Eventually, I could change my mind and join Twitter or GoodReads. For now, call me a Luddite, Twitter challenged or just plain behind the times. I’m happy with the social networks I have, but no more.

In online news circles, there’s been an ongoing discussion of links as news and links as reporting. The creators of Publishing 2.0, a blog about how technology is transforming the news, are huge advocates of what I’ll call link journalism. They wrote definitive article art this called Reinventing Journalism On The Web: Links As News, Links As Reporting. They later wrote this piece explaining how a New York Times article on John McCain really missed the boat because the reporters didn’t take the opportunity to link to what else was out there on the same subject.

So what does all of this mean to freelance writers? You’re only as smart as your links. You don’t live in a vacuum. If your posts don’t have links, what does that say about your ability to do research on your topic?

It’s not hard to do Google searches and find something that relates to what you’re writing. But if you’re really good, you’ll be able to pick through the chaff to find the stuff that best underscores your point, or even helps make your point. Whatever you may think of Penelope Trunk, the contrarian career coach who blogs as the Brazen Careerist, she is a link master. Her blog posts are chock full of references to academic research supporting her sometimes wacky theories. And she never misses an opportunity to link back to her past posts. That’s smart because people click on the links to read them and that ups her overall Website visitor numbers.

The most popular post I’ve ever written for WordCount was on the best blogs for writers, which was essentially a list of links. But it wasn’t just any list. It was a list I’d culled from ideas a bunch of writers submitted that I carefully read through and then sorted according to the type of blog, and then edited down to the very best, and then wrote about. Even though I wrote it back in February, according to my stat counter, at least a handful of visitors read it every day. That’s proof of the power of the well-placed link.