Creating a Language Glossary for Millennials... with a Plugin

How do you engage millennials? With the Tooltip Glossary Plugin, of course!

Dragana Amarilis is a Serbian linguist with a passion for teaching and a knack for creating rich websites about languages. And she’s combining those two to overcome a tough challenge: engaging millennials, who were practically born with a smartphone in each hand. Her solution: the WordPress plugin Tooltip Glossary.

The Challenge

“Currently in the Serbian language the number of online dictionaries is very low”, Dragana says. “Most of them are print dictionaries that were transformed into web forms with optical search engines and they are out of date considering the needs of Millennials”, she adds.

The result was that students could not find the definition of new words, even on the web. “Also the meaning of older words is not clear to new generations”, the teacher remembers.

The plan: Create a dictionary

The teacher then used her experience in the classroom and managing websites in English and German to better understand the needs of the younger audience. “What do they do is: they go to the search option in their browser and type ‘what is…’, ‘what does it mean…’”. But they would find nothing.

Her first attempt to tackle the problem was creating plain texts about linguistics: “But, without a Dictionary, the result was not satisfying”.

The solution: Tooltip Glossary

She then turned to creating a glossary and chose CreativeMinds Tooltip Glossary Pro for WordPress to implement her project. “I researched a lot before making up my mind. In the end, I was convinced because Tooltip Glossary had good ratings on wordpress.org”.

She installed the free version last year and upgraded to the Pro version in July.

Homepage has Tooltips: important terms words are highlighted and easily explained

The result

The teacher skillfully expanded the content of her website.

Tooltip example on website about linguistics

Now, important words are highlighted and, upon hovering the mouse over it, the reader can see their definition – it’s a customizable function called Tooltip. By clicking in the word, the user is referred to a dedicated page in the Glossary where he/she can then read the whole explanation of the term.

Currently, the Glossary has 313 entries divided in categories such as expressions, colors, surnames, verbs and technology. You can check it out here.

“If I am successful? So far so good!”, she celebrates. “My advice is: test the free version, but do not wait too long before getting the Pro”, the specialist adds.

Sample of the Glossary page on Dragana’s website

Next steps: Even more content

Currently, Dragana writes about diverse subjects, such as etymology, literature and even Serbian cuisine. Now, she hopes to increment her Glossary and create more content in order to improve her page ranking in Google Search.

That way, she’ll be able to reach more and more people interested in languages, specially from her core group, the Millennials.

Excerpt of a term page with image