Tag! You're It!

Congratulations! You've been tagged...now what?


Most of us are already familiar with tags from the Facebook application where we tag our friends in photos (you know, those photos you had to untag when you cleaned up your profile to be more "professional" for your Humber PR course). My social digital media group has focused on how to use tags, and why they are important in network learning. Our focus in this assignment was to keep the type of tags we looked at specific to blogs.

First let's clarify what exact a tag is. A tag is a keyword or term that is assigned to a piece of information, for example, a blog post. Tags allow posts to be found easily through searching or browsing. They can used to link to other related posts as well. My group searched diligently to find the best how to article on tagging blogs for this project and found the following link to be the most useful here.

We like the simplicity in this how to and its direct application to the ning network used by our Humber PR program as most of the other links we found were specific to either wordpress or a particular blog site such as blogspot.com. We debated about the merits of using a more sophisticated link that emphasized the importance of network learning, but felt it was best for people to understand how to use tags in their blog technically before exploring the wider social networking implications. On the first day of class there were many overwhelmed faces, and we though keeping our link basic would help to weed out confusion so people can first really understand "how to" and then move on the the "why".

Moving on to the "why"...

Some of the best advice that we came across was to think of tags as "as the colorful little page markers you might use to flick back to your favourite pages in a book." The more relevant tags that you have in your post, the easier it will be for people to find and link to your posts. This creates a wider exposure for your blog posts. The likelihood of your blog coming up as a search result will also increase. As anyone who has ever used a Google search engine knows, this leads to more exposure. Another important tip is not to be afraid to use tags over and over. If you are interested in a more in depth discussion of using tags in your blog effectively the following link by Michael Martin is helpful: http://tinyurl.com/2e84e5

Some of us are more visual learners. Here's a great little video that lays out a tag so clearly even the most technological inept can follow it:





If you want to go even further, you can check out the blogs of my other group members Katy and Jaymes who have their own insights into tags. For how to's on a variety of mind-expanding social networking topics a wealth of information can be found in our class how to website. As a result of this assignment I have become more comfortable with blogging and tagging. Im on my way to overcoming my fears of social media and hopefully will soon be a skilled navigator and creator- so look out!