Social Media 101 TweetChat Recap: Tagging

The final installment of TechSoup's Social Media Mondays tweetchat series, an interactive companion to its Nonprofit Social Media 101 wiki, covered the topic of tagging. Tagging, a feature found across many social media channels, is used to help surface content during searches. While it is a feature of many social sharing sites, often times those very sites do not provide beginner-friendly instructions on how to use tags effectively.

To understand why tagging is found on so many social sharing sites it helps to understand why tags exist in the first place. The use of tags has become common practice to manage the flow of information available on the Internet. Adding tags to content, whether blog post; video; photo; and so on, helps content creators organize content and, more importantly, helps your intended audience find it on the Internet. Tags can also be used to find resources such as photos, slide presentations, and articles to reference for use on your site.

Whether you or not you understand how to use tags, chances are you have come across them if you have ever used blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, or bookmarking sites such as Delicious. While each of these channels has their own mechanisms and conventions for using tags the primary function of those tags remains the same - organizing content. Twitter, however, is distinctive in that it reserves its own name for its tagging system; "hashtags." (which you'll recognize on Twitter by the use of the hash or # symbol prior to the tag).

Blogs, photos, video, and bookmarks can benefit from the use of many tags when they are uploaded. Twitter, again, distinguishes itself, however, by favoring a "less is more"and approach to tagging. It is an accepted convention on Twitter that too many hashtags is unhelpful and, in fact, makes a tweet look too busy and difficult to read. Use tags to not only find content but to identify individuals or organizations who are creating or sharing useful information and, in the case of Twitter, to engage in actual real time conversations or tweetchats.

Individuals who are new to tagging might find themselves asking what tags are best to use for their content. For starters, it is worth considering what types of words might be used to describe your content. A helpful question to ask is, "who is this content intended for?" Understanding who your intended audience is and what terms they might use to seek out your content will help you narrow down on the most appropriate tags to use.

If you are just beginning to use tags, it is often helpful to explore and use tags on broad topics such as "nonprofit," "art," and so on, to reach out to a broad audience if you are not familiar with more specific tags for your content. As the article Thirteen Tips for Effective Tagging suggests, "be a lemming" and follow what others are doing which can also help you discover more specialized, niche tags. Consider using a social media dashboard, like HootSuite, to follow Twitter hashtags to understand how they are used and who is using them or have those tagged tweets sent to you with Twilert.

One tagging tool that is overlooked as a nonprofit resource is social bookmarks. Social bookmarks are used to listen, track news, follow a topic, and receive updates. Social bookmarking sites include well-known sites such as Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Technorati. When using a social bookmarking site like Delicious, tags not only function to help you categorize online content you find interesting but to connect you to other relevant content. In the case of Delicious, you can make your tagged content public, so that it can serve as a resource to others, or private, perhaps to remind yourself to come back to something later.

Another good use of social bookmarking sites is to create group resource lists for collaborative bookmarking. Check out TechSoup's Nonprofits in Second Life Delicious group page for an example of how multiple users can collaborate with social bookmarking. If the thought of what ranks as worthy of bookmarking is daunting, a great way to get started using social bookmarking sites is to tag content on your organization's website so that others may find you.

Tagging is not only a tool for archiving and locating online resources, it can also be used to collaborate with your volunteers and other like-minded organizations and even for fundraising. Tagging can be a great activity for volunteers, as it provides an opportunity to volunteer virtually by adding tags to the digital content your organization has on photo or video sharing sites such as Flickr and YouTube.

The Boomer Esiason Foundation raised thousands of dollars for cystic fibrosis research by working with corporate sponsors who donated five dollars for every tweet or Foursquare check-in charity supporters made that used the hashtag "#tackleCF." UNICEF used mobile tagging technology to raise awareness of the childhood hunger and raise money. The campaign used Microsoft tags placed on supermarket staples such as milk and water and prompted shoppers to donate the value of the items they were shopping for to UNICEF. Donations were followed by an additional prompt to share on social networks to encourage others to participate through donations.

While the preceding should serve to illustrate the value of tagging for online content it is helpful to remember the words of one chat participant who wisely noted, "Tags are a function of your content - not the other way."

To further help readers learn about tagging visit TechSoup's Nonprofit Social Media 101 wiki or any of the following:

• Thirteen Tips for Effective Tagging
• A Taxonomic Tree of Philanthropy
• Social Bookmarking and Tagging - Listening
• Solutions for Tagging and Archiving a Discussion List
• Tagging Tutorials - Part 1 Flickr
• Free Flickr Pro Account Through TechSoup
• Tag! You're It! What Value Do Folksonomies Bring To The Online Museum Collection?
• 40 Hashtags for Social Good
• 400+ Twitter Chat Schedule
• How can you use QR codes if you can't afford a mobile site?