How-To: Use Tags Like a GovLoop Rockstar

Ever notice those little links at the bottom of blog posts and forum discussions?

Most people who post content on GovLoop use these keywords called “tags.”

But I have noticed some common errors that people make in using tags that could prevent their content from being found by other community members.

Tags, also known as metadata or “a keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information,” are critical to getting your brilliance discovered on GovLoop. Especially in the long term as new members join this community and search for content, it will become increasingly important that contributors use tags and tagging effectively.

With that backdrop, I’d like to share a few tips for tags on GovLoop:

1. Create your content. Whether it’s a blog post, discussion, a video or a photo, get your content just the way you like it.

2. Identify the keywords. What are the words that stand out when you read your blog content? How would you want to be found in a search on the site? Who is your niche audience and what language do they use to talk about your particular topic? The answers to these questions are the words that you will use for your tags.

3. Add them to the box below your content. I already have a few words in mind for this blog post, as you can see from the image below.

4. Be sure that the words stick together! I have noticed that many people enter their words and separate them with commas…and yet the words “break apart” when the person publishes their content. Here’s an example:

My guess is that the person did not intend to have social and media as separate words. The same was true for Web and 2.0. Notice again in the image of my tags for this post how I used a hash mark to link the words together.

In this case, social media needs to be tagged as:

• social-media
• social_media
• socialmedia
• “social media”

All four of these alternatives will work!

5. Pay attention to how others are tagging their content. As you read other content across the site, take a look at the tags. You might get some ideas for tagging your own, related content in the future.

6. Follow the yellow tag road! Okay, so the tags on GovLoop are green. But you get my point. If you like one blog post or forum, chances are you’ll want to check out more content like it, right? I’d encourage you to hit those links every once in a while to discover where it might lead you.

So that’s tagging on GovLoop. If you have other tips on how you use tagging, please let us know. By the way, in case you’re looking for other content on tags or tagging, hit the link below.

And to find other How-To’s on GovLoop, all you have to do is…yep, you guessed it…hit the How-To tag.