ActiveRain - Your Tags Are Virtual Folders

I've written a couple of articles recently about using tags in your ActiveRain blog posts. I think there is some improvement in this topic, but from my browsing around different blogs, I still see that I'm not sure the concept is still all that clear for some people. So let's continue our discussion on this topic.

Let's take two examples to illustrate. First, as listing agent, you are going to write an article to help your sellers to consider what they should consider for showings as regards to their dogs. The second blog post you are going to write is about an upcoming event in your local town.

Let's pretend that all the blog articles that you wrote, you saved on your local hard drive. (maybe you shouldn't pretend, but that's a different topic!) If you are a prolific blogger you will have lots of articles. How will you organize them? Well of course, you are going to make folders and then also subfolders depending on how many subtopics there are.

So, for starters, you will create folders labeled for buyers, sellers, and local info. Next in the sellers folder you will put a showings subfolder with articles to help sellers prepare. In the local info folder, you will put subfolders for events, restaurants, shopping, etc.

Now here's the point of the day: When you tag your articles, think of this folders and subfolders analogy because tags are like having virtual folders.

So let's tag the article that you are writing about advice of what to do with pets for showings.

Tags: sellers, showings, pets, dogs

Tags are a way of organizing, recalling and hopefully sharing. You want more mileage out of your articles right? You want consumers to know you are a pro at what you do and they need to hire you. What are your specialties? You had better be writing blog articles about all your specialties. Think about this, consumers who come across your AR blog will not know about tags or tagging but YOU DO. Why not put on your profile page links to your articles in each of your specialty areas? If you are a listing agent, why not put a big link to your articles for "sellers". You can do that if you strategically use your tags.

Tags also help you locate specific articles in your archives to share. What if you have somebody that is listing with you and they have dogs. Don't say "I know I wrote that article earlier this year, now where is it?" Ten minutes (twenty minutes?) later you find it. If you tagged properly, you can find it under 30 seconds.

Was the above mentioned article about showings and pets related to you or your target area? NO it was a universal article. Notice in the tag list there is nothing about your name or your location. Now you may want to stuff those things in there because you are all worried about SEO (we get a little crazy with SEO don't we!). Resist the urge - you should not do that.

Let's take a second example for tagging. In my local town there is an event coming up next weekend called Applefest held every October. Let's say that if I were a real estate agent who wants to represent myself as "a local expert" you better believe I'm going to be writing about this! I will write an article before to tell everyone about it and then I will write an article after showing photos of the day and how it went.

How am I going to tag those articles?
Tags: Warwick NY, Warwick NY events, applefest, things to do with family

Every one of those tags is useful to call up similar articles. The town specific one will show articles not only events but shops, restaurants, parks, etc. The second tag could have been simply just tagged events but in this case the extra mention of location is really to emphasize locale and for visual effect you are targeting that location.  The applefest tag would call up articles for all years and your before and after articles (e.g. how was it LAST year). The last tag would call up all the other articles that you have written helping families see there is so much about your area that they will enjoy

Again, (most) consumers are not going to understand tags but you do. Tags can be used to your advantage and invest some time THINKING and STRATEGIZING on how you can leverage them. They should not be "that dumb step I have to take everytime I post."

Let's do a quick review of HOW to use tags by grabbing the corresponding URL. First, go to your blog page where your articles are listed. In the address bar, append /tags and press enter. There you will see what's called your "tag cloud". These are all the tags that you have used and they are all LINKS. Click on the specific tag that you want to feature. That takes you to a page listing all the matching articles. Go to the address bar and select the URL and copy it to the clipboard. Now head over and edit your profile page and put a link to this listing. Put a headline, Do you want to know about all the local events in our area? Click here and then create a link using the URL you have in your clipboard. You could do something similar in sending a helpful email to your clients with lists of articles that you think they will find helpful.

So, do you understand tags just a little better now. I hope so!

In fact, let me use tags to create an article list of my other posts talking about using tags

aha! now you've got it! :)

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About the
Author

Craig Daniels  is a Technology Manager residing in NYC who specializes in applied technologies in the fields of Architecture and Real Estate. Craig focuses on finding the best uses of tech as can be used to help a business be more successful. He is keen on always seeing the perspective and viewpoint of his audience and he tailors his teaching to be easily understood. He teaches by means of this blog, online courses and webinars, as well as one-on-one remote sessions with persons located throughout the country and beyond.