Use "Tags" to Organize your ActiveRain Blog 

While Tags no longer have the SEO power they had once held, you may still want to use them on your ActiveRain blog. Recently, I've heard a few RainMakers say they really want to be able to organize their "inside blog" so it looks more like their "outside blog". For those of you who are new to ActiveRain, "inside blog" is slang for your "AR Blog" and your "outside blog" is a feature you get with a RainMaker subscription that allows you to claim a custom domain. This information works for ActiveRain members who aren't RainMakers too, so everyone can use this!

Before we start, look at my tags for this post. You can find the tags at the bottom of this post - right above the comments section. You'll see that I'm using the tags "organization", "activerain help", and "tags". When we're done setting up the links to my tags, you'll be able to find any post I tag with "activerain help" by clicking on my link for "ActiveRain Help" on the right hand side of my blog.

The quick, easy way to use "tags" to organize your AR Blog is to be consistent with how you tag your blog posts. If you're consistent with the tags you use, the trick I'm going to show you will make your tags automatically organize your topics. For example, let's say you write a blog about your new listing in Ballard. You may want to use the tags: "Homes for Sale", "Ballard", and whatever type of home it is. Then, next week, you write a blog about a condo listing in South Lake Union, you might use the tags: "Homes for Sale", "South Lake Union", and "Condo". When we're done setting up the links, visitors will be able to find both of your listings under "Homes for Sale", information about Ballard under "Ballard", and information about condos or homes under their respective links. You could have a link for each city or neighborhood you work in! The other cool thing is that new blog posts with the same tags will show up in those lists automatically.

To get started, go to your blog and click on one of your tags.  You'll see a page with all of the blogs you have tagged with the word you clicked.  

Copy the URL of the page with the list of your blogs.  In my example above, the URL is: http://activerain.com/blogs/jeffgray/tags/activerain%20help  Yours will have the name of your blog in the URL.

Then, go back to your AR Blog and create a link by clicking the [add/remove] button found next to "Links".  The top arrow in the screenshot below shows exactly where that link is on your page.  From there, you'll see a blank for Link and a blank for Link Text.  Paste your URL in the Link blank, and type whatever you want the link to be called in the Link Text blank.  In my case, it's ActiveRain Help.  

Now you can repeat this process for each tag you want your visiters to be able to browse, and you're done!  Now you have an easy, intuitive way for people to browse your AR Blog posts.