Tagging: What is it Good For?

I’ve run into a lot of very smart professional communicators who just don’t yet get tagging.  So, this is a first in a series of three posts that will hopefully explain tagging, using them in practical applications for marketing communications and its implications in moving to “modern media” communications.

Are you tagged?  If you aren’t sure go to Flickr and type your company name or product category (such as “cameraphone”) into the search box – or just click on one of the words you see in various sizes of blue.  Chances are Flickr will display several to hundreds of photos as a result of your search. I’m guessing you’ve been tagged.

Tagging is assigning “keywords” to content, such as the photos on Flickr, bookmarks on del.icio.us, or blog posts for Technorati.  Maybe you’re somewhat familiar with tags as in “meta tag” keywords embedded in web page code to help some search engines categorize your site. But, we’re not talking here about your father’s tags.  No, these tags are thoroughly modern tags, created by everyone, for everyone turning photos, web pages or blog posts into shared mindspace (hang with me, this isn’t going to get metaphysical).

Tagging may seem chaotic on the surface, however tagging is an incredibly powerful media tool.  It is as much a media channel as it a social experience of the content that exists within the medium. 

Now, don’t be put off if tagging hasn’t seemed terribly intuitive to you.  It is actually quite simple. And you already do it for yourself when you bookmark a page in your web browser.

To help get your mind around how it works in the larger world, Gastrocast is a great example of putting tags (and modern media) into action.   ChefNeal has a great blog as well as a delightful podcast show, Gastrocast. To say it is about cooking seems anemic, as it is full of rich sounds, texture and culinary illumination. 

To help us listeners be better cooks, ChefNeal uses Flickr (a photo-sharing web site) to post photos of recipe stages, ingredient photos as well as images of tools or techniques to accompany his podcasts.  He tags each set of photos that correspond to each of his Gastrocast podcasts with his chosen keywords. For example, for his Gastrocast #14, ChefNeal assigned the tags ‘grilling,” “gastrocast,” “podchef” and “summer cooking” to his Flickr photos for that show. For purposes of his podcast, he links listeners via his blog to the specific photo set for that show, as well as the podcast audio file.  So, the full Gastrocast podcast experience becomes a “when I want it” audio broadcast and a shared (public) Flickr photo set/slideshow. 

ChefNeal isn’t the only person who uses the “grilling,” or “podchef” tag on Flickr, however.  By searching on the tags “grilling” or “podchef” you can also see everyone’s photos who have assigned those tags to their own photos, as well as any ChefNeal may have assigned to photos from other Gastrocast shows.

Tagging, at its core, is a super-simple keyword filing system.

Where it gets messy is that there is nothing that says what tags (keywords) are “available.”  There are no pre-assigned categories or hierarchies like you find in Yahoo, for example.  You assign the tags (keywords) simply by what makes sense to you – and so does everyone else. Just like you do when (if) you categorize your very own bookmarks in folders in your web browser. What’s different here is you can access documents based both on how you (with your personal tags) “filed” it, as well as how everyone else tagged (“filed”/described/categorized) that same document. 

Better yet, because others may have tagged very different documents with the same or similar tags as yours, tagging leads you to documents or resources you may have never been aware of. In essence, by tagging everyone is contributing to a shared set of resources filed under that tag.

In Flickr the documents are photos; in del.icio.us the documents are bookmarked web pages and in Technorati the tags are tied to blog posts.

So what? big deal; a simplified, shared document description methodology….  That is what it appears to be on the surface, but here’s where you have to make the leap out of “old media” thinking into modern media thinking. 

What results from tagging is a shared categorization system that reflects how individuals describe documents, rather than a highly structured location system, like the Dewey decimal system, for example.  It defies “standardization,” doing something that a standardized filing system (or search engine) can’t.  It creates an evocative “view” of a document; one based on how it fits into people’s own lives, work or consciousness.

Tagging moves us away from a single “expert” determination of the context or categories a document “fits” into.  It totally removes control over the context of documents or even physical objects (e.g., Flickr photos). While you may think of your press release in the context of  “Corporate/News Room/New Product Press Release,” someone else may think of that document as “New Gadget I Gotta Have” or “Who Are They Kidding?”

The point is, documents you create do not exist in your context but in the context of every viewer and all the viewers.  A document is the sum of its tags.

Think again about that last sentence.

Next we’ll look at how to use tagging in del.icio.us and Technorati and how it fits with your communications efforts.

Comments

[Prentiss Riddle]

"Great minds travel in the same channel," as my mother always used to say: this is close to the title I used for a not particularly earth-shaking paper I wrote for a class this spring.

Tags: What are They Good For?
http://prentissriddle.com/school/papers/385q/riddle-2005-tags.pdf

Thanks for the roundup on tagging and for mentioning Shadows in part 3.

[Podchef]

Linda thanks for the kind words. I was excited to see my PubSub and Technorati Search Feeds for the keywords, "ChefNeal", "Gastrocast", and "Podchef" all lit up this morning.

"Podchef"--and here I give credit to Lloyd Davis (http://perfectpath.co.uk) for coining the phrase--and "Gastrocast" are great examples of how a name, or brand can suddenly "make it" in a large playing field. Words which weren't in common circulation are now being searched with Google. A Technorati search of these words will bring up all the instances not only of my own blogging, but other times I have been mentioned in the Blogosphere and other places I have commented--like here.

I represent a small microcosm--perhaps why this works well as an example. My tags, for the most part, are purposfully focused towards one end--people from whereever finding my material on a number of different avenues; All non-traditional. All in 5 months. Even if things never grow beyond where they're at presently in terms of podcasting and my involvement: blogging, podcasting and tagging have all served to show me the unbelievable power of this new marketing paradigm.

Thanks again for a wonderful article.

Neal