How Tagging Matters for Writers Who Blog

These are the labels or tags
used for this post.

As writers use blogging as a platform for developing and publishing their ideas, they should not omit using tags (also known as "labels" or "hashtags") with each of their posts. Why bother?

There is a practical angle for tagging: the instructor can find and sort student posts more easily. But tags play a greater role. Tagging has to do with ways of thinking and finding that go along with online writing. Bottom line: tagging helps both to automate and to socialize online content. And for writers perfecting their ideas, tagging helps you reflect on and focus your writing.

But first, what are these things? You can see the images I've inserted that show where labels are added when composing a post in Blogger, and how these appear at the bottom of a post.

Labels or tags appear below a post
(and sometimes via a widget on the side of a blog)

Tags are Metadata
Metadata is data about data. It is critical to helping machines sort and prioritize information. Whenever someone tags something, the computers give more emphasis to those words in search results. Tags get you found by machines, and by humans who have learned how to search for tags and to find content and users that are associated with tags. Interestingly, their usefulness isn't related closely to their formality. They actually work best when they are a casual part of posting content.