Tag Protocol
How To Lose Fear and Gain Audience Using Tags
I read a lot of posts every day. I consider it part of my well being to view at least 50. I don’t just read them, I always look at presentation with the eye toward how I can make my posts more appealing. How are the pictures posted? How is the bold print used? How long are the paragraphs? How many words?
I look at the scorecard at the bottom. You know the one. Votes and comments. I pay particular attention to any post that gets lots of comments and lots of upvotes. How can I make my posts more like these?
The last thing I look at critically is the tags. What did this post use? Is that why it got the votes/comments that it did or didn’t? How can I improve my tags?
I see a lot of obvious mistakes in the tags.
What Is The Tag System?
This article is about Steemit and the Steemit tag system.
At the simplest tags are part of the master filing system for the platform. There are tens of thousands of posts on Steemit every day and the number increases every day. Obviously the platform needs a filing system so that the patrons can find things. How would it be if every post was filed simply in the order it was received? Not good. That database would soon become unsearchable just due to sheer numbers.
Tags provide ‘pigeon holes’ to sort posts with. It’s a sort of additional hierarchy that allows search functions to ‘pre qualify’ posts that someone wants to see.
On Steemit you are allowed to use up to 5 tags. The first tag is the ‘primary’. That is going to be where your post is archived under that specific tag. The other 4 will be secondary search terms to allow the system to serve up qualified answers to search queries.
image courtesy of the author
Why Are Tags Important?
Everybody should be aware of the tag column in Steemit. On the left hand margin of your feed page titled All Tags. The top 49 tags are listed there and sorted in terms of popularity. Life is first followed by photography, steemit, kr (Korea) and introduce yourself. Tags on Steemit are always listed in lowercase letters with no spaces between words (eg: landscapephotography)
If you scroll to the bottom of the tag column you will get to the ‘View All Tags’ link. If you click that link you will be shown all the multiple use tags that are used by authors. Not only is that list sorted alphabetically, but it has some columns for Posts, Comments and Payouts.
For instance, if you scroll down to the most popular ‘life’ tag you will see that it has over 650,000 posts, almost 700,00 comments and over 10 million SBD in payouts. In contrast the landscapephotography tag has over 4200 posts, near 19,000 comments and more than 90,000 SBD in payouts. Huge difference.
In addition each tag on this list has an embedded link that will take you to the TRENDING page for the specific tag. There you can see what is currently the most popular posts in the tag you are considering.
image courtesy of the author
Common Mistakes
Don’t just list the most popular tags. Try to match your post to your tag. Putting a nature post in the introductions section just because it is more popular will only bring you scorn and the kind of attention that you don’t want. There have been some flags given for mis-posting.
The introductions tag is for introductions. A lot of people follow the introductions tag and tend to vote them up if you are a brand new Steemian. Those that post a second introduction post tend to not get the love simply because they aren’t new.
Unless you are writing about the platform, steemit is a wasted tag. You are already filed on Steemit if you are posting there.
You are really looking for the Goldilocks equation here. You want your tags to represent what you are posting about, but not competing with everybody and everything. There is a tag selection that is just right.
First Tag Is Critical
You want to chose your first tag very carefully. This is the tag that determines your overall category that you will be shown in and is the tag for the trending function.
You need to be careful to not oversell your post. Is it a photography post? Photography is a huge topic, do you want to compete for attention with all the other photographers that will post today? Perhaps you want to consider landscapephotography or portraitphotography or macrophotography. All three of those will put you in a sort of a subset of the photography class and you will be shown with others that are posting the same.
Use Your Tag Line Carefully
Not every tag can really help you, but some can be used to great effect.
There are several countries and regions that really support their members. Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Canada and Aceh are among them. If you are from one of those places and support your fellows the tag line is perfect for that.
Most contests require a tag entry to compete for the additional prize that they offer. A perfectly good use of the tag line.
There are upvote bots that require a tag line entry to qualify for an upvote.
There are several societies that can give you added views and value for your post if you include them on the tag line. Since this is an Adsactly post we will discuss their program.
By just including adsactly as one of your tags you are welcome to put your post in the post promotion bin. One post is chosen every day for the Adsactly post of the day which is very nicely supported by our members both financially and in viewership.
What To Do?
Careful choice of tags can make a huge difference in how your post is viewed and voted. You can keep track of which lead tags served you best pretty easily. Find the tags that work the best for your style and content. Don’t waste your tags, they are really important to you.
Authored by: @bigtom13
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