#FindOutFriday Summer School Specials, Lesson 7: TAG - You're It!

What's the best way for a random audience to find your works when you don't have direct details for contact? How does a new fanbase find you all on their own; with no-one else to alert them to your existence? Basically, HOW do you harness the power of the Almighty Internet and draw it's traffic to you? Simple! By tagging of course!

Think about the way that you use Google. You want to find something, so what do you do? You enter the name, or search term of what you're looking for and hit that 'Enter' button, right? But have you ever thought about how those search results are determined and how you can make them work for you?

www.deerohdeer.co.uk

'Tagging' is essentially the equivalent of running your favourite neon highlighter over your item of interest, by pinpointing the key criteria that you want people to focus on. Deer Oh Deer Ltd. works for instance, will always be tagged under 'Fashion' and 'Vintage' first and foremost, before anything else.

So that covers the first step of how to put you in the spotlight; but how do you make it work for you? Well simply put, you need to associate your search term with relevant topics that people are interested in and generate a definite high volume of web traffic. Case and Point:

Interviewing the lovely Ladies of StooShe was a fun experience and their involvement in sharing the piece was invaluable; but it is their name tagged to the post, that keeps a daily audience visiting a feature that is now a few months old.

Tagging is not just restricted to blogs and social network posts though. Every file that you upload, saves the file name as it's search keys. I am forever uploading pictures for various projects. Every photograph I place in the public domain, is entitled with the terms of reference that are most likely to receive the highest amount of web hits. Associating popular search terms with your project will automatically draw you a fresh audience looking for related items under a general search.

For another example, look to the vehicle that has catapulted the Humble Hashtag to bigger and faster fame than Justin Bieber on a YouTube short! For now - #ThatsAllFolks!

Enjoy your rainy weekend fellow Britons; let's try not to spook that rumoured heatwave!

Until next time...

ES ;)