Blogging Tips

An introduction to tagging

If done right, tagging is a great way to get some extra traffic to your blog with very little effort.

What is tagging?

Tagging is when you mention other bloggers in your posts or invite them to participate in something you have taken part in. It’s commonly associated with blog trains and carnivals however you can tag people in any of your posts. A good example is the ‘8 things about me’ type post which has been circulating around blogs lately, bloggers wrote 8 things about themself in a post and at the end of the post they listed 8 bloggers they wanted to do the same. When other bloggers wrote a post about it they linked back to the person who had ‘tagged’ them.

A great example of tagging

To help illustrate how tagging works and show you how it can promote your blog I thought I would give you guys an example (it was this example which inspired this post!)

Chris Stark from Bookmark Bliss tagged me in his post ‘Changing the World, One Blog at a Time…Unite!‘ a few days ago. The post announced the upcoming Blog Action Day event and at the end of the post Chris posted the names of bloggers he hoped would participate in it.

This is a perfect example of how tagging should be done because :-

Chris tagged over a dozen bloggers who had not mentioned the event in their blogs. The blogs he tagged are bloggers who are not only likely to take part in the event, but also post about it too.
Chris tagged bloggers who are known to always credit the source or inspiration for a post ie. the bloggers he mentioned would link back to him because he brought this to their attention and he named them.

Overview

Tagging is not something that should be overdone in your posts however if it’s relevant, it’s something you should consider doing every now and then to encourage some pingbacks to your blog. It’s also a great way to give a shout out to bloggers you are friendly with and others you admire