Hash-what?

Tags allow you to categories and add context to your article by associating specific keywords or terms to your blog posts, Twitters messages, Flickr photos, Delicous bookmarks etc. In the case of Twitter, adding a “#” (AKA pound sign or hash sign) makes the tags clickable and feedable so you can follow all posts across user who are using that tag.

Short, memorable and relevant

By attaching tags, like-minded people can more easily find related content. The key to good tags are:

• Accepted and used by many people
• Short and descriptive
• Relevant and memorable

Indeed the more people using a tag, the more content which aggregates under that tags nomenclature. Here’s tag suggestion for the Vancouver Olympics:

Macro tag:

TNMH recommends using: #van2010 - shorter than #vancouver2010 and more accurate than just #olympics

Micro tags:

You can (and usually should) use multiple tags to categorize and organize your content so augment #van2010  with tags specific to:

• Publishing community tags: i.e.:  #vo2010 for Vancouver Observer, #va2010 for Vancouver Access 2010 or even #CBC or #huffpo if publishing to CBC or Huffington Post respectively
• Topic or event tags: #luge #media #protest #CODE (allows drill down from the broad van2010 topics)
• Affinity group tags: #tnmh #ORN (this helps others in your project to keep an eye on each other)
• Descriptive tags: personal adjectives to add flavour to your posts i.e. #absurd, #stellar, #hawt #drunk #lost

What tags are you using?

Remember, the fewer tags and more users, the merrier. Comments welcome, discuss.