Social Networking: Tag You’re It

Or maybe tag and you’re the shit?! The good shit, the best, on top of your social media game.

Tag, tag, tag. It’s the number one piece of social media advice I give to every business and organization. Tagging puts the network in social networking. As I mentioned in my Marketing Plan musings, the whole reason we’re on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter is to connect with other people. In bizland that often means connecting with other businesses, vendors, partners, customers, even those you may perceive as competitors in the same market space (rising tide lifts all boats, people.)

Aside from all these “technical” reasons below, the simplest reason to tag is you’re almost guaranteed a Like from whoever you tagged. Who knows, you may even get a Share. Now that’s some dopamine that’ll help anyone get through their work day.

Facebook Tagging

Not only do you show appreciation by tagging and thus highlighting other businesses on Facebook, but you increase the reach of your own post. A friend on the Greater Franklin Development Council (GFDC) is promoting a Challenges and Innovation Local Business Forum. How to increase event promotion beyond the members of the group? Use your panelists! Especially when one of your panelists is representing one of Maine’s biggest and most beloved companies, Renys. By tagging the panelists in event promotion posts, those posts may get seen by people who like Renys but only have a tenuous friend of friend connection to the GFDC.

I used a screenshot instead of embedding a Facebook post because styling embedded Facebook posts is a pain in the butt! If you’re reading this before February 3, 2021 then get in on this biz forum. The panel is full of creative thinkers.

Instagram Tagging

Instagram tagging works a little differently. If you tag someone in your post description it helps highlight their company. If you tag them on the image it puts your image on their page (which helps you gain new followers, and tells them ‘hey, feel free to use this image in your marketing.’) Here Maine Crisp smartly tagged fellow food crafters, Maine’s most popular magazine, and the photographer, who should always be credited with a tag. Click the image to see the tags.

and so Maine Crisp appears on Down East Magazine’s tagged images with their 115k followers, on Crooked Face Creamery’s tagged images, with their 1,600 enthusiastic fans (I know ’cause I’m one of them, I mean have you tried the smoked ricotta?!) And also on Kennebec Cheesery’s page and Fredrikson Farm’s, because Maine’s fine food crafters work together to support the local foods movement, much appreciated by us eaters of good food. It’s a beautiful image and Maine Crisp did one heck of a job getting it out there… to make us all hungry.

Twitter Tagging

Twitter is such a noisy swamp that it’s difficult to be heard. Businesses or media organizations with lots of followers will barely check their news feed. Instead they will only look at their notifications. So if you want that media outlet to see your tweet, you tag them in the tweet. You can also tag images on Twitter. However, if you only tag the account you’re trying to reach on the image, as opposed to within the words of the tweet, your tweet will appear in their “All” notifications but not their “Mentions.” Those with thousands to millions of followers are unlikely to wade through All notifications. It’s simply too time consuming. Tag them in the tweet. Write separate tweets to tag competing organizations in their own tweet (they’re not going to retweet anything promoting their competitors.) You can of course tag complementary businesses and organizations in the same tweet.

Twitter conversations are most active in news, politics, entertainment and what surprised me, education. I learned that from Kingfield Elementary School Principal, Dr. Johanna Prince whose Twitter feed is a well-rounded example of selective tagging and hashtagging to further discussions (rather than business promotion.) Here she is reaching out to Scratch Team, an online community with 100K plus followers, and showing #edtech in action:

Go Dr Jo! Kingfield is lucky to have a leader conversant in ways to use technology in education.

Whether you’re promoting an event, fostering discussion, trying to help out a friend’s business, or aiming to increase your the reach of your social posts, tagging is key. And just like with hashtags you CAN overdo it, thus annoying everyone. So keep it targeted and aim well, friends.

(and tag me if you share this… 😉