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Mar 1, 01:44 am: Tagging and community

At last week’s Nonprofit Developers Summit, I had the chance to talk about the nptech tag with some smart folks. The nptech tagging stuff was the least interesting. Most interesting was the list of nptech community tagging tricks developed in the discussion. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good list of the participants so I can’t give credit so if you were a part of this chime in on the comments.

Here’s the list that I captured, old school, on a notepad with a pen:

• Give them a bookmarklet. Similar to the one that’s already being used by most services (see these 1, 2 examples) but put your chosen tag in as a default tag. This makes it even easier for folks to tag and can be especially useful for users who may not be tagging already.
• Republish the tag. This may just be a single web page that shows the results. This way you can give them instant gratification and use the tagging tool (or tools) of choice as an ultra-light-weight CMS. Again, good for people who aren’t into tagging.
• Make the tag easy. You don’t want them to forget the tag or have it be onerous to use. Of course, the first suggestion makes this one a little less important.
• Feedback information to the group. This is really about doing things like telling them how many people are in their community, who the active taggers are, and what the most popular URLs are.
• Don’t try and explain tagging. It’s not the easiest topic to just get. Most people get it because they see it or use it, not because it is explained to them. Give them an easy way in to using the service or tool and then get into explanation later.

tagged: tagging, community, tips