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Your Tag is Showing August 13, 2008

Posted by skmak in Uncategorized.
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I always thought that tagging was just another way for you to organize the mounds and mounds of data that we find on the web.  You can tag blog posts, tag YouTube content, tag your links in Delicious, tag your links in Digg…basically any online content engine has some sort of tagging mechanism.

Quick note: tags allow people to associate words to information they find on the web.  For instance, I found a yummy, yummy, yummy (salivating) baking site using StumbleUpon.  I tagged it in my favorites as “baking” and “blog”.

But, I didn’t realize the opportunity that tagging offers those of us in the business world.  Let’s say that you work for a cell phone manufacturer.  You want people to use the words, “cool”, “technology”, and “wireless”, when talking about your product.  But, how do you know? 

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff give an interesting take on this in their book, Groundswell.  They talked to Ricardo Guimaraes, founder of Thymus Branding, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  Ricardo believes that your brand’s image belongs to the customers that define it.

So, with that logic, the way people tag your company content online should give you some insight into what people associate with your brand.  Delicious offers a URL search that will bring up the tags people have used for that URL.  I was excited to see some of the tags associated with our company website – “healthcare IT”, “government IT”, “jobs.”

This could go the other way, too.  You may find some tags that people have associated because of a bad experience with your brand.  But, remember how I said that we can’t control the message, just hope to influence it?  This is another way for you to learn – listen to - what your customers are saying. 

Gain the insight…tag, you’re it!

Mmmm….Yummy! August 1, 2008

Posted by skmak in Uncategorized.
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That’s Delicious!  Or, should I say, that’s del.icio.us!

Del.icio.us is a self-definted “social bookmarking” site.  Think of it as an extension to your “Favorites” in your browser.  You can bookmark articles, videos, interesting sites…anything!

You can tag and organize your bookmarks to make it easier to find what you’re looking for, and you can search for other users’ bookmarks as well.

Practical uses, according to the site:

  • Storing research for a thesis or article all in one place
  • Bookmarking favorite recipes
  • Keeping track of favorite podcasts and creating RSS feeds for your podcsts
  • Organizing information for travel – where to eat, places to see, flight times, etc.
  • Collaboration – shared accounts can be used to keep a collection of bookmarks for a work or study group

Our marketing department just set up a del.icio.us site for our company, to keep all of our news and press releases in one place.  You can also search to see if other users are bookmarking your sites.

I’ve noticed that some of my more high-tech twitter friends are using Del.icio.us as a resume – bookmarking their articles as well as stuff written about them. 

Tasty!

UPDATE: Delicious has can now be reached through del.icio.us and delicious.com.