There are major benefits to tagging people in your notes, videos or statuses on Facebook. On the flip side of that, doing it incorrectly or to the wrong people can tarnish your reputation with them or even lead to a de-friending. We’ll start with the pros and cons of tagging and then move into some tips and practices that I’ve found to be effective in avoiding this issue completely.
Pros
Reach – This is probably the number one reason people push their content on Facebook through tagging. Suddenly your content is viewable through not only your own network, but to each of the networks of your friend that have been tagged. It’s possible to increase your personal reach from a maximum of 5,000 into well over 10 or 20,000 in a well tagged post.
Connection – When you tag the people that will most enjoy or resonate with your message you help strengthen your connection with them. People will be excited and feel special when you correctly target them.
Increased conversation – Building off of connection, the people that are tagged in your videos can feel somewhat obligated to respond and will help generate additional conversation on the topic.
Increased sharing – Playing off of relevance once again, tagging the people that will most enjoy your content increases your chances of it getting shared. In most cases, that person’s network will also enjoy your work because they share common interests with the friend that you tagged.
Cons
There is only one negative I could find with tagging people on Facebook so please comment if you can think of some other downsides.
When you don’t tag the right people, you can seriously piss them off. How does it make you feel when someone posts something on your wall that is totally irrelevant or begins advertising like its some sort of billboard when they haven’t even connected with you? There are consequences to tagging willy nilly just to extend your reach so I wanted to share those next:
How to Best Avoid Upsetting People When Tagging
Know Your Friends – The only reason you should be tagging people is because you think the content will be of direct interest to them or their networks. When you’re tagging just for reach and trying to leverage your friends that have much bigger lists you’re damaging your relationships with some of the most influential people on the web.
Tell People Why They’re Tagged – To clear up any confusion you can always tell people why they’re tagged in the very beginning of the video. Some people don’t get why they’re tagged in content that they’re not featured in (I still get that with my videos from time to time) but that’s easily remedied by an explanation.
Ninja Trick to Up Your Tagging Game:
Let’s say you’ve created a video about a hike that you did. You can use the search bar that you use to find new friends or groups to search what people have been talking about.
So I would take the words hike, hiking, hiked etc and plug them into the search bar and click to expand all the options and conversations that included those words.
Now I can tell which of all my friends have been hiking recently or plan on going, and then I can tag them in the video because if they’re talking about it already they’re more likely to enjoy the content. If it seems a little creepy you can always send them a message or post to their wall, “Hey I noticed you went hiking the other day, I made a video of my hike and tagged you because I thought you’d enjoy it. Maybe we can go hiking sometime?”
Those are my thoughts on tagging on Facebook. Feel free to leave any of your tips or ways that you make sure to tag the right people for all our readers. I figure Facebook lists are one of the more prominent tools that didn’t get covered in this post.
