Blog 4: My Desktop is on the Net – The Social Bookmarking Phenomenon

My desktop is on the net – Is yours? I'm talking about 'social bookmarking.' What is social bookmarking? Waters (2010) describes social bookmarking as a communication method that allows individuals to store, organize, search and manage bookmarks of web pages on the internet and share those bookmarks with others.

The more pertinent question is - how is the social bookmarking phenomenon relevant to us as PR practitioners? Some benefits of social bookmarking include: Ability to ascertain if people are bookmarking our organization's website or news related to our organization, and the numbers of people doing so. This reflects our visibility as well as brand loyalty and recall, and ultimately whether people are interested in our organization. Second, the types of tags people use to label our organization help in gauging public perception of our organization – do we have a favorable image? What can we do better? After running a campaign we can re-evaluate public bookmarks to determine if corporate image has improved.

Rule of thumb before embarking on a PR campaign - conduct research to effectively tailor your message to your target audience. So, I propose a fun, interactive exercise to better understand public tagging behavior. My question- How do you usually decide what kinds of tags to use? How do you classify tags? I’d like to hear from you.

I’ll get the ball rolling - I usually classify tags based on (1) topic or content and (2) field or genre. Using a standard set of keywords (e.g. Travel) helps me instantly recall the content. Also, by categorizing material, I can go back to it later, make connections and track story/issue developments. For example, for an article relating to touring the Grand Canyon, my tag would be 'Travel' and 'Grand Canyon.' Your turn now! : )

Public tagging behavior:
Q: How do you usually decide what kinds of tags to use?

Tags which:
(1) relate to the topic or content (e.g. Dieting Tips, Pierce Brosnan)
(2) relate to a specific field or genre (e.g. Health, Entertainment)
(3) indicate the author of the material (e.g. Waters, 2010)
(4) reflect my feelings or personal opinion towards the material (e.g. Funny, Interesting)
(5) indicate a follow-up task (e.g. For Work, For Shopping)
(6) indicate material relating to someone else (e.g. For dad, Tim’s class project)