As a social media consultant people often ask the question “What is the best way to write and post on social media?” The answer to this question has many parts and each could be answered with a dissertation. Today I want to focus just on tagging an author.
Getting any traction on social media can be difficult. You have to have followers, post valuable content, engage, and be social. When you correctly tag an author and/or the publication in a post, that account is notified of your tag and may interact with the post.
Here is how you can go about tagging authors for different posts on a few social media outlets:
You can contribute a tweet or retweet to an author in two ways. If you are directly sending out a tweet from your account and wish to tag the author, you may tag them by simply typing the “at” symbol and their Twitter handle. It should look like this: @username. Or if you are trying to retweet someone, while the shows the author of the tweet, you may comment on it by instead selecting “Quote Tweet” and adding a line that includes the authors handle and a comment.
LinkedIn tags can only be used in updates and photographs. If you wish to make a longer post it does not allow tagging, neither within the content nor within the tags used to organize content. However, tagging someone in a quick update or adding a contributing tag to a photo or infographic is just like the other sites. With a quick use of the “@” button, you can add an author’s tag to a post.
Pictures are what drive Instagram. This means that if you want to build an presence on Instagram you need to have a whole lot of pictures. You can tag others in your Instagram post in several ways. You can “tag” them in the picture or include their handle in the post.
Tagging an author on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn can be used when you share an article, quote, or idea from an outside source within your business’s industry. This increases reliability and could potentially spark conversations and connections. Authors can also be tagged within your small business. If an employee posts a specific tweet or shares something on LinkedIn you can tag them to show they wrote it.
Overall, tagging makes your social media feel more personal, instead of a faceless, mundane, account for just another small business. Tagging also allows you to connect with others in the online environment, everyone loves the mentions so your efforts will be noticed!
