WRITING TIPS.
How to Properly Tag Writers on Medium and Globetrotters
It really isn't that difficult
This platform is not just for people who love to write or those who love to read, it’s a place for everyone looking for a genuine community. Finding like-minded people, exchanging thoughts and experiences, learning from each other and sharing one’s happiness with others.
Isn’t that why we’re all here?
Well, and just to make it easier to connect with our virtual writer friends and readers and to notify them when we talk about them or want to remind them of something, Medium offers the tag function.
Most people who are active on social media know or at least have heard of tagging friends and family members on Facebook, Instagram or other posts.
And while tagging on Medium doesn’t work a lot differently than on those platforms, I still see many writers not tagging people correctly. You may ask if there is a way to not tag someone the right way and I say, yes, there is.
In this article, I try to answer all questions about writer tags, the ins and outs of why we use them and how you can create tags. If I should finish this article with open questions for you, please shoot them in the comments below and I’ll address them in a second piece.
Why do we use writer tags?
Before I dive into the topic of how to tag writers, we should first clarify the reasons why we use them in the first place, right?
And there are two reasons why we use tags in my eyes.
- To highlight someone else’s work and let readers get directed to this person’s profile.
- To notify the writer we do talk about them in our story.
How does a correct writer tag look like?
This brings me to the next topic on how a correct tag looks like.
You might not have known one can tag a writer without that person getting notified but this is indeed possible. It is possible but will then only fulfill one of the two functions of tagging.
Copying a name from a comment the person left on your piece or simply highlighting their name in their article, clicking copy and then pasting it into your new post, the tag will look as below.
JoAnn Ryan will not be notified of me talking about her but it will allow you, my readers to click on her name and you will get forwarded to her profile. This is what I mean by the wrong way of tagging as it only fulfills half of its job.
To correctly tag writers, you need to copy their Medium URL and those can differ a lot from their actual displayed name but if you do that, their name will appear in green in your text. Only then you know you have correctly tagged a person and JoAnn Ryan will receive a notification and email about me talking about her in my story.
The difference between Medium names and Medium URLs
While most people assume one only has to type a writer’s name and the tag will appear, there is sometimes a significant difference between a writer’s user name on Medium and their URL.
Sometimes you can be successful simply typing a writer’s name behind the @ sign and it will appear but I do recommend double-checking if the correct icon is displayed or you might tag the wrong person.
If I am looking for Adrienne Beaumont and try to tag her I won’t find her using her full name. If you look at my screenshot below, you might see I typed almost her entire name and while a ‘Adrienne Beaumont’ appears, looking at the icon, I know it is not her.
So how do I find her?
I need that Medium URL…
How do I find the Medium URL of a writer?
Finding and knowing the Medium URL of the writer you want to tag is essential in tagging the writer correctly. It might require you to open a new tab while you’re writing a draft but it only needs a few clicks and the knowledge on where to look.
This can be done on your computer or your mobile device. If you are on your laptop or are working through the browser from your phone or tablet, you simply go onto the writer’s profile and look into the URL.
It will start with medium.com/ and everything behind the @ sign is the writer’s URL. Some writers have changed and personalized their URLs, then their name is the very first part of the website address.
And if you do work from your mobile device using the app, you still can tag writers and find out what their URL is.
You also go to the writer’s profile but then click on the share sign. It will display all kinds of apps you can share the profile with but above all the icons, you will see the link of the profile and once again find the writer’s URL right after the @ sign.
How do I tag a writer?
So, now that I know the URL of the writer I want to tag, I can go to the next step and tag the writer. For this step start with putting the @ sign into your text which will automatically turn green and show a list of writers below.
Now you can type (or paste if you copied the name from the URL) the name of the writer behind the sign and with every letter you are typing, the selective list of writers below will change until you finish the entire URL and only one writer will remain.
If you did not misspell the URL, this should be the writer you were looking for. Click on the name with your mouse (or hit enter) and the URL will change into the writer’s display name. Michele Maize now will get notified of me talking about her in this story.
If nothing appears when you are typing in the browser of your mobile device, simply add a space bar at the end of the typed letters and the list of writers will appear.
An alternative way to tag writers
As mentioned in an earlier paragraph, one can tag writers without the use of a Medium URL but in this case, one should know at least the full name of the writer and the picture or icon this writer is using to make sure to tag the right person.
When I want to tag my fellow editor friend Jillian Amatt, I usually only begin typing her name and she will appear as in the picture seen below. Since there aren’t other Jillian Amatts on this platform, it is easy to see I need to select the second person on the list.
This gets a bit more complicated when trying to tag Matthew David who is one of our travel writers as his name is very common and many accounts with the same name are to be found on Medium.
If I type in @matthew, his account does not even appear on the suggested list. But If I continue typing his name including the space bar between his first and second name, then you will see his profile appearing on second position.
Copying tags from one article onto another
Copying tags from one article to another is indeed possible but probably not the way you are attempting it to do. If you have a longer list of writer tags (which Medium btw frowns upon and does not support) you can save time by copying them over instead of typing every name new but you need to know how and where.
If you copy the names of a published piece, you will receive the first kind of writer tag which does not inform the person of your tag. To get the second and correct way of tagging them, you need to go into the edit function of the published story and copy the names of the tags from there directly into your new draft. This way all tags will remain intact.
How do I only use a writer’s first name on tags?
You might have tried before to shorten a writer’s tagged name as some of them include a lot of extras from university degrees over brand and book names but ended up removing the entire tag.
Yes, you can shorten them up to the first word or name but once again, you need to know how.
While you might have tried removing part of the writer’s name using the backspace button, this is not working. Instead, use the ‘delete’ button as shown in the GIF below. It will keep the writer’s name in green and will still notify the person while allowing you to only display part of the name.
I often use this function if I mention a writer more than once in my story and don’t want to always have the entire name displayed.
And what are your editor's URLs?
To wrap things up and since we often deal with tagging issues in our monthly challenges, I want to help you find your editors without needing to research our URLs.
JoAnn Ryan has @joannryan
Adrienne Beaumont has @andiebee-17203
Michele Maize has @soberveganyogi
Jillian Amatt has @artisticvoyages
And I (Anne Bonfert) have @anne.bonfert
Final words
I thank you for your attention and hope you appreciate the hours I put into creating this story. Feel free to share the link with any writers who don’t know how to tag properly and help them make life easier on this platform.
If you still have open questions regarding tagging on your laptop or your mobile device (I have created this piece on my tablet as always), please comment below and I will try my best to answer them.
Your editing team is looking forward to no more tagging issues in stories submitted to Globetrotters.
Thank you
