Writing | Self Improvement | Business

Tags Or Topics, What’s the Big Deal, Anyway?

How Do I Use Tags?

Tags are a useful tool for a writer on Medium and they can be used in several ways.

Medium allows you to add up to five tags to your story.

The Medium algorithm uses them to connect readers to your stories. Writers sometimes overlook Tags, thinking they aren’t important, or casually selecting Tags without considering their impact.

The Tags you choose make a difference.

Tags and Topics

Tags are sometimes confused with Topics, which are broad categories used by Medium to allow you to choose subjects you are interested in reading about. When you tell Medium what your interests are, you’re talking about Topics.

To see the available Topics Medium uses, click on your profile image and select Customize Your Interests.

Sometimes Tags and Topics are the same.

Stories about Humor — the Topic, will often have Humor — the Tag added by a writer who is savvy about these things.

Choose Tags that are relevant to your story. The Medium algorithm looks at your Title, your Text, and your Tags when deciding which readers to put your article in front of.

If you choose a Tag that has nothing to do with your Title and your Text, you may confuse the algorithm and disappoint the reader.

Never disappoint the reader.

Let’s assume you’ve selected Humor as your first Tag. (Note, spell it using the Medium convention. The Tag Humour will come up but it’s not an official Topic, which defeats the purpose.)

The selection of the next four tags should also be relevant to your Title and Text as well and. This is a moment where you have a chance to expand your readership horizons.

• You could go for another Tag that is also a Topic, such as Travel if you’ve written a funny story about your recent trip.
• If you choose Comic or Satire as your second Tag, you will likely be covering some of the same readers as Humor. The choices are endless.
• Political Satire, Parenting, Workplace are all Tags that might relate to your story and connect you with a wider audience. It depends on your story.
• It’s up to you to make the best choices, but it’s good to be aware of how your tags will connect you to your audience.

Topics and Top Writer Status

You might have noticed some writers have notes from Medium on their profile indicating they are a ‘Top Writer’ in one or several topics. It’s a Medium thing, like earning a badge, and it gives you a bit of prestige as a writer. See the blue arrow in my image below.

It also gives you visibility in searches.

When you use the search tool on Medium’s main page, entering the Topic Poetry, for example, you see this selection: Stories, People, Publications, and Tags.

Clicking Tags brings you to a screen that shows Poetry related tags. They are Poetry, Poetry on Medium, Poetry Writing, Poetry Sunday, and Poetry in Form.

When you click Poetry again, you arrive at a screen where you are able to choose from Top Stories, Archive, and Top Writers. You can see that Eli Snow comes up as the first Top Writer on the date of my search. It’s well deserved. I love her poetry.

To earn Top Writer Status in a topic, you need to write consistently about that Topic, and use the Tag for that Topic frequently. For example, writing a lot of poems using the tag ‘Poetry’ will increase your visibility. It doesn’t hurt to edit your profile to include the Topic in your bio. You can see Topics at the orange arrow in my profile below. If you have a publication, one of the tags should be Poetry.

One approach is to choose a Topic to focus on and write a bunch of articles about it. If you are consistent, your writing is high quality and you remember to use tags, you may achieve Top Writer for that Topic.

Once you’ve achieved Top Writer status in a Topic, you need to maintain that status by writing frequently in that Topic. You can’t rest on your laurels.

Tags and Publications.

I didn’t learn this tip until I created my own publication. (It’s Words In Motion if you are interested in finding out how you can become a writer.)

When you design your publication, you’re able to create pages that sort writer stories into categories, that you define.

They appear along the lower border of your header. As you can see for Illumination, the categories are Business, Poetry, Fiction, Philosophy, Science, Technology, and Self Improvement.

When submitting to a publication, have a look at their main page to see what tags might help your article’s visibility.

Here’s the main page for Words In Motion. You can see there are fewer categories to consider. Poetry, Relationships, Business, and Writing are the ones I’m using right now.

If your Title and Topic relates to any of the categories in the publication of your choice, select it as one of your Tags.

Custom Tags

I know several writers on Medium that always use their name or a specific unique word as a Tag for their stories. They use it as a custom search tool and swear by it.

Publications will sometimes use the name of their publication as a Tag to increase visibility and to allow readers to more easily find their stories.

Tags demystified. — Voila!

Writers Connect to Build Engagement!

As a lifelong learner, I gather new ideas by observing how other writers engage with their readers.

When you’re shooting for the Moon, don’t forget to notice the Trees.

A good conversation is a two-way street. We sometimes get caught up in telling our story from our point of view. It’s good to step back and listen once in a while.

If you test these ideas for yourself, tag me (pun intended), and let me know how it worked for you.

Our hardworking editorial team has been fine-tuning Illumination’s Submission Guidelines. I’m happy to present them to you here.

Have a look. There are changes that may affect the articles that you submit.