Why Tags Matter

Getting your work seen long after it disappears from the latest stories list

As an editor of 5 publications, I read through tens of articles, poems, essays, and pieces of fiction every day. One of the biggest problems to getting your work the readership it deserves is in your simple use of tags.

Every publication uses tags to organise the pieces it publishes. If you check the header bar you will be able to see the sections in which your work will end up. These sections are essential if you hope to have your work read after the first few days in a publications pages.

You see, once published your article will stand tall and proud on the main homepage screen, it’s carefully chosen image sparkling in the screenlight trying to draw in the reader’s attention. As the day passes, a few more pieces will be published, and after a day or two your slaved over words will drift lower and lower down the screen and past the attention span of most people. And this is when your tag usage can save your work from obscurity and give your work a hopeful boost.

Tags on Medium are often likened to hashtags on other social media platforms, which is one way of looking at them, but they are so much more when used as a search tool and as a way to keep your work at the top of your publication’s section list.

Here on Promptly Written we have four reader interest tags which are Poetry, Fiction, Articles and Essay… nice and simple. By choosing the tag that matches your work, your piece will drop into that section on our publication as well as the main front page. However, it will stay close to the top of that section a lot longer than it will on the main page where it will appear in the latest stories until newer published pieces knock it off the top spot.

In addition, in many of the publications I am an editor for, we create a curated piece each month celebrating the best work in each section. It’s a little difficult to get noticed for that if your writing isn’t appearing in the correct section.

So, do yourself and your editors a huge favour and go back and re-read the submission guidelines one more time. Make a note of the tags you are being asked to use and pick just one so that your poems find the poetry lovers, and your fiction finds those hunting for a new imagination to get lost in.

Tags aren’t just to help you pop up on the recommended list for Medium reads, they can help that imaginary perfect reader to find you within every publication.

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