Lately I’ve been trying to make my blog more social on Facebook. In the process, I’ve noticed that a lot of bloggers have a lot of trouble with tagging–particularly new bloggers. So why don’t we have a quick tutorial about how to tag on Facebook.
What is Facebook tagging?
This is where you turn someone’s name or blog name into a link. Just like in Twitter, except in Facebook you tag their display name not their screen name.
Why should I tag someone?
Tagging can do multiple things:
- It alerts the person you tagged that they’ve been mentioned in a post. This way, they’ll be sure to see it and respond accordingly.
- If the person you’re tagging has friends that you don’t have, whatever you say will be shown to them, as well because of the tag. (This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you’re posting.)
- It’s a great way to credit another blogger for something you’ve posted or shared.
- If tagging a website, it gives your readers/followers/friends something to click on so they go to the exact website you mentioned. This way, they don’t have to Google it and search. It increases the likelihood of people going to the site because you’ve done all the work for them.
- Same as when tagging a person, if you tag a website, the people who follow that website will see what you posted. So if you tag from your website’s FB page, they can find you.
How do I tag a person or blog?
It’s actually really simple! You use the “@” symbol. Let me show you!
For this tutorial, Trine from Creative Pink Butterfly will be assisting me. Follow her on Facebook!
See how “Creative Pink Butterfly” is a link? (Meaning it’s blue and you can click on it.) Here’s what I typed to make that happen:
For today’s post on Blog U, @Creative Pink Butterfly will be assisting me.
Here’s how it looked on Facebook as I was typing it:
You can see that I’m not even finished typing “Creative Pink Butterfly,” but there is a drop-down menu (that blue area). When typing a name, multiple people will pop up. However, she is the only person on Facebook with the name I started typing, so she’s the only person who popped up.
In order to turn her name into the link you saw earlier, I’ll click on that selection in the drop-down menu. And it will look like this:
The highlight shows that this will be a link once I click “Post.” All I do now is continue typing out my message. Just be sure you don’t backspace or you’ll have to type the whole name all over again until you see her pop up.
Let’s try it with a person’s name!
I realize it’s hard to see after my huge, long name, but the linked name is “Trine.” Notice that her last name isn’t included. You can include a last name, but you don’t have to. Here’s how I did it like this, though:
Just like I did above, type @FirstName and see if they pop up. Since I’m replying to something she said, she’s the first person to pop up. If I hadn’t been replying, other people would have popped up. If the correct person doesn’t pop up, type the last name in as well.
Since she popped up immediately, I clicked on her name. Just like I did earlier.
First and last name are showing. Most people leave it like this, which is perfectly fine! If you want to leave it like this, ignore the rest of this tutorial and keep typing your message. If you want to use only the first name, keep reading.
The reason I use only first names when possible is that I always think it sounds too formal to include last names, so I delete it (imagine if people came up to you in real life, calling you by your first and last name–that’s how it reads in my head).
Al you do to delete the last name is press the “Backspace” button once. Be careful not to press it more than once or you’ll be redoing all of this. (Not that it’s hard, but it can be frustrating to do it over and over again.) Hitting it only once is enough to delete just the last name. So it will look like this:
From there, you just keep typing your message.
And that’s it! That’s tagging.
Not so hard, right?
What else do you see people doing on Facebook that you would like to learn? How about other social media platforms? Making tutorials is what I do best! 🙂
