Tags, depending on how you look at them, can be both very beneficial to your blogs and a pain. Some bloggers really enjoy being able to categorize their posts in laymens terms, while others think they’re just a cheaper version of categories. I’m not claiming there’s a right or wrong way to run a blog, but looking at both aspects is key in deciding whether you should use the tagging system.

Tags have been around for much longer than blogging, if you consider how some social networking sites such as Delicious and Technorati have been using them since originally launching.

I’m going to point out the straight facts about running tags on your blog. I don’t want to push a certain idea one way or the other – I’m just discussing facts about the tagging system, and having you, the reader, question whether you think you should be using it on your blog.

Tags are Useful for Laid-Back Blogging

The simplest way to look at tagging is a more laid-back way of running categories. You can have both tags and categories running side-by-side on a blog – in fact, it’s encouraged in most cases! They are in fact not one in the same, although many articles will say otherwise.

Some blogs, I would assume corporate or business blogs, may not see a reason to run tags. Their users are looking for the article they want to read, and if they have a specific area or niche they want to read about the categories should cover it. Tags are more general – maybe 2 or 3 different articles will use 1 tag, but 20 or 30 different articles will fall under a similar category.

So what are the Benefits of Tagging?

Overall, it depends on how you look at the tag system. The benefits far outweigh the negatives, if you can even assume there are any. For one, it allows your users to find articles much more targeted to their interests. You may have tons of articles about blogging and writing, but maybe only a few pertain to marketing your blog on social media and news websites. This would allow your readers to click on the tag “social media” and bring up tons of great articles about it – without needing to start a brand new category.

If you don’t have very many posts, though, the tagging system begins to lose it’s purpose. If you are trying to tag a blog with 50 or 100 posts, it overall loses it’s value. You can use categories to suffice in this situation, as there isn’t much benefit trying to squeeze in tags for such a small site.

If you are planning on sticking it out blogging for the long haul, you may end up with archives of hundreds of even thousands of posts! This would be difficult to sort though just by categories alone, so that type of blog would benefit greatly from tags.

Ultimately there is no Right Answer – It’s Personal Opinion!

Personal opinion is what it comes down to in the end. You would be surprised how many people use tagging or don’t just to follow their idols of blogging – really this is completely backwards! Don’t use tagging because somebody else tells you to or not to, use it because you see the benefits of it.

I don’t currently run a tagging system on Jake Rocheleau Blog, but that is because I don’t see the main value in it… yet. I can envision needing to implement this at some point in the near future, but for now I think my blog is small enough where my content can be easily found.

Of course if anybody has another opinion I’d love to hear it – this is just me ranting and frantically typing my thoughts out. Tags just aren’t for everyone – but if you’re running a large blog, it can’t hurt to allow your users a quicker way to access stories, no?