subject: Tagging And Folksonomies The New Viral Marketing Tools [print this page] Tagging And Folksonomies The New Viral Marketing Tools
One of the newest consumer phenomenons is known as tagging, which is also known as folksonomies since it is short for folks and taxonomy. With tagging consumers are able to take online content and create organizational structure. However, with folksonomies consumers are not only capable of filing online content under tags, but they have the ability to share it with others using a worldwide taxonomy in which they have created, which is how tagging works.
Consumers work together with online content categorizing under keywords or tags on such sites as Flickr, which is a sharing site for photographs, and del.icio.us, which is sharing site for bookmarks. These sites are useful if an individual has photographs on their iPod and wants to post them on Flickr, then they can file then under the tag 'iPod.' As a result, these photographs will be visible to the community of Flickr under the 'iPod' tag whenever consumers look for images under the keyword 'iPod.' Currently, there are more than thirty-five hundred photographs listed under the keyword tag 'iPod' on Flickr.
What is so important about tagging? Tagging has instantly became a natural complement to any search engine. No matter the size of a website, all over the internet they are getting on the folksonomy train. As a result, in order to help users better they are creating tag like structures to help locate content easier. Of course, tags are not perfect, but they are a great way for marketers to keep up with the heartbeat of the public.
By subscribing to a RSS feed you could easily monitor the way consumers are tagging information that might be related to your business, website, products, or service. RSS feeds are live focus groups that are available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but the best thing is that they are free. Think about it! Free marketing information for your business. Another great marketing tool are folksonomy sites.
