The amount of data published to the web on a daily basis is mind boggling. Ten years ago you’d need to be a certified computer geek to update a web page. Now all you need is a Twitter account and you can start spamming the Internet with every moment of your life. Blogging is now the norm: we Twitter the mundane, we post rants and stories, we publish photos and videos from our phones and so we report on the world around us. As the amount of content grows so does the need to filter and search out the interesting and relevant, as well as group various perspectives on the same event into one story.

In order to publish your content into relevant search terms and meta blogs, you content needs context. And the most effective way to give your content context is with tagging.

Tagging your content allows both automated search bots and online users to easily pull out groups of interesting and relevant content based on the tag(s) they share.  The Iran Election is a recent example of how tags powered the ability of thousands of bloggers to collaborate and basically create their own “TV Channel” (or rather “Blog Channel”)  for the world to tune into.  They created that channel by simply adding the tag “iranelection” to their content.

[NOTE: on Twitter tags need to preceded with the # symbol.  This is called a hash-tag.  It's that same thing as a tag in other social media channels, except Twitter adds a bonus when you use a hash-tag: it gets turned into a link to their search page for all Tweets sharing that hash-tag.]

Twitter Page for #michaeljackson

What this means is by uploading their content under the tag “iranelection”, bloggers all over Iran collaborated and built these “Blog Channels” without anyone actually having to set up a website and manage the content.

For example:

1. On Flickr, photos and videos tagged with “iranelection” were added to this page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/iranelection.
2. On YouTube, videos tagged with “iranelection” were added to this page: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=iranelection&search=tag
3. On Twitter, updates tagged with “#iranelection” were added to this page: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23IranElection

It’s important to note that these are permalinks.  Meaning that the moment someone uploads an item of content with a specific tag (to Flickr, YouTube or Twitter for example), a blog for that topic (tag) with a permanent address is created for the world to see, and for others to collaborate on and share.

It gets better.  And I’ll use Flickr as the example as to why.  All that content added to Flickr under the tag “iranelection” did more than create a blog page on Flickr, it also created a blog that can now be embedded into other websites and applications.  For example, I am now going to insert a slideshow of the Iran Election into this article and it will take me about 20 seconds . . . .

The result is that now FairfieldVoice.com has a rich set of content from the Iran Election and I didn’t have to upload a single photo or video.

How is this relevant to Fairfield Iowa community?

Consider several people attending the Art Walk. They publish photos, videos, tweets and posts to the web: pushing content into different social networks under different accounts all with different urls.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could give all that related content a common, static address on the web that everyone knows about? A way to group all that great content into one collaborative “blog”?  Wouldn’t it be great to have a blog with (for example) everyone’s photos from the Art Walk over several years time?

Well there is a simple way to do just that . . . and if you’re paying attention you already know how.

The trick is for everyone that wants to participate in the collaboration to agree to a common tag. A group of experienced web developers and social media geeks have come up with a simple tag that people can use to collaborate on the topic of Fairfield Iowa.

• Flickr photos or video, YouTube video, general blogging: tag with fairfieldia.
• Twitter: add #fairfieldia anywhere in your post (note: Twitter requires tags begin with the # symbol, it’s call a hash-tag).

This allows websites, like say Fairfield Voice, The Chamber of Commerce or The Iowa Source, to capture content relevant to Fairfield. It also greatly helps Fairfield content in online search.

For example, creating the slide-show below is as simple as going to http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/fairfieldia (note that the url is simply flickr’s tag url with ‘fairfieldia’ on the end) and grabbing the slide-show.

Normally when you publish content you have to have “followers” on your different social networks in order to make sure they get your updated content. But how do you follow “Fairfield”? You can’t unless you add every single person who publishes content on the topic of Fairfield. So instead, tag your Fairfield content with fairfieldia and follow that tag (and encourage others to do the same).

For example, on Twitter, follow the tag #fairfieldia and get content from anyone blogging about Fairfield, whether you follow them or not: Twitter Search for #fairfieldia. Wouldn’t it be great if you could follow Fairfield Arts and Events by watching out for #fairfieldia on Twitter, and EVERYONE was collaborating on what events to see and where to go?

Have an event to announce?  Own a store and have a sale to announce?  Looking for someone to carpool to Iowa City?  Tweet with #fairfieldia.  The more people who use that tag, follow that tag and the more sites that embed the recent results of that tag into their pages (see the bottom left of this page for example), then the more we can as a community can start harnessing the real power of social media and together increase the relevance and value of our contributions to the Internet.

Start using the fairfieldia tag and see the power of social media work for you, whether you’re a person or organization.

For additional inspiration on the power of social media, watch this excellent presentation given by Dr. Michael Wesch of Kansas State University.  He gave this presentation at the Library of Congress in on June 23rd 2008.

[Local Fairfield resident Will Merydith is a husband, father, web developer and writer for Living In Small Sizes.  The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily the opinions of the Fairfield Voice.]

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• How to Find out Which Sites Have Embedded your YouTube Videos (makeuseof.com)
• Your Guide to Iran Election News Online (pbs.org)
• Breaking the wall (news.bbc.co.uk)
• #IranElection Crisis: A Social Media Timeline (mashable.com)
• Images From The #iranelection (techcrunch.com)