Get Folksy with Folksonomies

One of the most important social media trends to watch this year is the increasing influence of tags, also known as folksonomies. on Flickr, a photo sharing site, and Increasingly you will see many sites adopt tags to create more structure around user-generated content. Just this week, launched a for blogs. Here's their for example. In the months ahead I bet we will see other sites - including open source news sites like terrific paper on the subject. Folksonomies present both a threat and an opportunity for marketers. Tags make it easy for consumers to share and discover user-generated content in the subjects they are passionate about. On the downside, I predict that this year at least one company will watch in horror as its top-secret, stealth product shows up on moblogger. And there will be little they can do but watch. Although tags are far from perfect (they generate a lot of false/positives), you should nevertheless be using them to keep your finger on the pulse of the American public. Right now, at a minimum, you should be monitoring your company/brand tags on Flickr as well as your competitors' folksonomies. smartly advised marketers to take in planting links and/or photos on these sites. However, be careful. While criticize it. In addition, tags also make it easier to find your true customer evangelists. Regardless of whether you view folksonomies as a threat or an opportunity, they are here to stay. I am going to be blogging about this topic throughout the year so I have created a new category on my blog and also set up a Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

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