What Do You Blog About? Check Your Tags

Once you get past the issue of explaining what a blogger is and does, then comes the question, “What do you blog about?”

Do you know? Do you really know what you blog about? You might think you know but do you really know? There’s a way to check.

If you are using a tag cloud or keyword heat map plugin or feature on your blog, your most popular tags will be the largest in your tag cloud. If you use a tag frequently, the odds are that you blog about that topic.

The above graphic is from my main site, Taking Your Camera on the Road. The largest tag words are:

• business of nature photography
• photography
• camera
• doing
• going
• learning
• nature photography
• nature
• photography techniques
• planning for the road
• telling
• travel
• traveling
• web pages
• WordPress
• website development
• israel

From this list, it looks like I write a lot about nature photography and the business of nature photography along with travel and website development including WordPress and web pages, and about Israel. Then there are those large Doing and Going tags. It looks like I write about way too many confusing topics, right?

A tag list is a good reflection of what you are blogging about, but you also need to understand how it works and why it says what it does. With this information, you can cull the facts about what you blog about.

Let’s sift through the tags for information about what I blog about.

Doing, Going, Learning, Planning for the Road, Business of Nature Photography, Photography Techniques, Web Pages, Website Development, Telling, and Israel are categories. WordPress automatically turns categories into tags. Yes, these are topics I blog about, but a few months ago I decided to start this blog, Lorelle on WordPress, to hold all my website development and blogging topics, including WordPress topics. So I can explain to someone that I do blog about website development, blogging and WordPress on one of my blogs.

Over time, these category tags will reduce in size comparatively. It also means I need to go through and do a better job tagging my posts from among the photography and travel educational material. So tagging can help to remind you of administration tasks left undone. 😉

Israel is a strange one in the list, but that is part of our personal blog category called Telling. We have just returned to the United States after living in Israel for the past 5 years, so you can imagine I had a few things to say about life there over the past few years. This, too, like the website material, will reduce in size now that I won’t be talking about living in Israel.

This is another good example of how to monitor what you are blogging about. If you find a specific topic tag growing in size and it isn’t really reflective of what you blog about, let it serve as a warning to get back on topic, or make an overall change in your blogging topic.

Take away the web stuff, and what I write about is nature photography and travel and topics related to those subjects. Bingo, I have just summed up what I write about on that site.

Now it is easy to explain to people that I have two blogs. On one I blog about WordPress and blogging and the other I blog about nature photography and travel.

That pretty much sums up the topics. I still have to work on explaining blogging to people over 60 years old, but I’m getting better at that. If they don’t understand, I just tell them that I’m a writer and I write about nature photography, travel, and web stuff. 😉 That pretty much covers it.

If you need more help explaining what you do to others, I’ve written a series of articles called “Ten Words or Less” about how to convey your job description to others to help improve your networking and business contacts.

• Networking – Casting Your Net-work
• Networking – Ten Words or Less – Form
• It’s What You Do, Not Just Who You Are

Related Articles

• A Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and wordpress.com Users
• Tags and Tagging in WordPress
• Categories versus Tags – What’s the Difference and Which One?
• The Problems With Tags and Tagging
• Categories versus Tags: Defining the Limitations
• The Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin
• Helping the Ultimate Tag Warrior Work with Jerome’s Keywords WordPress Plugins
• Adding Del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati and Slashdot Links to Your WordPress Blog
• Adding Technorati Tags to WordPressMU Sites
• Putting Some Thought Into Blog Categories and Tags
• Tags Are Not Categories – Got It?
• What Do You Blog About? Check Your Tags
• Playing Tag With WordPress
• Top 10 Tips for Technorati Tricks
• Tidying Up Tags – A Technical Review
• Lorelle on WordPress Now Part of Technorati Tools
• Combining Ultimate Tag Warrior With Jerome’s Keywords WordPress Plugins – Meet Tags in the Head
• Link Referrals – Linking to Site Search Tags
• Abuse: Keyword Spamming versus Tag Spamming

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