Do you know what tags on Substack are and how to use them properly?
You don't know about this?
No worries. You're in good company.
Many writers don't know about tags (=labels).
And so I want to show you how you can organize your little corner on Substack and how to highlight and feature specific parts because there are special featured areas you can capitalize on.
And also, since you are the editor-in-chief, you're managing your whole newsletter, website, and internet publication. It's so important that you decide which parts you want to highlight.
So many asked me about my Members Area where paid subscribers can find all replays, tutorials, and live sessions.
How to add a featured area to my Substack?
We can click on it, and then you will see all the live sessions for members, which are paywalled.
So now we want the same for you. This can be, for instance, a Book Launch Club.
There are so many possibilities. And also, this can be a specific topic.
So for instance, you're writing about flowers, but you're also writing about animals, something like this. And then you would want to have specific categories, specific meta tags you're using for your newsletter.
Similar to a newspaper, you know, where you have sports, you have culture, you have politics. See it as this here with your newsletter, your website, and also your publication on Substack.
So let me go and show you how to add these special featured areas to your homepage and also how to highlight specific areas.
Where to add a custom tag?
Click on Settings
go on Search where you can then look for tags
So, for instance, I'm someone who loves tagging and I'm doing a lot of tagging here. I wrote about Adobe Firefly, or about Canva Magic Studio.
And I tagged them properly. And now we want to add a custom tag.
We click on add
then we would now go with Substack School because I would love to offer my subscribers immediate access to Substack School videos
go on show more tags
search for Substack School.
I would click on the three dots and say: “hey, I want to add this to the navigation bar”
How to add a tag to your Substack post?
Click on a post you published.
Click on the three dots
Click in edit and update it
Click on tags
As you can see, I'm already tagging my Substack newsletter with, for instance, education, Substack categories, educative videos, online trainings, marketing, and so on, because this is going to be very important for the future, as I showed in this video tutorial.
Substack’s new 150 categories
Substack is already in the middle of changing the categories, so in the past, there were about 27 or 26 categories.
Now they shipped new categories. We have now 29 categories, and in the future, we're going to have about 150 categories. This is why today's video is here, because I thought it would be very important for you to show you how to tag because so many don't do it and miss out.
So don't snooze on tagging.
What I would do then is
I would click on Substack School.
I would add Substack School and
click on Update Now.
Now I'm really excited to see what's going to happen if I refresh this page.
Click on Substack School.
Et voila. There it is.
Your newsletter = your magazine/newspaper on the internet
Now, I have this as in a newspaper: I have politics, I have sports, I have culture, so now I have this Substack School.
So people visit my Online Writing Club and see:
Nice! Kristina has a Substack School and a Medium School!
Why I think tags are so important and what the future might bring
Tags are like labels that you use to organize your Substack and also to tell the Substack network and Substack's algorithm and Substack's bots what the post is all about.
It helps you. It reminds you, if you're writing on Medium, maybe of these five tags you can add.
There are specific tags.
In the past, there were about 70 tags.
Now we have more than 500 tags or topics we can use.
So we have this huge topic cloud.
And I guess with Substack, this is something that's also going to come in the next weeks and months.
So make sure to use these tags if you want to highlight specific parts of your newsletter, of your publication, of your website.
🤔Are you using tags? How are you using them? Questions? I’m happy to help.🤔
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The Right Way to Use Substack Tags to Organize Your Newsletter