Tagging people on Facebook, when done with a generous spirit, can make you fast friends.
Why tag people on Facebook? To be nice, of course! To reach out. You might want to:
- Promote their upcoming exhibits
- Talk about what a nice job they did teaching a workshop
- Brag about their art
- Gush about how much you enjoy their book
The best place to mention people (“tag” them) on Facebook is on your business page because it is public. Anyone can see it or link to it.
Be sure to point your tags to other business pages rather than personal profiles. Again, this is so that anyone seeing it on your business page can then go to a public page to see more. This isn’t possible if you tag a personal profile and the content is protected – as it should be.
To tag someone’s page, you must first be a fan of (“like”) that page.
When typing your comment and it comes time to mention the name of the page you want to tag, type @ followed by the name of the page. Facebook will populate a list of page names for you to choose from. You can see in the image below that I typed “@Lois” and three names came up.
If you don’t use the @ before you type the page name, you’re not tagging, just mentioning.
Just click on the correct name, and Facebook will highlight the text in your post. This shows that the tag is in place.
If the text isn’t highlighted before you click “Share,” you’ve done something wrong. Double check to see that the wording is exact and that you are, indeed, a fan of that page.
When you add tags, your posts appear not just on your page, but also on the pages of the people you’ve tagged. This lets them know you’ve mentioned them while showing their fans that they are being talked about by others. Buzz! Instant friends!
To finish my real-life example from above, I was giving a high five to Artist Conspiracy member Lois Primeau for an award she received. After finishing the post and sharing it on my wall, it looked like the image below. Notice that “Lois Primeau – Artist” is in blue and, therefore, hyperlinked to her page. If you visit Lois’s page, you will see this same post on her wall.
I went to a little extra effort and found the image of the award-winning painting in Lois’s Facebook photos. I included the precise link to the image, which brought up the picture of her painting on my wall. This resulted in 10 Likes for Lois and a handful of kind comments.
Start tagging and making more friends!
(You can also make friends commenting on this post.)
9 thoughts on “How (and Why) to Tag People on Facebook”
Thanks for this post. You’ve cleared up my confusion about tags, and what they are about. You always manage to help clear up confusion. Thanks Alyson
A great post and makes a shortcut to support things I like, where previously it has taken me ages to get all the images and links together. Thanks.
This was super helpful. Just tagged someone! Thanks. Always wondered how to do that!
With my blind daughter becoming quite an artist and being recognized in so many ways, this stuff is so hard to keep up with. I learn something new everyday. Thanks for this new info about “tagging”.
Tag you are it!! : )
Thanks for sharing this. Now I know what the tagging is meant for and will use it – like today.
Thank you for this, Alyson. I just did that with an artist who I don’t personally know but I like her work, and sure enough, my note and my page are now showing on her page. What a great way to spread the word about something that you like, as well as about your own page. Great tip. Thanks.
All: Glad to help! And so many people tagged me as a result of this post. Very cool. I’m grateful for every one of them.
I’ve had people tag me, but it has been in a different context and, I think, with the intention of advertising themselves. They post one of their paintings on their FB profile and tag me and a heap of their contacts under this image. Then their image appears on my profile and I get endless emails whenever someone responds to the tag.
Since I read this article I am tagging other artists I like on facebook, and it’s amazing to see that it just works the way you promised! And for me it’s a wonderful way to show my admiration for my fellow artists. I always include the artwork I like the most from their albums, which hopefully ecourages others to click on the link. Thanks for this very good and useful hint!