Whether it’s in internal corporate communications or within a news offering, a multitude of messages, content, and content types from various sources often flood target audiences daily. Proper organization of content and the right structure are becoming increasingly important. This lays the foundation for efficient navigation within your app. This applies both to the personalization of the news feed and the ability to provide targeted, additional content and information on specific keywords and topics.
In tchop, content within an organization is organized into channels. Within these channels, there are sections, called mixes, which can be organized in a dynamic structure in the news feed or in section and topic lists. Now there is another way to segment content: the creation of so-called “tags”.
What are Tags?
Tags are simple yet powerful tools for categorizing content. They function similarly to keywords or labels, allowing users (as well as editorial and administrative teams) to mark specific topics or categories. By adding tags to content, it can be easily organized and filtered, leading to better discoverability and potential personalization.
Tags in tchop work across channels, meaning all content within your organization can be structured and packaged into engaging content bundles and newsfeeds.
Important to note: Tags are an option, not a requirement. Those who do not wish to use them will not face any disadvantages or additional effort and can simply ignore them.
Volle Kontrolle durch die Redaktion
Anders als auf den bekannten Social Media Plattformen kann bei tchop nicht jeder Nutzende Tags anlegen. Dies würde zu einem Wildwuchs von inhaltlichen Formulierungen führen, dabei soll ja genau dies verhindert werden. Daher werden Tags zentral in der Organisation durch Administratoren angelegt und verwaltet. So wird sichergestellt, dass eine stringente, passende Struktur geschaffen wird.
Es wird daher prinzipiell empfohlen vor der Einführung einen Plan zu verabschieden wie genau Tags genutzt werden sollen, zu welchen Anlässen, Themen und mit welchem Ziel.
Es können zwei unterschiedliche Arten von Tags angelegt werden: Unsichtbare Tags, die nur durch die Redaktion sichtbar sind und die der Nutzungsauswertung dienen (mehr dazu weiter unten) und sichtbare Tags, die für alle Nutzenden sichtbar sind und auch auf den Karten selbst dargestellt werden. Das Gute: Tags können auch später sichtbar gemacht werden. Oder umgedreht zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt, wenn das Thema keine Relevanz mehr hat, unsichtbar gemacht werden.
Ein wichtiger Aspekt bei Tags ist nämlich auch deren Pflege. tchop erlaubt zum Start das Vergeben von bis zu 100 Tags jeweils für die sichtbaren und unsichtbaren Tags. Wir denken, dass dies ausreichend ist und dass es manchmal auch angebracht ist, nicht mehr relevante Tags einfach zu löschen.
Full Control by the Editorial Team
Unlike popular social media platforms, not every user in tchop can create tags. Allowing everyone to create tags would lead to a proliferation of inconsistent formulations, which is precisely what we aim to prevent. Therefore, tags are centrally created and managed by administrators within the organization. This ensures the creation of a consistent and appropriate structure.
It is generally recommended to have a plan in place before implementing tags—considering how exactly tags will be used, for what purposes, topics, and goals.
Two different types of tags can be created: invisible tags, which are only visible to the editorial team and are used for usage analysis (more on this below), and visible tags, which are visible to all users and displayed on the cards themselves. The good news is that tags can be made visible later on, or conversely, made invisible at a later time if the topic is no longer relevant.
An important aspect of tags is their maintenance. tchop allows the assignment of up to 100 tags for both visible and invisible tags at the start. We believe this is sufficient, and sometimes it may be appropriate to simply delete tags that are no longer relevant.
Tags and Mixes
Another very exciting feature is the ability to specify whether new content in a particular mix should automatically be assigned a specific tag. This can save a lot of time. Additionally, both the mix and the tag can be used to structure the content.
Many tools also offer automated tagging of content. Many large publishing houses, for example, use such technology. However, this often leads to a large number of tags, resulting in long-term reduced usefulness. We believe that tags should be used “intelligently” for current topics, campaigns, and goals. Ultimately, the question behind this is always: is the content, in the form of segmentation, relevant, and does it offer a concrete added value?
Tags as a Navigation Option
Visible tags are automatically displayed on each card in the news feed. Clicking on a tag opens the corresponding content feed, just like on popular platforms. Users can delve deeper into a topic at any time to see the latest content related to it.
Additionally, more options are planned. For example, a tag module in the web app, which displays current tags on the right side—similar to LinkedIn—could be offered. From here, users can quickly access the latest content associated with the tags and see which topics are currently in focus.
In the future, there may also be the possibility to “follow” specific tags or subscribe to push notifications for a particular tag. However, these forms of personalization often come with some hurdles, so it’s important to carefully weigh the pros and cons. In principle, this can only be an “add-on” to the editorial news feed, especially since the majority of users are hesitant or do not use these personalization features at all.
Evaluation of Individual Campaigns and Topics
The great thing about tags is that they can be easily and efficiently used for usage evaluation. For example, if you want to measure the overall reach of a specific content campaign or the engagement with a particular topic, this can be done simply through tag filters in the usage analysis.
Just as filtering specific channels is possible in the navigation of usage evaluation, this will also work for tags. Invisible tags provide editorial and administrative teams with the ability to filter topics that are not visible to the users themselves.
Summary and Outlook
Tags will be rolled out as an update for all customers in the coming weeks. In principle, they should be considered an option, meaning no customer is required to use tags. They can simply be ignored if desired. In any case, we recommend that you at least come up with a simple, small concept for how, why, and for what purpose tags should be used before implementing them. This doesn’t need to be an extensive set of rules, but experience shows that tags can become a powerful and exciting tool that can quickly become unwieldy and confusing over time.
Important: Tags are also associated with a necessary app update. Only when the app is up-to-date will tags be available for all users on mobile.