Viddler

One of the most under-utilized features of Viddler, or any social sharing site, is use of meta data. To be more specific, tags. Often tags are not even used! And, when they are used they are not being used well enough to really promote the content properly.

So, lets go through proper tagging techniques and the benefits of taking an extra few moments to make sure your videos are tagged properly.

Three simple questions

In order to make best use of tags, all you need to ask yourself is three simple questions. By answering these questions, by using tags, you can be sure that you and everyone else will be able to find your videos quickly and easily.

In fact, asking these three questions can expose your videos to people who may not even be looking for your video specifically. We’ll look into this more in a minute.

• Who?
• What?
• Where?

Three simple questions that can be used on pretty much every single video that you upload to Viddler. Who is in the video? What is in the video or what does it regard? Where was the video shot? Each of these questions may have multiple answers or can be answered in little or great detail.

Lets look at an example video, and pick apart its tags to see how they are best utilized. The Riddler - by: Bryan is a video I shot back in 2003 of my friend Bryan doing the “riddler walk”. I’ve added the following tags, to answer the above questions.

• Who? Bryan Jackson
• What? impersonation, riddler
• Where? Montdale, Pennsylvania at a golf course

This makes it very easy for me to find the video again. It also would make it easy for anyone to find the video under the following circumstances: anyone looking for: Bryan Jackson, videos taken in Montdale or just Pennsylvania, videos taken on a golf course, impersonations, or the riddler. So essentially I’m exposing my video to many more people by adding the proper tagging.

Proper timed tags

When should you use timed tags? Obviously you can use timed tags as often as you’d like, but to really add value you should add timed tags anytime the three questions answers change. When a new who, what, or where changes in the video - you should put a tag on the timeline. This makes it much easier for people to find the portions of your video they are looking for.

So the next time you’re wondering how best to tag your video - perhaps you should ask yourself the three simple questions.