Ear tag, name tag, playing tag… whether it’s a farm animal, a person, or simply who’s next when chasing over the playground. Tags help us identify what’s around us, and the same holds true for the thousands of photos uploaded to Flickr every day. They are our memories and impressions, and adding tags does not only help others find our photos (assuming you’re sharing your photos as public), equally important, they help us find our photos after years to come.

A good example is the tag me that a lot of us are using to mark photos depicting ourselves. It’s a very simply way of making sure you can still find that amazing self-portrait you took a couple of months back. Tags can be general like portrait, street or architecture, but they can also be far more specific like Syringa vulgaris, Lucanus servus or Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream (you can use quotation marks to link words together to make them one tag).

It’s not just about me

You clearly know where we’re heading, and as you can see a tag can be anything that’s meaningful to you or others. If another photographer allows it, you can even help them to better categorize their images, and our Commons institutions in particular invite you to add tags (and comments) to their photos for valuable insights about locations and subjects in their photos.

So why not set yourself a goal to add a handful of tags to your future uploads? We’re sure it will pay off and you’ll see the benefits in no time, as tags, titles and descriptions are invaluable when looking for and sharing content with others.

Photos from newspaper_guy Mike Orazzi, Mr-Wild, and Bruce McKay Yellow Snow Photography.