Tags. A word used so much, yet with so many meanings.
Tags are helpful, I'm told, in a blog, because it makes readers stick around. They see a tag they're interested in, click it, and bam!, all posts with that tag will show up and then he/she will read all of them, while dutifully clicking on 30-40 AdSense/Chitika/AdBrite ads and a couple of ad-widgets (yes, there are those, too). Whew.
Frankly, I don't believe one word of that is true.
I think that, similarly to how people have grown to be experts at ignoring ads, they'll (unwillingly, perhaps, but still) ignore anything on a page that isn't specifically the content they're there after. Especially people who know what an RSS reader is. And let's face it, it's those people that I target with my blogs.
So, in spite of Posterous having tags, I plan to not use them. Ever.
This is a challenge because it means that discovery of other posts is only possible by going to the home page and scrolling down. And then hitting Next Page and so on. And since I'm not very sure this will ever happen, the challenge is that each individual post has to be worthy of your attention.
Let's say, for argument's sake, that you would click on a tag if it existed to discover other posts. You'd be more likely to do so if the post you're reading isn't especially well written, or entertaining, or filled with useful content. This means that all of my posts will have to be all that.
I can promise I will try.
As for you, there's always clicking on the title, which takes you to the home page. And scrolling. :)
