It’s very exciting to plan, create, and maintain any internet community. For those of you who are just starting out, I am excited for you! It may be useful to keep in mind that most successful blogs and networks go through many phases and transformations before they start producing major results. For those of you who have been following moxie since the beginning (August 2009), you may have noticed our transformations. We started as a simple political blog, then advanced to an online newspaper covering a range of topics. Then we were a community network focused on bridging the gap between the students of Rutgers University and the residents of the city of New Brunswick. And now we are a reliable source for new media education, specifically referring to multimedia composition, digital communication, and community development.
“There is a constant process of refining, interrogating, and crystalizing of the concepts which represent your site.” Â -Â Dr. Paul Hammond
Hammond is referring to what people in the blogosphere call a “tagline”. In order to advance your project, you must come up with a few terms or phrases that represent the style and type of content your site produces. Then label your site with this tagline. You will see this sometimes under the title of the site – as with The Huffington Post, or in your browser window at the top – as with Read, Write, Web.
The idea is to research and rake through the internet to find how other people are presenting similar concepts as your own. As you discover popular terms that represent the core concepts of your site, chances are others searching for common information will also use the same terms. Use these terms to your advantage by joining the right conversation. When I say conversation, I am referring to the chatter and information populating the web about various topics, media, and ideas. How do you join the right conversation? By coming up with an effective tagline through research. Through this process of research and refine you will come up with a tagline that is easily searchable by search engines. When people use Google to search for information that your site happens to provide, your site will be one of the first to show on the results feed because your tagline includes popular searched terms.
Keep in mind the tagline may change as your site evolves. Be sure that a majority of the content you produce is related to your tagline and continue to use popular searched terms, tags, and labels in your posts and pages that relate to the tagline to ensure maximum results.