Tag, You're It | Guest Blogger

Remember Adam? He's back & is informing us on all things facebook tagging. 

Ever wondered why sometimes you can tag and sometimes you can't. Want to pull your hair out bc you have more luck playing blackjack at the local casino... LUCK no more. Read this! 

We are breaking this up into 3 sections today since this blog is uber informative. NOW go get your fb tag on. 

Tag, You’re It. | Part 1

Tagging your friends on Facebook is easy enough – in a picture, you just use the tag photo option. In a status update, you just type @ and start typing their name – Facebook will find it for you and let you select it. Easy enough, right?

Well it’s not so clear cut when you want to involve pages – when you want to tag a page personally, or when you’re a page and you want to tag a person. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty much a screwed up disaster. Let’s start with the easy stuff, and work our way down.

I’m breaking this down into profiles and pages – a profile is your personal account, a page is something you create for your business, brand, etc.

Tagging in Photos – Profiles (i.e. Personal Accounts)

Let’s examine this first from the experience of you, the person, using your profile. Want to tag a person? Great! All you have to do is navigate to the photo you want to tag, and click this “Tag This Photo” option. Voila. Super easy! Don’t pat yourself on the back – a chimp could do it.

But what if you want to take a page? Well too freaking bad kid. Well, mostly too bad anyway. You can tag pages, so long as they are categorized as “Brands & Products” or “People” (categories show up under the company name on their page), and it also works for Facebook Places, which aren’t really the same as “pages” so we’re not getting into that debacle. If your favorite company is categorized as a “Company” (GASP! A company categorizing itself as a company?!) , a Professional Service, or any of the myriad other categories – well too damn bad, you can’t tag them.

But wait, there’s more! You’ve successfully tagged that “Brands & Products” or “People” page but your image still didn’t show up? Check your privacy settings – your photos, or at least the particular folder where the image is saved, must be set to be viewable by everyone. Just to be clear – you can tag freely, but for the “tagee” to see it, your privacy settings must be set accordingly.

 Article Written  By: Adam Lowe

Follow Adam on Twitter! @dudeimbibes

Questions? Let us hear them in the comment section! 

Look out for part 2 - coming up soon!

Update on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 11:27AM by brooke and pedro photography

Tag, You're It - Part Dos

Tagging in Photos – Pages 

Got that swank new page and you want to tag your followers? This is particularly useful if you’re a photographer. Assuming you created your page as a page, and you didn’t game the system by creating it as a profile (you will go to Facebook hell for that), then you’ll need to know how to properly tag people.

It can be done, in a roundabout way. Case in point – I have a profile and I also recently create a page for my photography business, A.Lo Pho.To. After my shoots and editing are all wrapped up, I post images on the A.Lo Pho.To page. I want to retain my brand - I want the pictures to come from A.Lo Pho.To, not Adam Lowe.

There’s a page setting to help make this easier (this same setting will also help you later on in this post, so stay tuned). On your page, click Edit Page, followed by Your Settings (first option up top). You’ll see “Posting Preferences” – make sure you check the box saying “Always comment and post on your page as (page name), even when using Facebook as (your name).”

That setting is fantastic – now you can use your page as you, but everything you post looks like it came from the page. A.Lo Pho.To is posting the photos, not Adam Lowe.

Now has come the time to tag those images. Here’s where all the caveats and confusion set in. First thing – on your page, under “Admins” (right hand side) make sure you are using the page as yourself, not your page. If you see “Use Facebook as (your name)”, you’re currently using Facebook as your page. If you see “Use Facebook as (your page name)”, you’re currently using it as yourself.

And the caveat – you have to be friends (a “like” for your company page does NOT count) with the person you’re tagging. For all intents and purposes, this is simply using your profile to tag another, like you would if the pictures were on your own personal profile page. It just looks like the page is doing the tagging.

Now you can switch to “Use Facebook as (your page name)”, and tagging will work, in theory – you’ll just have to search for people you’re tagging, and it’s a very broken system. Save yourself the trouble and just avoid it.

Tag, You're It - Part Tres

Tagging in Status Updates – Profiles

This should be easy enough – you want to tag a person or page from your profile. If you’ve liked the page or friended the person, all you need to do is type @ and start typing the name of the person or page. Tagged!

BUT – if you want your status update to show up on the page your tagging, make sure your privacy settings are set accordingly. This is super simple – see that little padlock next to “Share” – click it. Choose “Everyone” in the popup list. Now it’s going to show up on the page you just tagged, because it’s viewable by everyone. Of course, it’s viewable by EVERYONE, which means everyone from your kid’s teacher, to your pastor, to your boss can see your post where you just tagged Adam and Eve, complimenting them on the quality of their sex toys.

Tagging in Status updates – Pages

Are you ready to claw your eyes our yet?

This one is mostly easy – pages simply can’t tag people. Pages can tag other pages, just like a profile would tag in a status update, but they can’t tag people. The only current option available – disable the setting I mentioned in Tagging in Photos – Pages, and then switch to “Use Facebook as (your name)” – you can then tag a friend, but for all intents and purposes you’re just a user writing on the wall of the page, tagging a friend.