Label Your Posts!

What are labels and why should I use them?

Labels are just key words that attach to any post. They allow you to browse posts by label - for example, to see all the posts in an animation blog labeled "stop-motion". Labels are a way to organize or index all of your posts by topic - which makes it easy for you and your readers to find what is needed quickly. They make it possible to find the proverbial "needle in the haystack."

In most other software (like photo-editors) and blog platforms (like Wordpress), they are called tags instead of labels.

How do I make labels?

Over to the right of your post, under Post Settings, click on Labels.

Type your labels for the post in the box, separated by commas.  For labels, think of any words that have to do with the topic(s) covered in your post.

Underneath you'll see a list of previously used labels. To use those you can either click on them or type them.

For this post about labels, I'm going to use the labels in the box:
labels (duh), tags (for those who don't know that Blogger calls them labels), tutorial, and gadgets (since we will add a gadget to show our labels).

In this example, gadgets is a label I had used before, so it brought it up in the white box when I started typing it.

Press done when finished.  You can add more labels later if you think of some.

How do I let people use my labels?

Labels usually show at the footer of a post, along with the time and share buttons, such as on this earlier post.

Clicking on one of these labels will bring up all the posts with that label.

The best way to use labels is to display them in a gadget.  Go to your Layout settings, and Add a Gadget.  In the pop-up list, choose Labels.

The default configuration settings for Labels shows them as an alphabetic list.

You can also arrange with the most-used labels at the top (by frequency), and you can show the number of posts using each label.

Alphabetic list of labels in a gadget.

The user can click a label to see all the associated posts.

I changed my title to "Browse by Topic", which I think is more descriptive of what people can use my labels for.  They will probably also understand that concept, even if they don't quite get the concept of labels or tags.  At least, that's my theory.

This time I'm showing my labels as a "cloud" - which is usually known as a "tag cloud".  I guess in Blogger it's a "label cloud".

Here's an example tag cloud from my other blog (since it has more labels than this one at the current time).

The more often a label has been used, the larger the type size.

Clicking a label brings up the posts with that label assigned to them.

Mr. Allam has a blog that uses a list of labels, with the frequencies of use.

iTeach.iCoach.iBlog

If you don't have too many labels, this is a great way to do it.  If you do have a lot of labels, there is also an option to exclude some from the gadget.

How can I use my own labels?

Labels also help you find your old posts quickly. In the Posts overview, I told it to only show my posts on my other blog with the label "typography" (using the pull-down in the upper-right corner.)

Use them!

Get in the habit of assigning labels to everything you post - even if you aren't using a labels widget. It only takes a few extra seconds.  You and your readers will be glad that you did!