[Survey] Tagging your art

Posted 6 years, 5 months ago (Edited 6 years, 5 months ago) by Caine

Before I start this off, I want to make it clear that my stance on art tagging is very positive: I think people should tag their art to gain more visibility & make it easier for people to find things they're interested in!

However, I know a lot of people actually don't feel this way: there is still this weird and in my experience a pretty deeply rooted idea in a lot of art communities that tagging is just a way to cry for more attention, and "real" artists don't tag and magically just get their art popular without it.

I'm really curious to see how people here feel about tagging art (this includes both the site's own tagging category ie. furaffinity and hashtags on sites like IG and twitter) and what their general thoughts are!

Just remember to be respectful & avoid policing people in your responses / imply tagging or not tagging is inherently a bad thing, m'kay? This is a thread to discuss, not to point fingers and yell.

Anyway without further ado, here are some questions:

Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?
Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)
How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?
Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"?

Feel free to also add your own thoughts!

reinapepiada

Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?

N...ot exactly? I have my own organizational tags, I only make a feeble attempt at popular tags every once in a while... I get really embarrassed about it, even if I don't dislike it when other people do it? I guess it's something to do with vulnerability and openness lolol (sweats)

Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)

I mean I take my chances every now and then and sometimes they work! especially if we're talking fandom, but I'm not experienced enough outside of tumblr to really say somewhere else... I try to tag firealpaca on twitter and I never get attention for it lolol

How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?

I think OP has their shit together and knows exactly how to get more viewers, or is attempting at least. I just dislike when the tags are totally unrelated or too vaguely related to the content, that I feel is just not appropriate.

Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"?

I don't consider myself one of these, I get embarrassed about it but I don't judge other people like I do myself. I feel tagging too much is 'cheap' when it's a bunch of tags with very little relation to the content :( it clutters those tags with content people don't really seek in there IMO. otherwise it's fine! I mean if it works and gets you more audience, especially if you publish mostly original work, that's great :D

Caine

@artyrambles I'm so sorry you had to go through that; I get people are always curious and fascinated by "uncommon" things but honestly imo the history blogger did wrong in doing what they did: like it's given if a popular reblogs sth in a not-so-nice manner there will be a lot of unwanted and negative attention :/ Even if you don't harm anyone whatsoever

5inthemorning Same hat!! In a culture where trying to make yourself stick out from the rest and make people pay attention to you is considered bad, it can be super deeply rooted in people and show in other spaces too.

ElithianFox I do the same with OC tags! I don't use the folders atm since I find them limiting so tags are the way I arrange my OCs instead. I also didn't know we had a search function in the first place until like... last year... so my tags were strictly for myself

216th A really good point, and I can honestly see it! There is this odd assumption skill is the only thing that gets you far online, even though that's not true at all: advertising yourself smartly and marketing are honestly just as important, because I keep seeing TONS of amazing artists who get little to no traffic due to lack of advertisement

PrinceSawyer

Do you personally tag your art? If not, why?
When I upload on sites like dA and FA, yeah. I don't typically know what best to tag my art, and I worry about over-tagging (especially with different variations of words, like adopt/adopts/adoptable/adoptables etc etc, or if they're two words, it could go on and on....) I don't know what tags work best for my art, on sites like Tumblr and Instagram, though I have meant to upload more on those platforms.

Does the site you use to post your art affect the types of tags you use / how many you use? (for example tumblr only recognizes like 4-5 tags afaik)
Didn't know that on tumblr...which makes me even more concerned about what the heck to tag my art as on there. ; n ; But on dA, if I'm selling adoptables, I go heavy on any tag I think is relevant to what I've drawn. But I usually also pick ones that actually show up when you start typing tags. I wouldn't know how best to tag on FA, so I go with the most generic things I can think of.

How do you personally feel if you see an art piece with more than just 1-3 tags attached to it? Do you jump into conclusions about the OP?
I might raise my eyebrows and chuckle because it's similar to what I've done, tbh. And again, mostly just for adoptables. As for regular art...I don't mind either way. I'd rather an artist tag their art a shitton instead of sitting on like 2 views and 1 fave despite having good art, y'know?

Why do you think there are people out there who find tagging "cheap" and "embarrassing"?
Because there are always people who have that kind of weird, elitist mindset of "if you promote yourself you're selling out, therefore not genuine" or something. I think the only reason tagging art might be an issue is if a popular artist with a fanbase that reacts super quick is taking over the tags, so tagging would be more beneficial to lesser known artists. In some cases, some people just have a complex about what they think 'selling out' looks like. Tags can also look cluttered depending on where they are, but. Tags are there for a reason.

atempause

Tbh I use tags as a way to tell something but not being too obvious about it. My tumblr being the biggest example of that, I just cram a bunch of nonsense in there that I left out in the main post. I stopped caring about using tags properly, nowadays all I use is art and oc/other people's oc and if I happened to make a fanart then name of the thing I drew. Anything else depends on how I feel about the drawing, if I like it I might tag more stuff so more people might see it but that's not happening very often now.