Tags as Departments: Organizing Community News

When I started building Jottings, I was thinking about personal microblogs. But after talking with communities—from open-source projects to local nonprofits to startup teams—I realized something: the same problem kept coming up.

"How do we share updates without overwhelming everyone with notifications?"

A software engineer doesn't need to read every event announcement. Marketing doesn't need to follow technical architecture decisions. Yet these teams are all part of the same organization, and they do want to stay connected. The friction point wasn't the platform—it was organization.

That's when I started thinking about tags differently. Not as simple categorization tools, but as departments. As micro-channels. As a way to let everyone publish to one place while readers pick what they actually care about.

The Problem With Traditional News Channels

Most organizations use one of two broken approaches:

Option 1: Everything in one channel. Slack, a single email newsletter, one RSS feed. Engineering updates, hiring announcements, event details, product launches—all mixed together. People tune out because the signal-to-noise ratio is terrible.

Option 2: Multiple channels/emails/feeds. Separate Slack channels, different email lists, fragmenting content across platforms. Now you have coordination problems. Did everyone see this? Is there a centralized source of truth? Spoiler: there isn't.

Both approaches have costs. The first wastes people's attention. The second wastes organizational time and creates silos.

Tags as a Middle Ground

Here's what I've started recommending: use tags as your department structure.

Imagine a nonprofit with this tag cloud:

#fundraising #programs #volunteer-ops #board #events #press

Every update gets at least one tag. Often multiple. A volunteer recruitment post gets #volunteer-ops and #events. A grant announcement gets #fundraising and #board. A program impact story gets #programs and #press.

Now here's the magic: each tag has its own RSS feed.

Your development team follows #engineering. Your marketing team follows #marketing and #product. Your founder follows everything. New volunteers subscribe to #volunteer-ops to stay in the loop. The board president only reads #board items (plus maybe one or two others).

Everyone gets a customized view of organizational news without anyone feeling like they need to be involved in every decision.

Why This Actually Works

1. Inclusivity without overload. People stay connected without notifications overwhelming them. They can check their subscribed tags on their own schedule.

2. Async-first communication. Tags work beautifully with RSS feeds, JSON feeds, and even email digests. No real-time pressure. No expectation to be in a Slack channel during business hours.

3. Searchable history. Unlike Slack threads that disappear into archives, every tagged update on Jottings creates a permanent record. Want to see all engineering decisions from Q3? Filter by #engineering. Want press mentions? Check #press.

4. Open-source friendly. You can make your entire site public. Contributors can follow #releases, #roadmap, and #community. Users can follow #bugs and #feature-releases. No gatekeeping or private channels needed (unless you want them).

5. The tag cloud is your organizational map. When someone new joins, they can glance at the tag cloud and immediately understand how information flows through the organization.

Structuring Tags for Different Organizations

Here's how this might look for different groups:

Tech Startup

#engineering #product #design #marketing #fundraising #hiring #company-culture #announcements

Strategy: Core teams follow their own tag. Everyone follows #announcements and #company-culture. Leadership follows 3-4 areas.

Open Source Project

#releases #roadmap #security #community #governance #tutorials #sponsorship

Strategy: Users care about #releases and #security. Contributors care about #roadmap and #governance. Community members help with #tutorials and #community.

Nonprofit

#programs #fundraising #volunteer-ops #board-updates #events #press #impact-stories

Strategy: Staff tag everything. Board members follow #board-updates and #fundraising. Volunteers follow #volunteer-ops and #events. Donors follow #fundraising and #impact-stories.

Local Community Group

#meetups #member-profiles #opportunities #jobs #resources #feedback

Strategy: Everyone follows #meetups. Members create profiles under #member-profiles. Companies post jobs in #jobs. The group shares #resources and gathers #feedback.

Best Practices I've Learned

Keep your tag set stable but extensible. Start with 5-8 core tags. Add new ones if they emerge naturally, but don't create tags preemptively. Your taxonomy will tell you what's actually needed.

Balance broad and specific. You need tags that apply to many posts (#announcements, #general) and tags that are narrow (#hiring, #security-advisory). This prevents tag proliferation while keeping things organized.

Document your tag structure. Add a tag legend to your site's info page. New members should immediately understand what each tag means.

Let the tag cloud be self-describing. On Jottings, the tag cloud shows frequency. You'll immediately see which areas generate the most communication. If #hiring has one post and #company-drama has 100, that tells you something about your culture.

Use multiple tags per post. Don't force posts into single categories. A product launch announcement belongs in both #product and #announcements. This increases discoverability and lets different people find it naturally.

The Bigger Picture

What I really love about this approach is that it solves the problem of organizational transparency at scale. Early-stage teams can communicate with a Slack channel. But the moment you hit 30 people across multiple departments, things break. Not because you have too many people, but because you have too many asynchronous conversations happening in too many places.

Tags give you a broadcasting system that's as simple as a Slack channel but way more structured. You can make it public. You can add comments and discussions. You can search it. You can RSS subscribe to it. You can build feeds around it.

And unlike other platforms that treat tags as an afterthought, Jottings treats them as a first-class feature. Every tag gets its own feed. Every tag gets a page. Every tag gets counted in your analytics.

Give It a Try

If you're managing communications for a community—whether that's a team, an open source project, or an actual nonprofit—try thinking of tags as departments. Start with 5-7 core tags that actually map to how information naturally flows through your group.

Then watch what happens. You might find that your organizational structure becomes clearer. Your communications become less noisy. And new people understand, almost instantly, how information moves through your community.

That's the kind of simple, powerful design I believe in. Tools that disappear into your workflow instead of demanding special behavior.

Want to try this structure for your community? Create your Jottings site now and start tagging. It's free, and your tag-based departments are waiting.

Have you used tags to organize community communications? I'd love to hear how it's worked for you. Reach out on Twitter or visit my site.