How to tab without losing block

I have been using vim for about 3 weeks now and have been having problem with tabs.

What I usually do is do gg to go to the top, do a ctrl+v for visual block, do a G to select everything to below(one column), do a $ to select to the right, then press < or > to tab.

However having to do all this, I lose the selection and I have to do all those commands to do another tab.

How do I not lose selection? Or is there a better way?

NOTE: I sometimes don't need to select everything sometimes just a portion of the file.