Social bookmarking sites have proliferated. The number of people frequenting these sites has become large and varied enough to attract marketers. We look at the nature of social bookmarking and how web marketers can use these.
Let us now look at the possibilities.
What Is Social Bookmarking?
You bookmark pages you like so that you can come back to it later. In the case of social bookmarking also, you do exactly the same. The difference is that your bookmarks now reside on the Web, with two major consequences.
You can now access your bookmarks from anywhere in the world with Internet connectivity. Secondly, you can share your favorites, along with your comments, with your friends, and even non-friends of similar interests.
The process of social bookmarking involves:
- Creating an account with a social bookmark site like Digg. According to a survey in 2008, the top ten social bookmark sites were Digg, Technorati, delicious, Propeller, Stumbleupon, reddit, fark, newsvine, Slashdot and mybloglog. Go to the site and sign up
- You can now vote on the stories already at the site, comment on them and tag them.
- The entries with the maximum votes go to the front page where thousands of people will see them, and many might click through.
- Or you can add something of your own along with your comments and tags. The entry creates a live URL which other visitors can click to view the original.
That is social bookmarking in essence.
How Does Social Bookmarking Help Marketers?
If you are able to get your bookmark to the front page of a bookmark site, thousands of visitors might click through to your bookmarked site in a single day. And if what these visitors see impresses them, you get to be known. And getting known is the essential first step for marketing.
Even if your bookmark does not reach the front page, you would have a link pointing to the bookmarked site. There are also ways to encourage other people to bookmark the same site. In these ways, you can get one-way links that go to enhance the search engine rank of your website.
Users of the social bookmark sites often search for information by using tags. If your bookmark is tagged with one of these tags, it will be seen by the searchers. If the description with your bookmark interests them, they are also likely to click through to your site.
There are other incidental benefits that experienced social bookmarking site marketers will soon identify. The one basic rule is that you should become familiar with the culture of the site and available possibilities through regular interactions.
How to Go About Social Bookmark Marketing
- Start by creating accounts with several popular social bookmarking sites
- Get to know the culture and practices at each
- Add your website or blog along with comments and tags
- Get social bookmarking buttons using tools like http://addthis.com and display these on your web pages or blog posts that you wish to be bookmarked. People can then simply click this button and add the page or post to their favorites
- Provide some real value through these pages or posts so that people will feel inclined to bookmark them
- Cultivate friends at the bookmark sites to help you along (and help them in return)
Social bookmarking is a growing phenomenon and the number of participants has exceeded the critical mass to attract marketers. Your business also can benefit from it provided you go about it the right way.
Here is a list of social bookmarking sites
