Social Bookmarking could be one of the best things that ever happened to websites and blogs.

Basically Social Bookmarketing sites allow users to create a set of content bookmarks. These bookmarks are organized by tags, which are (usually) arbitrary words or phrases the user can assign to content. This gives the user a way to classify, rank and organize content using tags. The most popular Social Bookmarking Site is del.ici.ous, which has millions of users.

Social Bookmarking sites have an intrinsic advantage over search engines and other bots — people choose what to bookmark rather than relying on a program to categorize and qualify content. There is an implied quality in something that someone has taken the time to select.

Social Bookmarkers read other people’s bookmarks and add them to their own if they like them. There are also RSS feeds so people can see what others are tagging, which I think is really cool, and a textbook example of viral marketing.

About 4% of my referrers this month are del.icio.us related, including .8% off the home page, meaning that people click on my link when they see it pop up in their RSS feed. I get a goodly amount of traffic from technorati as well, but I would call that site a business bookmarking site, so I’m not going to mention it here.

I only provide a facility on AffiliateBlog for del.icio.us tagging. There is a terrific WordPress plugin called Sociable that allows direct tagging for tons of Social Bookmarking sites. If you don’t have it as part of your blog you should get it and install it today. This blog is being redesigned and should be done in a few weeks. The new design will incorporate Sociable.

So…what can YOU do to get the social bookmarking virus ramped up? I see two basic considerations:

1. Write good content. Darren Rouse had an interesting observation about del.icio.us items that make it to the top of the site. You can take a look, but basically he observes that lists, how-tos, technical articles and humor get to the top faster.

2. Give people the tools to bookmark easily. If you have a blog, use Sociable. It’s terrific. If you have a site, there are plenty of interesting tools that will help you make it easy for your visitors to bookmark your content. AddtoBookmarks.com is a good one.

There are Social Bookmarking sites popping up all over the place. Here are the Top 10. Where did I find them? In someone’s bookmark list on Listable, of course.

Del.icio.us

Listible

Digg

StumbleUpon

BlinkList

Spurl

Magnolia

Furl

BlogMarks

Reddit



By: Matt Deangelis

About the Author:

Social book marking refers to a process by which people of common interest network on the internet to further their interests and subjects. This is achieved by setting up a common web page. This web page has links to various resources directly on the internet.

For instance, if the subject is related to astronomy, the social bookmarking will be supported by a group of scientists and amateurs interested in the same subject. The blog will feature exclusive and shared information relating to astronomy. There will also be some images on astronomy on the blog. It will also have links to popular and professional websites relating to astronomy. There will also be cross postings on the blog page.

If there is an entry on the blog page on the subject, the comments and responses to it will follow in weeks to come. These comments and responses will be automatically posted on the blog page. To enable people sharing common interest to look for similar individuals, there are social bookmarking engines. They are no different from the search engines.

A majority of the popular search engines now have a separate search option for blogs. They include Google, Yahoo! MSN and Lycos. All these search engines have extensive network of bloggers. Log on to any of these search engines and look for the social bookmarking options. The internet search options also double as the social bookmarking engine search.

Key in the word of the subject that you are looking for in the search option. It will throw hundreds of web pages relating to the subject. Social bookmarking engines are now an integral component of any popular website. Even private websites have links to social bookmarking engines. One way of keeping these social bookmarking engines in the loop is by retaining the URL of the link.

These social book marking engines are updated on a regular basis to keep track of the developments among the blogger community. So make sure that you keep track of the developments on the social bookmarking engine. Bloggers can also remain in the loop of a social bookmarking engine by looping it to their personal blog.

It not only increases the number of visitors to the blog, but will also enable optimum functionality. Also, social bookmarking is gaining prominence as more and more advertisers are seeking the services of bloggers to spread information relating to the new products. In fact, advertising through blogging is playing a significant role these days. There have been instances when companies launch their products on the blogs before reaching out to the customers in the traditional route.



By: Darren Dunner

About the Author:

One of the best ways to succeed in your internet marketing business is to use social bookmarking. I have accounts on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Classmates,Tagged and ZenZuu. This strategy will be of great help in terms of getting targeted audience, generating more traffic to your website and achieving higher ranking in search engines. When you achieve these, you can be sure to earn more profits.

Social bookmarking is free to use and enables web users to save links to their favorite web pages that they want to visit again and share with other people. Additionally, they can vote, comment and discuss about the sites or blogs and then submit the site and get feed backs from other users. If the users like your site, there’s a chance they will visit it again to obtain information and other updates.

New features have actually been added to these types of sites. These include ratings, comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing bookmarks, web annotation as well as groups or other social network features. Although these bookmarks are public, they can be saved privately and shared only with specific groups of people or networks. People with access to these bookmarks can view them in various ways - by category or tags, chronologically or through a search engine.

Social bookmarking provides several benefits to promote your business. Firstly, web users can easily upload and save their preferred websites for other users to view. This alone is an effective way to improve your site’s traffic. Users are always clicking on banners out of curiosity. I wouldn’t be into Internet Marketing today if I hadn’t clicked on an add promoting MLM.

Users can also organize their bookmarks with informal tags instead of using the traditional system of folders. Tag refers to a keyword that describes a particular site and category. By using the appropriate bookmarking tags, search engines will be able to look for your content especially when a user searches for information within your category.

What you can do then is to bookmark your own site and get a suitable tag. Once you obtain the right tag on the social bookmarking site, other people will know about your site and will visit it eventually. So this only means that when you have the proper tag, you drive more traffic to your site.

Another big advantage is for your site to be visited by search engines and indexed. A new website has a chance of being visited by search engine robots within a day of submission to social bookmarking sites. Learning the basics of SEO Optimization is important in driving traffic to your site.

Personal branding is a great benefit as well. In other words, by using social bookmarking sites, you are given the ability to develop your own page on their site. With this page, you can list all your web pages, post links to your websites and publish content on any field of interest. This then allows you to establish yourself as an authority in your own niche.

Many people have been spending money just to ensure a high page rank in search engine results but with social bookmarking, there’s no need for that as it provides a one-way link to promote your site to other web users at no cost at all. This should, however, be coupled with credibility and a good reputation so that people will learn to trust you and your business. People ultimately do not buy into your product because it solely benefits them. They largely buy into it because of you.



By: Hervin Balfour

About the Author:

If you are not familiar with article submission or social bookmarking, perhaps this article will be improve your understanding. Article submission and social bookmarking are two of the most talked about methods of link building. But first things first - why build links in the first place?

Link building is done for two reasons. One, to get direct traffic from the links. And two, to get better rankings from the search engines. Now what has link building got to do with search engines? You see, the search engines count links as “votes”. The more one way back links you have to your website, the more “votes” you have. Search engines see these sites as authority sites, and any content that you post on these sites will rank well.

Once you understand this, you know where article directories are getting all that traffic - from the search engines! There are hundreds of article directories online. Some are already well established and any articles that are published on these sites will start to show up in the search engines in a matter of days. So if these are your articles, you are already getting exposure for your business. The readers will read what you have to say in the articles, and decide whether or not they want to visit your websites.

Each article contains two to three links in the author resource box. The author resource box is where you promote yourself or your business. That is how online visitors find your websites - by searching for the information they want, reading your articles, and eventually clicking on these links to visit your website. Once they are on your website, you got yourself a potential customer. Of course, the search engines also recognize these links and your websites will start to show up in the search engines as well.

Social bookmarking works in a similar fashion, except that you don’t post articles. You post URLs to social bookmarking websites. Social bookmarking websites are community based. That means if one member of the community finds a great website, he or she will be able to share it with family and friends through the website.

In other words, once a link has been posted on a social bookmarking site, others will have access to the links immediately. Search engines will also be able to crawl these links and visit your sites more often. In addition, social bookmarking links also count as back links for your websites.

The nature of social bookmarking sites is similar to the nature of the Internet - it is viral. That means for sites that are worth mentioning, the links will spread very quickly through the social bookmarking community. One person will share the link with two, two will share with four, and so on. The viral effect has taken off. Note that while the viral effect continues to work, the business owner is not spending any money on advertising. That’s why more and more business owners are looking to promote their websites using social bookmarks.

Remember, on the Internet, it’s all about traffic. And traffic depends on back links. The more back links you have, the more traffic you get. So if you haven’t given article submission or social bookmarking a try, it’s about time you do.



By: Gen Wright

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