What is the purpose of social bookmarking, does it really work and how can we make it work.

A brief introduction: social bookmarking sites like delicious and digg exist to allow people to keep their bookmarks all in one place so that they can be accessed anywhere from any computer. The idea arose from the need to resolve one simple problem: our browsers can only accomodate a limited number of bookmarks. And even then it is difficult to organize and search for the bookmark you are looking for.

Social bookmarking sites like digg and delicious allow users to save and tag their bookmarks to make them easier to find. Digg goes one up by allowing its users to vote and comment on the bookmarked article/site. You can also search for people who’ve bookmarked similar topics and be their friends. Thus also adding the social-networking aspect.

There has been plenty of arguments about whether social bookmarking help pass on link juice or bring traffic to your site.
The former may not be entirely true: digg and reddit utilizes the no-follow attribute so may not necessarily pass link juice if at all. But they are one of the most popular social bookmarking sites out there, with thousands of users and if an article or link is voted up or dugg by a significant number of people, then the article will bring you more traffic as it moves up the popularity chart.

I’ve noticed that the most common issue coming from the people who claim that social bookmarking do not work is that they do not have any real social bookmarking strategy. Just like it is important to have a social media and seo strategy, it’s also important to include a social bookmarking strategy with it.

Here’s a social bookmarking strategy I developed over time and follow. Check it and try it out and see if it can be improved.

Really Simple Social Bookmarking Strategy

1) Write a good article. We’ve seen so many articles in the internet, obviously written by SEO people and linkbuilders, and you just know when you see them. All the right keywords in the right places, repeated at just the right amount of times. Half the time the article is dry and boring and is not something a normal person would wanna read.
I always find that writing an article that sparks debate is one that will likely be dugg / voted on more in social bookmarking sites.
Articles that talk about social issues and politics tend to get loads obviously but then those topics need to be written with care.

I usually write mine with a gossip / rumour angle: it’s ok to be speculative and funny.
However its not ok to post something damaging and untrue and pass it off as fact.
Adding a celebrity factor is also a great idea. people like to be able to relate to something or someone they know.
Jazz the article up with a cool video, expose an interesting twitter trend, include links to a reputable site like a News site or a magazine forum etc and not just your client’s.
Also, usually I invite the readers to contribute in their own way at the end, like suggest an idea, rate the article etc.

2) Know your bookmarking sites and choose them well. Just because there are hundreds of bookmarking sites out there does not mean that you should submit your links to every single one of them. Sphinn is strictly for internet marketers and strategists, the majority of Digg users are people aged between 17-32 and are big on technology and gaming news while Reddit users are generally very particular and brutally honest with their comments. If you submit your article about, say a guide on cooking in Sphinn, then your article will likely be considered useless and spam.
What’s the point of sharing an article with the wrong kind of people anyway, right?

3) Choose your bookmarked title and description carefully. You’ve written your article, now you’ve got to write a title and short description to add it to your bookmarking site. By now you should know that your urls should contain the most relevant keywords possible to enable it to be found. Sites like reddit create urls from the description you put in.

For example if you put your description like this:

then your reddit URL will look like this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/awtb0/hey_guys_after_plenty_of_delibera/

If your article is about commercial coffee machines, then use the keywords to open your description. “Hey Guys After Plenty of Deliberation” does not make sense and does not really target anything.
Try to make your description eye-catching as well as this generates interest to want to click on the link. The tip is to write it as though it is a newspaper headline.

4) Choose your bookmark catergory wisely. Now that you’ve chosen the right bookmarking site and wrote the right bookmarking title and description, the next step will be to choose the right catergory. What the right catergory is depends on what goal you’re trying to reach with your article.
Does the article target a niche group of people with specialist knowledge? Or do you intend to reach out to a wider audience?

An article about coffee machines may work in the reddit catergory “coffee” but notice that coffee has only a few readers:

Or do you think the article will work better in say, the “business” catergory with 64, 000 readers?

5) Vote for other people’s articles. You’ve submitted your article for free now its time to give back to the community. I find that when I vote other people’s articles up, sometimes they will take it upon themselves to vote my article too. Voting doesn’t take too much effort. Just click the vote up buttons on the topics that interest you. The more you vote, there is more of a chance of getting your own submissions voted on.
Rating and voting other people’s articles also scores you points in some of these sites. The more points you score, the more “authority” you get. Contributing to the social factor like this also sets you apart from being a contributor to a spammer.

6) Keep a record of your bookmarking accounts. You may find that you may have to create different accounts with the same bookmarking site or the same bookmarking account for various different websites. Keeping a record of your usernames and activities is a good idea to keep track of your bookmarking activity. I usually seperate accounts according to industry: for example, I have an account for agriculture websites, one for business and one for technology.

Keeping your accounts relevant also means more authority on the particular subject because you cannot be an expert in technology, chickens and child health all at the same time. =)

Do you have a social bookmarking strategy? Share it with us here.

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Social Media Marketing