Social bookmarking has become all the rage over the past few years, and it can aid in all of your social marketing.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, social bookmarking is sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and so on. A person finds interesting content on a site, and adds it to their social bookmarks that are, typically, open to the public so others using the site can see them and explore what you found worthy of your attention. In the case of a site like Digg, not only do you “digg” the article, others can vote on it, “or digg it” and it will climb up the ranks. Get enough votes and you end up on the front page and you could receive an amazing amount of traffic.
The whole concept started for a couple of reasons. Nothing is more annoying than having your bookmarks on one computer, and then you go to your friends office, you want to show them something… no access to your bookmarks. With a social bookmarking site, no matter what computer you’re at, if it has Internet access, you can get to your bookmarks. It also adds the ability to discover new sites you may have never known about by exploring the bookmarks other users have made public.
So how do you make sure you get on the social bookmarking sites? Most users will have something added to their browser to do the work, but for those who don’t you can add buttons to your sites. For instance, look at the bottom of this post and you’ll see links to add this very entry to del.icio.us or Digg. Look to the right, and the “Bookmark” button will add this site to just about every bookmarking site out there.
You need to write material that’s actually worth being bookmarked by someone, but the time you spend should be worth it in the attention it garners. Finding that “magical” subject can be the rough part, but we’ll cover that in another post.
