Social bookmarking is a necessary part of blogging. It is something every blogger should devote an hour or two per week. I recommend setting up social bookmarking accounts at a minimum of three social sites, and preferably at five or six. Fifteen minutes per day at each site is all it takes to keep the social ball rolling.
I don’t always feel compelled to bookmark my own sites, however. I’ll spend one day looking for friends to invite into my network and approving friends who have invited me. Then the next day I might focus on finding interesting stories that I like. If you bookmark your own stuff too much then it will look like you are a publicity hound and no one will pay attention to you. So I only bookmark blog posts that I write that I think will have super mass appeal or that I think will hit a particular target market hard.
For instance, if I think my StumbleUpon friends will like a certain story really well but the Digg clan only so-so, then I might bookmark that blog post at StumbleUpon but not at Digg. Then when I write something that I think my Digg friends will salivate over I’ll bookmark that one there. But generally I bookmark at least three times other people’s stuff to my own so that I don’t look like the mouse caught with the cheese.
