Social Bookmarking and Online Marketing
Social bookmarking stands for exactly what it is – a bookmarking utility with a social component.
Social bookmarking is essentially web-based bookmarking. You have to log in to a bookmarking site to bookmark web pages that catch your fancy. Your bookmarks will be stored, not in your desktop, laptop or mobile phone; it will be stored in your web-based bookmarking account. Thus, you can access your bookmarks wherever you are as long as you have an internet-capable device.
Social bookmarking is a social activity. You can create a profile then connect and network with friends, colleagues, classmates, acquaintances through the web-based bookmarking site. You can then share your bookmarks to your network and the other users of the social bookmarking site. You can also rate other people’s bookmarks.
How to Join
To join social bookmarking sites, all you have to do is to go to the social bookmarking site of your choice. There’s Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicio.us, just to name a few. Create an account by providing your email address, name, age, and other pertinent information. As soon as your account has been set up, you will be given the option of installing quick bookmarking buttons on your browser toolbar. This will let you bookmark interesting sites whenever you’re of a mind to do so.
Also look into Onlywire. It allows you to set up your multiple bookmarking accounts in a single location, thus giving you the ability to bookmark a webpage in all your social bookmarking sites with a click of a button.
The Strengths and Weaknesses of Social Bookmarking
The internet has made a lot of information available to everyone who wants them. More information doesn’t necessarily mean more relevant information, however. More and more entities that are using the internet as a marketing and visibility tool have started sacrificing quality information and relevance to the altar of keyword optimization.  Consequently, you’ll find many pages filled with lots of keywords but no really helpful information.
The social bookmarking phenomenon puts the human touch back into the organization of the web’s information. People who found something good bookmark pages they like, in effect recommending it to other people who may be looking for exactly the same information. You want something really useful? Look at social bookmarking sites and see what relevant pages other internet users like you recommend.
Social bookmarking also addresses the limitations of the traditional desktop bookmarking. For one, it is much easier to organize bookmarks through a social bookmarking site. Social bookmarking sites have more tools you can use; you can use tags or keywords to organize and sort your bookmarks. Social bookmarking sites also make remote bookmarking and bookmark access possible. You can access your bookmarks from any PC or device with an internet connection so you’ll always have pages you deem important available when you need them.
As mentioned above, social bookmarking also connotes a social element. Users can share, rank, vote, or comment on other people’s bookmarks. Through this innovative set up, information on the web can indeed be quickly sifted, categorized, rated, tagged, and shared. In some ways, social bookmarking sites can make available a greater amount of relevant information than search engines; users can find bookmarked web pages that still have to be indexed by search engines or bookmarked content that are buried so deep in search engine results pages. Finally, social bookmarking sites could also provide a more intuitive approach to web information organization than even the most complex search engine algorithm; social bookmarks can effectively and directly lead users to exactly the information they are looking for.
Nonetheless, social bookmarking is far from perfect. For one, since the whole social bookmarking structure rests upon imperfect people, the whole system itself is compromised by typo errors, wrong information classification or organization, vague tags, ambiguous terms, etc. Moreover, spammers and blackhat SEO practitioners have also begun to invade the social bookmarking communities; they bookmark the content they wish to promote then give them non-relevant tags and keywords, consequently degrading the overall usefulness of social bookmarking.
Social Bookmarking and Web Marketing
The days of push marketing are over. Consumers today are evolving into sophisticated as well as information- and value- driven individuals. As with the other emerging marketing tools in the internet, social bookmarking sites can gain you new customers or bring you more traffic than you know what to do with as long as you offer real value and information to your target market. Here are some ways you can use social bookmarking to promote your site and content:
Focus on One Subject Area
Focus on providing and collating relevant information for a niche area rather than spread your efforts and marketing dollars into a wide product or service category. Not only will this gain you more branding points, this will also allow you to build on your past successes. This will also help you get targeted traffic to your web pages and content.
Use Intuitive Tags and Categories
Remember that people are using social bookmarking sites the same way they are using search engines. People go to social bookmarking sites to find relevant and useful content. Once there, they conduct searches or browse tags.
Thus, make sure to use tags wisely. Use only relevant keywords that people actually use to search for the content you want found. As such, make your tags as intuitive, as clear, concise, and organized as possible.
Bookmark Relevant Content Only
It can be very tempting to bookmarks all of your web pages. Don’t yield to such temptation, however. You must remember that, in the long run, you want quality traffic and not just any kind of traffic. You don’t merely want a lot of traffic; you want a lot of high-quality traffic. Thus, be selective about your social bookmarking activities. Offer quality bookmarks and you will get quality traffic in return.
Make Your Website and Content Easy to Bookmark
Don’t forget to make your web pages and content easy to bookmark. Add bookmark buttons at the end of your posts, articles or pages. This way, if someone likes your content and finds it worthy of bookmarking, he can do so easily. Don’t expect someone to bookmark your pages if he finds it inconvenient to do so.
Be Active in the Social Bookmarking Community
Think product review sites and trusted product reviewers, book and movie reviews by well known critics or even Simon the judge in American Idol, and you’ll see that even your ability to express your opinions about bookmarked content is important in building a brand and a following in social bookmarking sites. As such, take part in discussions; rate other people’s bookmarked content; bookmark content other than your own. What you need to do is engage other people so they will check your profile and, hopefully, your site links.
Scratch the surface and you’ll find that promoting your business through social bookmarking sites or any other social network online is based on plain old marketing ideas used by the milkman, the grocer or the bank in any old-town community. To get customers, they provide something of real value and interact meaningfully with their target consumers. Keep this in mind when you go social, and you’ll have a very productive time in social bookmarking sites.