Social Bookmarking answers
The following are answers in response to questions asked by Core Magazine.
1. From a marketing perspective, web 2.0 is like a watering hole for your prospective customers. It’s where they gather and share their needs and problems so that you can eavesdrop and pick up on clues for future product ideas that offer the solutions they’re seeking. It gives you the chance to make it a peer-to-peer situation where you can appear as both the go-to expert and a genuine part of the community so that you build trust with your audience. Social bookmarking is similar to keeping a favorite’s list compiled on your computer. Only this time, you’re sharing that list with other individuals and sending the links viral. Tagging is what happens when you have a link you want to share, but need to attach keywords or phrases to it to help identify the purpose of the link to others. For instance, a link to parenting.com might have tags like “parenting, kids, mom, dad,” and so on. The great thing about social bookmarking and tagging is that it crosses all boundaries and is used by a wide range of demographics - from Baby Boomers wanting to share retirement links with friends to teenagers passing along links to funny viral video sites they find on the ‘net.
2. Social bookmarks are the actual links you’re sharing. Social networks are the directories that you share them on. So if you go to socialbookmarktraffic.com and bookmark it, you might choose to bookmark it on Digg.com, Del.icio.us, or some other social network of your choice.
3. Bookmarking benefits any business that’s on the ‘net. The intent is to have your links found and shared with as many people as possible, preferably targeted individuals who fit your customer profile. Tagging helps make that happen because when someone goes to del.icio.us and types in a keyword that relates to your domain’s purpose, your link will come up in as many bookmarking lists as it’s been shared.
4. The top social networking is a bit different from social bookmarking. A social network is a community like MySpace, Squidoo, Ning, Facebook, and others. Del.icio.us is one of the top social bookmarking sites. It’s where you tag links and share your list with other like-minded individuals. Furl and StumbleUpon are similar, only with StubleUpon, people surf the web randomly, and users “Stumble” your site so that it goes into rotation. Flickr is a photo-sharing site where tags are used. If you went to Hawaii on vacation and took several pictures of the beautiful sunset, you could post them on Flickr and tag them with words like “sunset, Hawaii.” You can use Flickr photos on sites like Squidoo to make your lens look better. Digg is a social bookmarking site where people can share stories that are on the web and the community ranks it. Once a story (like a post from your blog, for instance) is on Digg, others can Digg it too or vote it down. People can leave comments about the story, too. The best way to get the public to Digg your domain is to make it apparent to them. Make sure you have text that says, “Digg this story!” And have buttons and hyperlinks at the end of each blog post to make it easy and convenient for them.
5. I think Technorati, Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, Furl, and Flickr are the top social bookmarking sites, but it’s always wise to submit to as many as possible. To choose the best tags for your links, consider what words spring to mind about your site’s purpose. It’s not good etiquette to spam the community with irrelevant tags. You want to include the tags people will most likely use to find your domain, as well as those you hope to rank well for in the Google SERPs.
6. Determining what’s hot on a social bookmarking site is usually as easy as looking at a tag cloud. A tag cloud is a cluster of words used to tag links recently in the community, and the more times it’s been used, the bigger the word will appear. Lesser-used words will remain smaller in comparison. You can begin building up momentum with your traffic via bookmarking sites by submitting your links yourself. But always make sure you also bookmark other sites so it doesn’t look like you’re spamming. Bookmarking does help you with SERP results. Google likes to see how many other sites are pointing to your domain, and each time the link is shared, it’s another nod in your direction.
7. Going viral means it heats up on the web in a shared format. You can create a video, but if you’re the only one watching it on YouTube, it’s stagnant. It goes viral when you start seeing people share it in emails, on communities, and in social bookmarking sites. A viral website needs to have certain elements that make people want to share it with others. That may mean it’s funny, shocking, or just extremely informative. Think of when you last shared a site link with someone - what was the purpose? Was it helpful? Did it have something you found unique and interesting?
8. Your reputation among die-hard bookmarkers is important. For instance, if you spam Digg with tons of your own links, they’ll start down-voting every one of them and can be very harsh in the comments they post. A quality bookmarker shares a myriad of links that are truly helpful and relevant. They don’t place a link about celebrities in the science category, and the links they do share aren’t always their own.
9. One that comes to mind is http://addthis.com/ a good free resource.
10. It really depends based on your content. Say you have a big time techie blog, then digg is a must image but if your blog or site is more general, stumble upon is better.
It’s best for one to check out what’s getting many bookmarks at these sites because each social bookmarking site kind of has its own demographics.
11. Every time you post a new entry to your blog, you want to ping it. This means you’re notifying the social bookmark sites that it’s been updated with fresh content. You can set this up automatically in your blog so it does it for you each and every time. Wordpress blogs do this automatically for you and at this time, I can’t really recommend any paid tools because I’m not 100% satisfied with what I’ve tested.
