What is it?

Social BookMarketing is way to save your favorite bookmarks for you to reference later, but the beauty is that your bookmarks are not tied to the computer web browser that you used to bookmark what you saved. Instead, your bookmarks are saved to a website that is called a social bookmarking site. This is what makes your bookmark available to share with anyone you like or for others to find you based on the tags (keywords) that you associated with your site.  Here’s how to get the most out of social bookmarking!

Social BookMarking gives you a means of putting websites and blogs into categories that makes it easier for Internet users to find what they are looking for. When you submit your website or blog for social bookmarking, you give your site the relevant tags that apply and/or categories that best fits the theme of your site.

By design, social bookmarking is public, so that anyone who is searching for the tags that you are using can find your content and share them with others. This has the possibility of bring traffic to your content if your sites are saved within the social bookmarking sites.

Why does it matter?

If, you care about how your website or blog is indexed, then you’ll take the time to get your site into many of the social bookmarking sites available. The search engine robots aren’t humans and are subject to errors when putting your website or blog within the appropriate category. This affects the relevancy of your site and to help ensure that your site is in the appropriate category, social bookmarking is a great tool that is powered for the most part by human editors and even though they too, are prone to make mistakes, the mistakes are fewer.

The human editors with the social bookmarking sites generally have some knowledge about the topics they are editing for submission approval, so if your website or blog has interesting content that adds value to your industry or niche, there is a good chance your site will be accepted.

Social BookMarking makes it easy for you to categorize your sites with short descriptions and tags (keywords). When you search through your bookmarks, you can read your short descriptions and if that is still too confusing, you can view your tags, to find what you are looking for quickly.

There are search engine optimization advantages that come with submitting your content to the social bookmarking sites. You can get backlinks, which are links back to your site from the social bookmarking site and that means the possibility of getting traffic to your site.

The search engines love content that is user-generated and social bookmarking sites tend to have a lot of visitors, so the search engines are constantly visiting. This gives you the additional benefit of getting your content indexed quickly by the search engines.

Each time you write new content for your site, after posting the content to your site, pick about 8 to 10 social bookmarking sites to submit your new content to. You don’t want to spam the social bookmarking sites by submitting to more than that, because the penalties with the search engines are severe. If, the search engines think that you are spamming the social bookmarking sites with your content, they may deindex your website or blog and no one will be able to find your site online.

Where do I start?

You can start with any of the social bookmarking sites in this article, they are all free to join and oftentimes require you to download their “buttons,” that allow you to add a “tag button” to the web browser that you are using. When you come to a website or blog that you like, you simply click on the “tag button” at the top of your web browser and that site page will be saved in your respective social bookmarking site.

When you “tag a website or blog page,” a new window will open for you to write a short description to remind yourself what the page you are tagging is all about and you will have the opportunity to put in your tags, so that you can find the site that you are saving.

Next, you will click the save button to close the “description window.”

The social bookmarking site saves your information as a list of bookmarks with your short description and as a list of tags for you to reference later.

Start with any one of the social bookmarking sites and write an interesting description that is unique and different for each of your submission. If, you do decide to use a social bookmarking submission service, ask about the possibility of duplicate content affecting the opportunity of your site being indexed by the search engines. Duplicate content or the same description for your site automatically submitted to many sites could affect your site being picked up by the search engines.

The key to successful social bookmarking is to contribute to whatever your industry or niche is, but don’t have 90% of your social bookmarks simply about your sites. You may get labeled as a spammer. You want the majority of your bookmarks about the numerous topics within your industry or niche others would enjoy reading. Share the discovered within your theme and you’ll be fine with social bookmarking sites.

To avoid being thought of as a spammer with any of the social bookmarking sites, have a diverse number of websites, blogs and forums that relate and contribute to the theme of your site. The content and media that you are reading, viewing and reflecting on a daily and or weekly basis that you find interesting or insightful and think that others in your industry or niche would enjoy, by all means social bookmark it.

The search engines love interesting content, and your description of your site is content, nonetheless, so be sure to ask in advance if you are using an automated social bookmarking service.

When should I start Social BookMarking?

As soon as you have built out your website or blog with sufficient content that your readers find interesting, you should submit your site to the social bookmarking sites. If, your site is approved, it will be easier for you to get your information to the people who are interested in your site theme to share with others who are also interested in your content.

You want to have interesting websites, blogs and forums that you have bookmarked and you want others who may benefit from you sharing your bookmarks, so you can start social bookmarking right away.

Your social bookmarks are public and others who are looking for the content that you have bookmarked based on the tags that you are using can enjoy your bookmarks too!

Social BookMarks give you the ability for the most part to add your own tags, categories and generally a short description of what your site is about, so that others who have an interest in your content can share it with others.

Who are the Social BookMarking Sites and How do I Social BookMark my content or sites?

There are a host of social bookmarking sites available to you and here we have listed the Top 15 Social BookMarking Sites, based on Quantcast Monthly visitor numbers at the time of publication of this article.

Digg

Digg has about 12.5 million U.S. visitors. Digg users vote on the best sites on the web and you have an opportunity to discover new sites and submit your favorites.

Yahoo Buzz

Yahoo Buzz has about 5.2 million monthly U.S. visitors. Yahoo Buzz gives you a look at the percentages of the most favorite searched site on its search platform. The most favorite searched pages/sites are updated each week.

Kaboodle

Kaboodle has about 2.6 million monthly U.S. visitors. Kaboodle is a shopping-oriented social bookmarking site that takes the products and service reviews of its users and recommends what’s good and what’s questionable. If, you occasionally do reviews of different products and services, then this social bookmarking site is perfect for you.

Reddit

Reddit has about 1.7 million monthly U.S. visitors. Reddit gives you a chance to vote on sites that you like or dislike. You can also submit a link to your favorite content or interesting content.

Technorati

Technorati has about 1.7 million monthly U.S. visitors. Technorati takes what its users say is the worth looking at for submission and the Technorati community votes on the content and the most popular content rises in the search returns on Technorati. A sort of snapshot of what Technorati users feel is worth sharing.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon has about 1 million plus monthly U.S. visitors. StumbleUpon is a bit intuitive in that it learns what you like based on your tags, and helps you to find more of what you’re interested in by suggesting sites.

Newsvine

Newsvine has about 983 thousand monthly U.S. visitors. Newsvine is a news aggregator of sorts that lets users submit their best news content At the bottom of each news piece users can vote on whether they liked the news article or not, and depending on the vote, the news piece increases in popularity or decreases in popularity and ranking with the Newsvine site.

You can create your own group on Newsvine and there is an opportunity to make money from the content that you write or submit to Newsvine based on the number of pageviews your content brings.

Mixx

Mixx has about 823 thousand monthly U.S. visitors. Mixx allows you to submit the most interesting news, sites and videos you find on the web to share with everyone.

Clipmarks

Clipmarks has about 797 thousand monthly U.S. visitors. Clipmarks is based on the concept that when people get together, they can learn more than they can if, they were going about it all by themselves.

The items that you find online and submit to Clipmarks, become “Clips, ” and when you follow people who you like, you make them a “Guide.” This “Guide” becomes your own personal world wide editor, who seek out the content (Clips) that you are interested in.

Twine

Twine has about 547 thousand monthly U.S. visitors. Twine is the beginning of where the Internet is possibly going and that is the semantic web, whereby computers can sort things out in a fashion that humans do, so they get more relevant with their search retrievals.

Propeller

Propeller has about 452 thousand monthly U.S. visitors. Propeller is a news-oriented social bookmarking site that allows you to submit a link to your favorite story or content and vote on it and the stories or content that others have submitted.

Delicious

Del.icio.us & Delicious have about 300 thousand plus monthly U.S. visitors. Del.icio.us & Delicious allow you to bookmark with tags and your tags will literally merge together to make them easier to find. You also have the ability to share your site and the sites that you find for the community to enjoy and share.

Slashdot

Slashdot has about 290 thousand monthly U.S. visitors. Slashdot lets you submit stories and links for the Slashdot to read and share. You also have the option to listen to stories that are uploaded as an audio file.

dZone

dZone has about 189 thousand monthly U.S. visitors. dZone is an Information Technology-oriented social bookmarking site that allows you to submit links to interesting content that you find on the Internet and its users vote on those links and the links that get enough positive votes are promoted on the site.

Faves

Faves has about 80 thousand monthly U.S. visitors. Faves is a social bookmarking site that makes it easy to follow groups and if you have enough readers, you can form your own group.

Just about all of the social bookmarking sites require you to download some sort of tool to plug into your web browser so that you can easily tag a website or blog page to submit to its community.

There is also a means to attach the social bookmarking site’s badge or icon to your page, to make it easy for your readers to tag your site page. For those of you are interested in automated the social bookmarking submissions, you can get a free plugin for your web browser or simply place some code on your site for up to 50 Social BookMarking Site.

It’s best that you submit to no more than 8 to 10 social bookmarking site when you have new content or find something interesting online and want to share it with others, to avoid being accused of spamming by the search engines.

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Twitter is a free messaging platform whereby users express what they’re doing now in 140-characters or less.  People who join Twitter, communicate and connect with others on Twitter who shares their interests or with those they wish to know more about.  There’s a good chance Twitter is what your competitors are using, are you?

Twitter is an instant messenger when the person you’re communicating with, is actually online.  Twitter is a social networking site where people interact with others as “followers,” which are people who interest you enough to follow and those on Twitter who are “following” you, because someone finds you interesting.  The content is user-generated and for that reason, qualifies as a “micro-blogging” site.  All of these features make Twitter, the hottest communication utility online today and the fastest growing.

Who should use Twitter?

Twitter is an excellent place to discover new things about pretty much anything that you may be interested in.  You will learn how to think within the constraints of 140 characters and believe me, that is an art form in itself trying to get your message across in 140 characters when each space between words, count as 1-character.

Twitter is a place where you can get ideas about any topic, suggestions, questions and answers that are both thought-provoking and pointless, depending on who you’re following or whose “Tweet” (a post), you’re reading.

Blackberry users who are looking for a way to interact with Twitter while mobile can use the Twitter application, TwitterBerry.  TwitterBerry allows Blackberry users to not only stay connected without having to use SMS (Short Messaging Service).

Why Twitter Matters?

Twitter matters if you want to establish a relationship with people who share your interests and Twitter matters if you want to learn more about topics you really don’t have an interest in, but are just curious.  Twitter matters because with everything in life, relationships matter and Twitter is all about exploring relationships, building relationships and interacting with those who are doing the same things, broadening their relationships.

Twitter matters because it is an excellent communication tool for getting your message out there to an ever-increasing audience.  Take the recent events in Iran concerning the protest over election results.  It seemed that no matter what the Iranian authorities did to suppress the media; Twitter users were able to get news about what was going on within the country still got out to the rest of the world.

Twitter can get your message out to the rest of the world, even if they aren’t a member of Twitter.  Most of the major international news agencies have a Twitter account and more than a few major corporations maintain and post frequently to their Twitter account to keep others abreast to what’s going on in their companies and provide updates on new products and services.  To see a list of some of the brands using Twitter, go here.  So, why does Twitter matter?  Twitter matters because if you aren’t on Twitter, there is a good chance that your competitor is using it.

When Do You Implement Twitter?

You implement Twitter when you want to establish a relationship with people who share your interest and you implement Twitter when you want to have a relationship with people you’re not particularly interested in, but follow anyway because of unique or rewarding content they seem to frequently produce. You implement Twitter when you have a need for information on subject ideas; by typing in the keyword you want to search for, to get additional information about.  One particular unique and effective way to get information about something on Twitter is to do a survey.

There are many Twitter applications online that you can use for setting up a survey and listed are some of the favorites that users find easy enough to navigate without any serious learning curve.  Here are two that I think that you’ll enjoy using.

TwtPoll is an application that I use from time to time, when I want to find out what’s on the minds of Twitter users.  This information helps me to develop topics in which to write about, knowing that I have an interested audience in advance of publication.

PollDaddy is another one of my favorite Twitter Poll Tools from the company that brought the world, WordPress.  Both TwtPoll and PollDaddy give a visual, colored, pie chart representation of your poll results and both are free.

Where Twitter Works Best?

Twitter works best when you are establishing a relationship with others online.  Twitter works best if you want to interact with others online for the purposes of sharing your knowledge about things you and others are interested in.

Twitter works best if you want to share something interesting with your “followers” and you hope that they “retweet,” your link to your interesting material so that it becomes viral.

Twitter works best if you’re looking for new relationships to add to your contact list and if you’re trying to reconnect with old contacts that you’ve been out of touch with for various reasons.

Twitter works best if you have new, updated or revised content or media that you think that your “followers” will find interesting enough to “retweet,” to their “followers,” hence giving you another opportunity to have your content or media to go viral.

How To Best Use Twitter?

Twitter is great for getting your brand, which is yourself, known to a wider audience, who may not have learned about your existence otherwise.   Twitter is the perfect platform to host surveys or polls, contests and information about you, what you do, but only if and when someone asks.  You’ll be amazed at the things you can learn on Twitter when you aren’t really looking to read someone else’s Tweet.

Twitter is great for getting traffic to your website or blog, especially if you’re using a Twitter application like, TweetThis if you’re using the WordPress blog platform.  TweetThis allows you to send your blog posts to your Twitter account, so that your “followers” can see your updates.

Twitter gives you an excellent opportunity to find out what Twitter users are thinking, their opinions, and additional information about their wishes or desires that you can tailor for your relationship and marketing needs.  You can discover new trends and generate ideas on Twitter that you might not have otherwise thought about and share unique and interesting content that you can share with others.  If, you haven’t already, you should be using Twitter if for no other reason, that your competition may be.