Social Bookmarking – How to REALLY Market Your Business
Posted by admin in Articles on Dec 6th, 2009 | 0 commentsJohn Reimann asked:
Social bookmarking is no longer an underground fad that limited numbers of Internet users participate in. It’s now a large and still growing component of the online experience for many people. It’s a form of web 2.0 technology that allows for more active participation from visitors to a site. Web 2.0 is all about the user and their ability to make content and share content. Social bookmarking is just one piece of that larger pie, but it can be very useful for driving traffic to your website. If you know how to use it effectively
What Social Bookmarking Is:
Just to clarify any lingering questions about what social bookmarking actually is, it’s essentially the process of posting an article, web site, video or other piece of online information to a site to share it with other people. Depending on the site you can place your link in a specific category, you can tag it with a phrase people might search for or be interested in and often users can vote for or rate what they like best.
Voting:
It’s this voting that can make social bookmarking enormously powerful if you can harness a way to reach out to people and make them like your content. The more people that vote for something, the more prominent a position the link gets on the website. That means more people get to see it and more people will visit your site. If you want people to vote for what you post, you have to be posting something that has value to them. That value can be anything, it can be new information or breaking news, it can be funny or entertaining or it can be unique in any number of other ways.
Popular Social Networking Sites
There are many different social bookmarking sites and each is a little bit different from one another but many share common elements as discussed above. Digg is on of the most popular sites, and you can post an article, web page or video and give it a brief description. People then “Digg” the article when they enjoyed it, and the more Diggs you receive the more attention you’ll see in turn. Reddit and Propeller function in essentially the exact same manner. You post your link to a specific category and give it a description. The more people that read it and like it, the more visible it becomes to other visitors.
Delicious is a little bit different because it enables you to enter tags, or search terms and descriptive phrases around the link you submit. It’s also different because you can host an entire link library and import your links from your web browser.
StumbleUpon is unique in that users can install a browser where they can “Stumble” around the internet. Which means that a person can enter categories that they may be interested in and then when they click “Stumble” they visit random sites entered into those categories. You therefore have to enter a specific web page into a category and be sure that it’s something that people would want to see from that category.
Fark is a site that doesn’t automatically accept submissions like all of the above sites do. Rather only a small sampling of links are accepted, and you have to create a funny or entertaining headline to help that process. While you won’t always get your links approved, when you do you’ll see a huge amount of traffic.
There are many other social bookmarking sites, and it’s all about finding the ones that are the best match for the content that you have. You’ll see that smaller, niche focused directories and sites can produce greater results even though they reach less people. Social bookmarking can be a great tool to drive traffic to your website if you know how to provide something that users will enjoy and be interested in.
Social Bookmarking – New Era in Link Building
Posted by admin in Articles on Oct 28th, 2009 | 0 commentsAnwar Alam asked:
Introduction of Web 2.0 opened the door for innovation in how websites are designed and used by visitors. Traditionally a site visitor would visit a site and then leave without having any interaction with the site owner or with other visitors of similar philosophy. Web 2.0 allowed everyone, site owners and visitors, to be able to communicate to each other. Social Bookmarking sites are just one of these many different Web 2.0 sites that are in existence today which can be used for link building.
Idea behind social bookmarking sites is to store private and public bookmarks organized by categories and tags. Anyone can register with these social media sites and bookmark their favorite URLs. These saved bookmarks can be used for personal reference or can be shared with others. Public bookmarks can not only be shared with others but also be viewed form anywhere, as long as one has a computer with internet connection. One good thing about these public bookmarking sites is that, search engine robots can visit those sites and index the data. While indexing these social sites filled with bookmarking links, search engine robots follow the links and index the pages where the link leads the robots to. This gives site owners the opportunity to use the bookmarking sites for link building purpose.
Social bookmarking sites not only offer a world of opportunity for link building but also offer the opportunity to free traffic. All site owners know how important and often valuable traffic is for a website or blog. Specially money making webmaster who are interested in generating revenue from their sites or blogs only have one goal in mind that is to drive as much traffic as possible to their sites. Reason for driving traffic is pretty simple. More people visit a site, more opportunity there for the site owners to generate revenue.
Aside form link building and traffic generation, social bookmarking sites offer another very important benefit which is promoting brand awareness. These social sites are viewed by millions of people so your presence on these sites, especially to the top ones, can promote brand awareness.
Due to the growing popularity of these bookmarking sites, lot of platforms have been released that are mostly open source that are now being used by even average people to run their very own bookmarking sites. Couple of these most common open source bookmarking platforms are Pligg and Scuttle. Pligg is an open source content management system and Scuttle is an open source social bookmarking platform where users can store and shared their bookmarks organized by categories and tags.
You can search for such sites where you can store your bookmarks and make a list of them if you are interested in link building with social bookmarking. All of these sites require free registration so that the bookmarks you make can be stored under your user account. Once you put together a list of available bookmarking sites and registered with them, you can start submitting you site details. Details most of these sites require include site or page title, URL, description, and keywords (known as tags). More bookmarking sites you submit your details to, more backlinks you get. Digg and StumbleUpon are two popular bookmarking sites that you can start with. SocialMarker.Com has a list of bookmarking sites where you can submit your site for traffic and backlinks. Since there are countless number of bookmarking sites out there, it is ideal that you do your own search and build your own list of bookmarking sites that you can use for link building
Social Bookmarking – Link Building the Web 2.0 Way
Posted by admin in Articles on Aug 14th, 2009 | 0 commentsAnwar Alam asked:
Website owners resorting to SEO (search engine optimization) for promotion know the importance of link building. Building backlinks for your site is even more important than onsite optimization these days. It is common knowledge that more backlinks a site has, higher the site ranks on search engines for a specific search term. Imagine how profitable your online business would be if more targeted people were to find your site and visit.
While SEO is time consuming, it is often free or costs low. Due to being a low cost method of promotion, smart online business owners are wisely taking advantage of this method to promote their sites and to make money online. Social bookmarking is a method of Web 2.0 style link building and promotion.
What is Web 2.0 and why it is important to build backlinks using Web 2.0 sites? Well, Internet is not what it used be 10 years back. If we look around, we see everything changed and so did the internet. While traditional methods of link building still works to some extent, utilizing current generation of Web just puts more weight in your link building campaign. Social bookmarking sites are all Web 2.0 sites for which using this method of generating backlinks can help you a great deal.
In case if you are wondering what social bookmarking is and how you can use these social sites to build backlinks, there are thousands of social media sites out there where you can setup an account and bookmark your sites or links of your interests. These bookmarking sites are often public meaning they get visited by lot of people each day. So these bookmarks are not only giving you backlinks to your site, but also sending the most precious traffic to your site as well.
Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, these are few most popular social bookmarking sites where you can bookmark your story pages. Other registered members can vote on your story shooting your submission to the top if your submission manages to get a lot of votes. It is important to spend some careful time crafting your submission details which is very vital to your success.
All the social sites are categorized by topics where you will need to submit under. They also allow you to add your title, description, tags (keywords), and URL. Make sure you use your primary keyword in the title and description and use few of your top related keywords as tags. This way you will have a chance to come up on search results when people within the social network searches for any terms related to your site.
Not only people will find your site if you can submit properly, you link building will be more effective as you will get more relevant backlinks from a page were other related sites are listed.
In order to submit URLs to these social bookmarking sites, you will need to register first for free accounts. Then you just login and submit your site under the right category. More bookmarks you can make, more people will find your site and more traffic and backlinks you will get. You just need to search the web to find as many social sites as you can get so that you can submit to them.
It is however extremely time consuming to keep searching for these social sites and find out how many of them you can submit to. It also takes a lot of time to register with them as you cannot submit without registration. It is ideal that you spend some time initially to find as many sites as you can so that you can put a list together.
Once the list is made, next step is to start registering with these sites one by one. Keep a spreadsheet with the list of sites including their login information. If you find that you have to devote more time than you can manage or find the entire process simply boring, you have the option to hire an SEO Company who can do the submissions for you.
Social Bookmarking Ethics – 5 Points to Consider
Posted by admin in Articles on Aug 1st, 2009 | 0 commentsCraig Edmonds asked:
Social bookmarking websites are helpful for attracting your desired niche to visit your pages. Like most sites that require registration, there are terms and by-laws that you need to abide by as a user. However, there are some situations that are not covered by the rules. These situations call for good judgment, and your decision could make or break your standing and more importantly, your credibility in the social bookmarking circle.
Usually, the more difficult assessments you have to make are ethical more than technical. Your social bookmarking account represents your brand as it tries to build relationships with your niche. Although you’re online, remember that it is a social bookmarking website. Ultimately, you’re still dealing with people more than links and landing pages.
Here are 5 points to consider before doing anything to your account- so as not to risk people disliking you or your brand.
1. Do I like what I’m about to bookmark?
The point of social bookmarking is to share interesting pages to others in your network. Before adding a page to your bookmarks, think about whether or not the page is something you actually liked reading. Was it helpful or informative for you in any way?
Every time you post something, make sure it adds value:
• Adding your own pages will give you the chance to be heard.
• Adding pages of the same topic from other websites will establish your credibility.
2. Is it worthy of others’ time?
If you’re bookmarking your own pages, make sure that the content is unique and relevant, so as not to waste other people’s time. You don’t want to encourage people to keep associating disappointments with your brand.
Make sure that your content is unique-either in tone, writing style, or information-to set it apart from other pages that offer similar content. Doing so would create favorable associations with your brand, your social bookmarking network will always have something to look forward to and they’ll have a reason to add your pages to their bookmarks.
3. Is it easier for others to find what they need from my bookmarks?
The best social bookmarking websites allow users to organize their lists. When you organize yours, make sure that it follows a logical flow. You might want to keep your own pages together and arranged chronologically. Organizing you pages this way not only highlights your web pages, but it also serves as an update to your social bookmarking network.
4. Am I spamming?
If you’re bookmarking more than 10 links a day, every day, then it might be wise to assess the pages that you bookmark. You don’t want to ruin your credibility by being labeled as a spammer to the point of being banned. This is why it’s important to ask yourself whether this page that you are about to bookmark is:
• Useful
• Informative
• Entertaining
• Relevant
5. Is my social bookmarking page/profile beneficial to others as it is to me?
Keep in mind that you are using social bookmarking websites to foster relationships with your niche. Bookmarking your page can be beneficial to you as it could lead traffic into your website. However, you also have to think about the sustainability of your pages-more specifically you content-to make sure that you remain relevant and useful to your niche.
Social Bookmarking For Internet Marketers
Posted by admin in Articles on Apr 11th, 2009 | 0 commentsMike Gates asked:
Social bookmarking is one of the hottest Web 2.0 online trends. The concept of social bookmarking is about 10 years old, but due to it’s recent explosive growth, it has just now become one of the new internet “buzz words”.
It’s important for internet marketers to understand social book marking and how it can help them promote their products and services.
So, what is social bookmarking? What is social bookmarking’s purpose? Why is social bookmarking important to internet marketers?
What is Social Bookmarking?
You are probably already familiar with bookmarking web sites, that you want to visit again, using your Internet Explorer or Firefox web browser. The bookmarks you create to these sites are for your personal use and are stored on your computer.
Social Bookmarking is the next step in bookmarking, where you and others can share bookmarks to web sites you think may be of interest to others. This is done via onlinel Bookmarking services. After you have signed up for the Social Bookmarking service, you will be allowed to register a website, site description and tags (keywords) with the service – this is a bookmark. You will also be allowed to share this bookmark, or you can keep it private (depending on the service). This information is stored by the Social Bookmarking service, and is not stored on your computer.
What is Online Bookmarking’s Purpose?
There are really two major purposes behind Web 2.0 bookmarking.
1. The main purpose of Web 2.0 bookmarking is to have people with like interests bookmarks sites that they think would be useful, or interesting, to others who have the same interests. For example, I love fly fishing. Let’s say I find a site that contains some great custom-built fly fishing rods for an inexpensive price. I would bookmark that site with one of several possible bookmarking services. I would give the site I’m bookmarking a title, a description and tags (keywords) related to inexpensive custom built fly fishing rods. I would make sure the bookmark is set to public so others could find it, and would then have have created a social bookmark.
Now when people search the bookmarking service, using the tag words used to define the bookmarked sites, they are presented with a list of related sites. Using our fly fishing example above – When someone searches for “fly fishing rods” they would be given a list of related sites, including the custom fly fishing rod site we bookmarked. Most bookmarking services also have a rating system so the most popular sites are at the top of the list.
2. Another great benefit of Web 2.0 bookmarking is, once you have social bookmarked your favorite sites, you can easily find those bookmarked sites from any computer connected to the internet. You simply log into the online social bookmarking service and find the website you bookmarked. This can be very helpful if you have many websites you like to monitor, when you are away from home and you are not at your primary computer.
Why is bookmarking important to internet marketers?
Since online bookmarking sites are generally very popular sites that get a lot of traffic, they have high Google page ranks and are visited often by search engines. Submitting your site to the social bookmarking services, increases the chance your site will be crawled by the search engines. I have seen my sites crawled by Google only one day after registering my site to social bookmarking services.
Submitting to Web 2.0 bookmarking services is also a great way to get one way, incoming, high page rank links coming to your website which helps increase your page rank.
But most importantly, if your website is seen as having value to a group of people, your bookmark can be rated highly and can create a ton of very targeted traffic to your website.
Social bookmarking is growing at a phenomenal rate and if you want to market on the internet, you need to add online bookmarking to your set of internet marketing tools.
