ValeMing176

Social Bookmarking is the practice of posting links to articles and website pages to various "link aggregator" or social bookmark sites, for example Digg, Stumbleupon and so on. Bookmarking sites rise and fall in popularity rapidly, but they generally have a couple of common features:

1. Users can submit links which other users can browse, providing a sensible way to expose your content.

2. Links get into large pages of lists, which can be normally very easy to navigate, and are generally usually divided up right into a "main page" of the best links for the day, and various sub-sections which help you to get exposure in additional relevant circles.

3. Links can usually be "voted on" to determine which links have more airtime on the front page of various sections. The more votes your links get, the more traffic they get.

4. Some sites, like Digg, attach a weighting to certain actions and users, so a person who submits popular links will have a vote that carries more weight.

5. Most social bookmarking site users are fairly jaded with regards to the internet, and will ignore things that aren't interesting, funny, or very entertaining. This isn't a place for your boring press releases.

6. Most bookmarking sites usually have some kind of "social" element in their mind, allowing users to produce profiles, have a friends list of other users, etc., with the aspiration of getting users to talk about content between themselves.

Those are the basics, so let's check out how best to approach social bookmark creating. I'm going to use Reddit and Digg as my main examples, however that Reddit itself needs a great deal of familiarity with its culture until you are able to submit links that anybody even clicks on.

Choose your niche

Social Bookmarking - Submitting articles on growing bonsais to the front page of Reddit won't get you anywhere - you'll get 30 visitors maybe, none who will buy your products. But submitting it to /r/bonsai, although it only has around 1,100 readers, will probably garner you more attention from interested people.

Ironically, submitting to /r/trees may have much less of an effect, because /r/trees is committed to marijuana culture. The lesson here is: know your subreddits.

Write a catchy title, and use a picture

Social Bookmarking - Standard newspaper/advert headline formats fail to work too well on the net, because everyone has become safe from them. Instead you should think of a clever title that interests people enough for more information about what you're writing, or at best promise pictures of cats.

Most bookmarking sites include a thumbnail from the page you're linking to, or one you provide. Consider the trouble to do this - it generates greater click throughs.

Keep at it, to make your links simple to share

Social Bookmarking is all about persistence, so if nobody clicks your first link, make another article, think of a more clever title and try again. Put a social bookmarking widget on your website or blog, and encourage people to share your articles. If you've submitted them already, and the've accounts, it only takes another to click an "upvote" or "like" button.

Regardless of anything else, having links to all of your articles on half dozen Social Bookmarking sites is great for SEO.