Social bookmarking has been around for as long as the Internet has existed. If you found a website or resource that you really liked and wanted others to know about it, you told your friends. The quickest way to tell them was to send them an email or post a message on a forum containing the link to that website so they could look at it and add it to their browser favorites list.
This marked it so it could be found again in the future. That was the old way to spread the word about the things that were new or exciting on the Internet. Now, there are some easier and much more effective social bookmarking tools you can use to get the word out about new things.
Social networking involves “tagging” a website of particular interest so that it can be easily accessed. The tag shows up in two places; one being the user’s profile or website, the second being the original homepage of the tagging bookmark. The tag can appear on a list of favorite websites posted on a blog or website, or it can be a special website designed specifically for these tags, called a bookmarking network. Examples of popular bookmarking networks are twitter, facebook, squidoo, flikr, and wetpaint.
Visitors to those sites can then rate the URL value according to how often a search occurs or that link is clicked on. Popular bookmarks remain at the top while less favorable links and spam are lost to new searches. Social bookmarking can be monitored for trends in the market and is used to introduce new and better products and ideas.
Many consumers, whether they realize it or not, use social bookmarking everyday to decide what products are worth investing in, where to shop, where to eat and other consumer decisions. This is because when they do a search online, the most popular searchable things that have had multiple tags come up first in the list. Tags can be a good way for consumers to gauge whether or not a product or company is legit by who manages the feeds and how often the website is tagged.
Here is a list of some great social bookmarking tools you can use today to boost your website visits and get the word out about new items of interest:
Twitter. Do you twitter? This seems like the most asked question recently by social networking people. This free social networking site works by people who become members and post short updates as they wish on anything in general. It’s advertised as a “service for family, friends and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick , frequent answers to the questions; What are you doing” (Twitter.com) The update feeds can then be posted on the person’s blogs, websites or anyplace else where they want people to know about what they’re doing and talking about. People often post their articles or other tidbits about their businesses with links included to get others to visit their website.
Facebook. This is an international social networking site whereby members sign up free and can post messages and updates whenever they wish. If they include links to their websites or other online items, members can go there to read more about them. Feeds are then available for adding to blogs or websites for real time updates. Facebook is growing in popularity among people who were typically participating in other social networking sites like MySpace, but its attracting more career- and business-oriented people.
Squidoo. This neat little social bookmarking site has nothing to do with sealife. In fact, not only is it a great way for people to interact and post updates, but it allows users to create simple websites called “lenses” for others to read about their special interests or topics. So if you are promoting a certain niche interest, an idea or something related to your business, you can create a page to promote this idea and include links back to your sites. Squidoo offers its members additional tools like forums to come up with ideas to promote their pages and highlights popular lenses all over the Internet.
Flikr. If you’re into sharing more than words and like to include images as part of your networking efforts, then you may like Flikr. This social bookmarking site allows users to post images for others to review. Users can also talk about their experiences by joining either private or public groups. So families can use Flikr to share personal photos, or public groups can share images and talk about things of interest. Each photo is assigned a tag which can be placed on user’s websites and blogs. Flikr rates images according to how many times they’ve been viewed and this list is posted on the community section for all to see.
Wetpaint. This is a Wiki format social bookmarking site that allows members to create a website about anything they are interested in or want to promote. It’s a similar concept to Squidoo, except that it is expanded to include the ability to integrate popular feeds into both your Wetpaint site and your blogs or other websites seamlessly. Wetpaint is supported by not only all the major search engines, but also by all primary news feeds and searches conducted by Internet users. This opens up the possibility that someone who may just be doing a general search will land on your Wetpaint site.
There are so many great tools out there that you can use to get the word out about your ideas and share your blogs and websites more effectively. In just a few minutes, you can be signed up and hooked into the best of what the Internet has to offer. Be sure to check out the above social bookmarking sites to get the most out of these services and increase your website’s searchability.
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Copyright (c) 2007 Titus Hoskins
Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportunity to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online marketing or site.
Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?
First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective.
In case you haven’t noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon… basically these sites are driven by their users – that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss.
These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining.
But is this social bookmark traffic useful?
Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketing efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a sites like Digg or Stumbleupon?
As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I could use these sites from an online marketer’s advantage; i.e. how can they help me create more online income.
Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportunity to really study these sites.
Of course, nothing happens without a reason… I did actually court these social bookmark sites by placing the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.
But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of these sites can drive 100,000’s of visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server and crash it.
So be warned; if you’re actively promoting to these social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.
In my case, it didn’t crash my servers but unfortunately, the page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.
But still I am not one to waste an opportunity, so I put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic.
It pointed out some very interesting factors about this bookmark traffic.
Most of this traffic will:
* simply bounce back
* very few visitors will spend much time on your site
* very few visitors will even venture into your site
* very few will sign-up to your newsletter
* very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels
(The unknown variable here being the content on your site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)
Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites, it’s very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last a few days… until your item is moved back from the front page.
These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone within seconds, never to be seen again. A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.
Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant, they grab the content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and surf on to the next item.
This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.
It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to my site.
So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the search engines over any other source of traffic.
So the question remains – is social bookmark traffic useless?
First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere.
Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it’s game over.
The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search, visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what you’re offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who will consider your offer, real your information, maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.
Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some saving graces.
Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand your site or business. It can get the word out about your site. Start a buzz.
If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.
These social sites are good for another reason; getting your links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can’t hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although it has never been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.
Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar embedded – your site’s traffic rank will increase. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa’s traffic rankings are not a true picture of the web’s traffic but it’s a good measuring stick, nonetheless.
Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic voting structure… sites give a vote by linking to your content; wouldn’t it also be reasonable to assume more traffic means more votes. So wouldn’t getting a lot of traffic or being featured on a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content to the front be the ultimate vote.
One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded me, all traffic from these social media sites can’t be judged with the one brush.
This whole experience also pointed out another important factor; it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general web surfer or the mainstream web. All my sites and content were planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.
If I or anyone wanted to take advantage of this social media traffic, you would have to create your site/content to appeal to these surfers and then somehow draw them into your marketing funnels. I don’t know if the majority of the users of these bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not very likely, the nature of the beast. But it would largely depend on what you’re offering on your site and how well it is suited to these users.
So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.
Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before making any final judgments.
For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much ado about nothing.
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try:www.bizwaremagic.com For the latest Internet Marketing Strategies Go here: www.marketingtoolguide.com 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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Social bookmarks are a way for internet users to store, organize, search, share and manage web pages on the internet that they find of interest. They replace the traditional method of browser-based system of folders by encouraging users to organize their bookmarks with tags. Social bookmarking means storing your bookmarks online, tagging them and sharing them online with other users.
Users from all over the world bookmark sites or specific pages using their favorite social bookmarks. They can search through their bookmarks by keywords or by tags, and can access their bookmarks from any internet connection. Almost all social bookmark sites have the same basic features like browser bookmarklets for one-click link saving, RSS feeds, tags and sharing capabilities.
In a bookmarking system, users save links to web pages they want to remember or share by the use of RSS feeds. These bookmarks can then be organized into a list of tags that describe what the site is about. People are always searching for information, and search is probably the most important application on the web for surfers to find what they are looking for. Search engines give more relevancy to sites that have been recently modified or have added new content.
This is where social bookmarks are one step ahead, notifying users when a site has been updated through the use of the RSS feeds. Instead of going into a search engine, typing something in, you can quickly narrow down the items to what you are looking for by searching the tags. You can even search through what other people have bookmarked as long as they remain public. So, what started out as a way to send bookmarks to friends has really grown into social search engines.
Social bookmark sites allow others to see your bookmarks and comment about them, creating interactivity among bookmark users. Social bookmarking is all about the collective voice and the power of the people. As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features. A social bookmarking system can rank a resource, or website, based on how many times it has been bookmarked by users, whereas conventional search engines rank resources based on the number of external links pointing to it.
Social technologies are here to stay, and are already growing in popularity. Social bookmarks continue to be one of the driving forces of this evolving web. It is all about labeling the web, making it easier to find the content that you’re looking for by passing on what you’ve found. For users, social bookmark sites can be useful as a way to access a consolidated set of bookmarks from various computers, organize large numbers of bookmarks, and share bookmarks with contacts. Social bookmarking can allow you to share the sites that you own to others with relevant tastes, driving traffic to your site, and creating valuable backlinks.
Alan Mater is an online business owner and member of the best making money system designed for newbies and experienced marketers alike. You can also make money online with these work from home opportunities that Alan provides on his website. He also provides free online training for those that are serious about earning an online income.
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Nowadays, Social Bookmarking services are the most popular source for webmasters to drive visitors and traffic to their websites. Social Bookmarking let’s the users to save and manage their favorite bookmarks online on internet. It has been made in such a way that users can tag them with keywords and share them with others and watch their bookmarks. Also, you are able to keep the bookmarks private and share them with your friends and family only.
This all started in the year 2003, when Del.icio.us launched the Social Bookmarking Concept so that people can enjoy their bookmarks online. But, now there are so many sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati, reddit and Raidx.co.uk that offer social bookmarking services. These sites feature the most popular and recently submitted bookmarks. Social bookmarking has now become a popular tool to webmasters for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Social bookmarking can easily make your website popular and produce more traffic. That’s why; webmasters take more interest in social bookmarking sites to have maximum social bookmarks of their websites so that people can visit them more.
Important tips for webmasters to get maximum social bookmarks for their websites:
Webmasters should always offer links to popular bookmarking websites so the viewers are easily able to bookmark their favorite websites and web pages. If you search Google for social bookmarking scripts you will find many scripts that are available for websites which permits users to bookmark your website easily. In order to get your website bookmark by other members of the social bookmarking sites, you must also bookmark your own websites and ask your friends and family members to bookmark it. You must register an account with all popular social bookmarking websites and bookmark all your web pages with appropriate keywords and titles. On bookmarking sites, you can also exchange links with many websites that are relevant to your sites niche. Many webmasters bookmark your websites if you bookmark their websites. However, nowadays social bookmarking sites don’t allow you to exchange your bookmarks with other webmasters but you can still find your own ways. Participate in the social bookmarking websites and create a huge friend’s list. Many times people visits their friend’s profile and bookmarks the websites if they like it. Also, you can ask the members of your friend’s list to view your newly created pages and they might bookmark them. Commenting on other’s bookmarks will help you to increase your profile as well as your websites popularity. Bookmark yours as well as other similar web pages because, when the traffic on the websites you have bookmarked goes high, yours will also increase at the same time. Similarly, if the link value of all the pages you have bookmarked goes high, the link-value of your websites also increases. The last and very important tip is that your website should contain unique and fresh content. This is because, if your content is good and impressive, then only the visitors will bookmark it or else they will never return to your website again. May be you have done extensive search engine optimization or have created hundreds of bookmarks, but if your website don’t have unique and good content there will no further bookmarks and traffic on your website. Remember that Content is the key to Success.
Work on the above social bookmarking tips properly, sit back and watch traffic coming to your website.
Robin Dale is the webmaster for the SEO|SEM|UK Web Hosting at www.teeky.org, offering useful articles and news about Search Engine Optimization & Web Hosting.
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Welcome to Social Bookmark Websites. Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.
With regard to creating a high-quality search engine, a social bookmarking system has several advantages over traditional automated resource location and classification software, such as search engine spiders.
All tag-based classification of Internet resources is done by human beings, who understand the content of the resource, as opposed to software, which algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning of a resource. Also, people can find and bookmark web pages that have not yet been noticed or indexed by web spiders. Additionally, a social bookmarking system can rank a resource based on how many times it has been bookmarked by users, which may be a more useful metric for end users than systems that rank resources based on the number of external links pointing to it.
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