ErinClack562

Social Bookmarking is the practice of posting links to articles and web 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 several common features:

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

2. Links enter into large pages of lists, which can be normally very easy to navigate, and are also 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 usually can be "voted on" to determine which links have more airtime on the front page of numerous 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 importance.

5. Most social bookmarking site users are fairly jaded when it comes to the internet, and will ignore stuff that aren't interesting, funny, or very entertaining. This is not a place for your boring press announcements.

6. Most bookmarking sites normally have some kind of "social" element in their mind, allowing users to create profiles, have a friends set of other users, etc., with the aspiration of getting users to share content between themselves.

These are the basics, so let's take a look at how best to approach social bookmark submitting. I'm going to use Reddit and Digg as my main examples, having said that that Reddit itself takes a great deal of familiarity with its culture until you are able to submit links that anybody even selects.

Choose your niche

Social Bookmarking - Submitting a write-up on growing bonsai trees to the front page of Reddit won't do you any good - you'll get 30 visitors maybe, none who will buy your products. But submitting it to /r/bonsai, even though 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 dedicated to marijuana culture. The lesson here's: know your subreddits.

Write a catchy title, and use a picture

Social Bookmarking - Standard newspaper/advert headline formats don't work too well on the web, because everyone has become safe from them. Instead you have to think of a clever title that interests people enough to learn more about what you're writing, or at least promise pictures of cats.

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

Keep at it, to make your links an easy task to share

Social Bookmarking is about persistence, so if nobody clicks your first link, make another article, make a more clever title and check out again. Put a social bookmark creating 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 a second to click an "upvote" or "like" button.

If nothing else, having links to all or any of your articles on half dozen Social Bookmarking sites is great for SEO.