Social bookmarking websites first started to be seen online around 2003, with the popular network Delicious. There are several of these websites now, ranging from the very well known like Reddit and Digg, to social bookmarking sites such as Squidoo. There are some newer networks that started more recently as well.
It is a key function in online marketing campaigns such as Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, and Content Marketing campaigns. Nowadays, social bookmarking has become a powerful tool for online marketing.
What is Social Bookmarking?
A social bookmarking service is an online service that enables users to add, vote on, edit, and share bookmarks of website documents and content. Delicious, founded in 2003, popularized the terms “social bookmarking” and “tagging”.
A bookmark which not only enables the marked link to be public to everyone, but brings visitors back to the website as well. Social bookmarking websites such as Digg, can quickly boost visibility for a website. Digg allows for quick sharing across multiple networks such as Twitter, Gmail, Facebook, and other channels.
Search engines such as Google pay attention to bookmarking sites as one of the factors for ranking. The more links a website has through social bookmarking sites, the more value is assigned to the website. This increases search results and rankings for these websites.
To get started with bookmarking websites and the art of bookmarking, see these five popular networks and websites. These are the more popular bookmarking sites and are a great start. There are many sites and many more that are niche. These are the best bookmarking websites to start with.
5 Most Popular Social Bookmarking Websites
Digg
As one of the top 100 most popular sites in the world, Digg is a powerful website for marketing. Digg is a place to discover and share the content on the Web. Digg members share content by submitting a URL or clicking on the Digg bookmarklet, which is called digging. Content is organized into major categories such as Technology, Science and Entertainment.
While most social bookmarking sites feature visuals and graphical layouts, Reddit’s layout is very text-oriented. Reddit users can submit links, rate content by voting up or down, comment on links and “friend” one another. Stories that receive the most “up votes” go up to the top of the webpage, while lesser trending stories sink to the bottom of the webpage. Reddit is known for providing unique news and unique content, so it’s a great choice to diversify networks.
Delicious
Delicious is known as the original social bookmarking site. Started in 2003, Delicious allows members to group their content in what they call “stacks,” which can be created on your own or with other contributors. While many of the other social bookmarking sites allow users to contribute to each others content, Delicious has a reputation for offering the best collaboration resources.
Technorati
Technorati is a Social Bookmarking site for searching blogs. Technorati look at tags that authors have located on their websites. At a very basic level, Technorati is an RSS directory, but it is also one of the most powerful sites on the web for driving targeted traffic back to a blog. When another user comes across a blog, they can link to it, subscribe to your RSS feed or add it to their favorites. These three things alone will generate a substantial amount of free, highly targeted traffic to a blog.
StumbleUpon
Like most social bookmarking tools, StumbleUpon will ask for people’s interests and then select content based on those topics. But instead of scrolling through lists of links, people can click the “Stumble” button, and StumbleUpon sends people directly to a webpage that’s relevant to individual’s interests. People can vote to “Like” or “Dislike” the content of websites visited, and StumbleUpon will take the vote into consideration, when choosing future content.
There are many more bookmarking websites, many hundreds more but these are the most popular amongst a few others that are the most used by individuals, by companies, and marketing professionals. Bookmarking should be part of any online marketing strategy and campaign to see better results and faster return on investment.
Companies that are not clear about how to fully utilize social bookmarking or integrate it into their existing marketing efforts can always obtain the help of experts through consulting services. Marketing consulting services can assist established organizations to utilize and benefit from social bookmarking.
