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Social Bookmarking ................................................................................................... 8
Internet Bookmarking ............................................................................................. 8
Social Bookmarking................................................................................................ 8
The Basics of social bookmarking ........................................................................ 10
What is it?......................................................................................................... 10
Who does it?..................................................................................................... 10
How does it work? ............................................................................................ 10
Why is it important? .......................................................................................... 11
Where is it headed?.......................................................................................... 11
Why use it? ....................................................................................................... 11
Using Social Bookmarking For Your Website or Weblog ......................................... 13
How to Make Social Bookmarking Work For You .................................................... 15
Social Bookmarking Sites To Try ............................................................................. 17
Digg...................................................................................................................... 17
Using Digg: Making it Work For You................................................................. 18
Technorati ............................................................................................................ 19
Using Technorati: Making It Work For You ....................................................... 20
del.icio.us ............................................................................................................. 20
Using del.icio.us: Making It Work For You ........................................................ 21
Stumble Upon....................................................................................................... 22
Using StumbleUpon: Making It Work for You.................................................... 23 Fark ...................................................................................................................... 25
Using Fark: Making It Work For You................................................................. 26
The Top Rated Social Bookmarking Websites......................................................... 28
Using Your Social Bookmarks to the Fullest: Ping! .................................................. 31 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 35
The World Wide Web has grown by leaps and bounds over the years. Each day – with every hour and every minute – it is growing even bigger and increasingly complex. Anything and everything that you imagined is just a click away. Many of us can no longer imagine a life without it. Indeed, already thousands of people already make their living from the World Wide Web. With the growth and spread of the internet, specialized techniques aimed at developing businesses on the web have also developed.
Despite all of the technological development, however, the basis of the global economy is still the same – buying and selling. For the producers to advertise and to make their wares available they need to market it.
Consumers also need a place where they can exchange their money for the goods and services they need. In the modern world, the primary marketplace is increasingly becoming the internet. ‘Internet marketing’ is the crux of all Internetbased businesses and is increasingly important for other businesses as well. There are few businesses of decent size that do not have a presence on the internet.
However, the dynamics of marketing on the internet is very different from ‘regular’ marketing. Offline, we use things like billboards, the sides of buses, adverts on television and radio, salespeople etc. to market our products. If you are on the other side of the buying ‘equation’, that is, a consumer, you learn of new products through these marketing tools. More often that not, we do not have a choice about what and when marketing information is available to us. In most cases we cannot choose to ignore the huge billboard on the road or the side of the bus unless you decide to drive with your eyes closed – but that is not something that is generally encouraged. You could change the channel when adverts show up on your favorite TV or radio show – but it is more than likely you will hear or see it again.
With marketing on the internet, the dynamics are a somewhat different. The internet is vast and intricate. It is an intense web of information that needs some skill to navigate, but if you do so, you can rest assured that your needs will be met. The internet gives you more choice. You can choose which website to click on or ignore. This means that the average internet user or anyone looking to do business on the net tends to be a little smarter than someone who does not use the internet for business. To market to a more intelligent set of buyers, the seller also has to elevate his/her game and be a smart marketer. You need to have an extra edge to make your business or website stand out amongst the millions out there.
It is said that word-of-mouth is the strongest marketing tool. For example, friends starting a new shop, café or blog will most probably tell you to ‘spread the good word.’ We are more likely to believe our friends and peers than a stranger on the television or radio. This is because we know our friends/peers well and we often share the same concerns, needs and tastes as the people around us. If something is good enough for them, it is good enough for you.
Word of mouth could be defined as the passing of information verbally, sometimes recommendations, but most commonly it is just general information. It is usually informal. Word of mouth was traditionally considered to be a person to person, face to face conversational characteristic. However, as modes of communication changed, phone conversations, text messages, blogs, chats, message boards and emails are also a part of ‘word of mouth’. Notwithstanding how it works or what channel it goes through, word of mouth is probably the most personalized form of marketing and the strongest.
A related marketing concept is that of the opinion leader. In any social organization there is a ‘leader’, one who is respected and held in esteem by the rest of the group. This could be for a variety of reasons – age, intellect, intelligence, or access to information. It could also happen in any setting – work, school, home, bar etc. There may be different opinion leaders according to subject. For example, when talking about the efficiency of washing detergents, the family is more likely to follow the opinion of the mother. At work, we generally tend to follow the opinion of the boss, simply because he/she knows more, is better qualified or more experienced. At least in theory, there should be some reason why we respect what the opinion leader has to say and then follow it.
What we need to remember when marketing on the internet is that internet users are a community. Internet users will therefore often have faith and confidence in their fellow net users. If, for example, a fellow blogger recommends an interesting blog to you, then you are more likely to visit the blog. Social networks are, therefore, becoming more and more important in the internet marketing world. Networks of like minded people create an easy target market for the marketer. Communications within this target market grouping about a certain product or website are even more crucial to internet marketing. It is the ‘word of mouth’ of the World Wide Web.
Networks come in various forms on the World Wide Web. They have proved to be popular across all imaginable barriers of age, gender, social class, ethnicity, nationality etc. A social networking group is defined by the focus on building communities of people who have something in common such as interests, activities, business, educational background, region etc. Some of the popular social networking websites in the English speaking world are Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, whilst in Asia, Friendster remains the most popular social networking website. Social networking websites allow the users to chat, message, video chat, voice chat, share files and links, write blogs and join discussion boards. These are just the major basic applications that social networking websites allow.
Social networks are therefore likely to become a key resource for all kinds of businesses. For example, they can work for small entrepreneurs and businesses by providing them with a specific contact base. This enables the business in question to easily locate their desired target market and build their contact base. Social networking websites have also become key customer relationship management tools for sellers, and, increasingly, companies are using these social networking websites to advertise. More and more businesses are now global entities – and online business and advertising is a great way of reaching millions of people who populate the desired target market.
Besides social networks, social bookmarking is another key element of internet marketing and directing traffic to a particular website. Social bookmarking is also important to individual users on the internet, such as the blogs written by you and me. It helps you guide more traffic towards your website. It allows your website to be indexed and more likely to be accessed by fellow internet users, because it works in a way similar to the way that word of mouth works. It involves the recommendations of other internet users about a particular website. There are many kinds by social bookmarking services available - and each one works just a little bit differently or deals with a different type of content. For example, some social bookmarking websites follow blogs, others follow news stories. Let’s take a look at what social bookmarking is and how it works.
In the same way that you insert your bookmark on the last read page; or into an interesting article or passage you come across – you can also bookmark your favorite websites. Internet bookmarks are the web page locations or URLs that are retrievable. Bookmarks are a feature of all internet web browsers. The bookmarking function allows you to save an internet address that you have visited. They are saved by name, rather than by address. This makes it easier for you to recognize and access it later. The web links that you save are known as ‘Favorites’ in Internet Explorer. The bookmark option is usually found in the top browser menu. However, along with the bookmarking methods that are a built in feature of your favorite web browser, there are also many external applications that help you save, catalogue and access your web bookmarks.
Social BookmarkingFollowing on from and building on simple browser based internet bookmarks, we come to shared bookmarks. These are a means for bringing together internet users who share similar interests. Using social bookmarking, such users can pool their resources on the web, and this is what social bookmarking is all about at its most basic level. The bookmarks are not stored on a particular computer but they are instead created and stored on a remote web server. They are effectively stored on an external website that can be accessed anywhere.
Social bookmarking websites are also a kind of social network. It is a means by which users can search, share, organize and store web pages that have bookmarked by themselves or other people. It simply refers to the various web based applications that allow you to store a record of your web bookmarks online, rather than saving them in ‘favorites’ on your computer at home or in the office. Therefore, these bookmarks are usually public although this will vary between the different social bookmarking services available. Some may allow bookmarks to be saved privately only, that is they are shared only with certain people in groups or networks of your choosing, etc.
Users who enjoy access to a particular social bookmarking site can view the bookmarks chronologically, by categories (tags), through a search engine or just randomly. Tags are most commonly used on social bookmarking websites.
At a slightly higher level, for the purpose of sorting and filtering the many bookmarks on a social bookmarking website, they are grouped under broad categories. These categories are what are most commonly termed tags. They may be words of phrases which can help you find the same link later and also provide a list of similar websites with the same ‘tag’.
Tags are nearly the same as keywords, yet they are slightly different. When keywords for a web page are created, you are trying to match the words or phrases to the information you are looking for, and of course you hope that this will yield the results you need.
However, suppose when you enter the words ‘celebrity gossip’. You will gets thousands of unrelated websites that simply contain the words ‘celebrity gossip’ somewhere in their content. Tags are categories not key words. They are labeling a certain ‘type’ of website, not searching the website content for the keywords – which may actually yield many useless results.
Many of the social bookmarking services actively encourage you to organize your bookmarks by way of tags instead of folders as in browsers. Bookmarks are categorized according to tags and include information about how many people have tagged that bookmark.
Similarly, most of the leading social bookmarking websites create web feeds for their database of bookmarks which enables users to be instantly aware of the latest bookmarks that may be of interest to them as they are saved, shared and tagged by users.
Social bookmarking services have grown increasingly popular. Many websites have added features like rating and comments regarding the bookmarks, emailing bookmarks, etc.
The Basics of social bookmarkingNo doubt, everything you have read so far has given you some indication of what social bookmarking sites are and what they do. Let’s try to break it down into even simpler terms. Social bookmarking is the practice whereby you can save your bookmarks to a public website and tag them according to content, type etc.
In order to create your own collection of social bookmarks or be able to view others’, you must register with the social bookmarking website in question first. The site will allow you to store bookmarks, make tags, decide upon which of your tags should be made public and which should be kept private. Some social bookmarking will do periodic checks on the bookmarks to make sure that the links still work, and as suggested, those visiting social bookmark websites can perform searches by keywords, popularity or person.
Who does it?Social bookmarking is useful for just about any one who uses the internet avidly and loves information. Social bookmarking is particularly appropriate and useful for pooling resources from research from around the world.
How does it work?Social bookmarking is a new way of organizing information and categorizing resources, making everything easier to access in the process. The person creating the bookmark must assign a tag or a group of tags to each link or resource. This creates a user directed and defined classification of information. Social bookmarking services show who created particular bookmarks and also give access to other bookmarks created by the same person. Users can therefore make social connections with other users interested in the same topic by following these tags. As a user you can also see how many people have used a particular tag and search amongst all the resources with the same tag. Over time, users of a particular community site tend to develop a unique set of key words to describe their resources. This is known as ‘folksonomy’.
Why is it important?Social bookmarking gives users a unique opportunity to express their own personal take on information and resources, as well as on the organization of these resources. The process of social bookmarking allows people of similar interests and tastes to locate each other and create a sort of online cyber-community.
It follows that using folksonomy as a tool for research allows you to benefit from the insights and research of other users, and this helps you find information relevant to what you are looking for, as well as topics that are not directly related (such as those that show up in key word searches). For example if your search is based on cars, you may also notice that other users found some connection between cars and car repair services, and this could prove to be a valuable connection and resource for you, either personally or on a business level. Furthermore, the collections of these folksonomies keep changing and are therefore generally up to date. Social bookmarking also allows users to rank tags and this acts as a collaborative filter of sorts and enables you to find your most relevant results.
Where is it headed?Social bookmarking is not a technological marvel, and indeed the technology behind it is quite simple. The basic idea on which social bookmarking is built, that is tagging, is now spreading into other applications as well such as email and multimedia files. As the net gradually moves away from ‘formal’ taxonomies and terminology, it will change the way that online communities come together and interact. The horizon of resources available on the internet is changing, new ways of classifying information are constantly emerging and much of it is user directed and controlled. Keeping this in mind, it is more than likely that in the future, the organization and function of databases may change as well.
Why use it?The most obvious advantage of using social bookmarks is accessibility. You can access your favorite websites from any computer and even from your mobile phone! You could argue that if you wanted to access any kind of information, you could simply enter key words into any search ‘engine’ and gets thousands or even millions of results, but that is exactly the problem.
No matter how fast or how many results a search engine may yield, it is still selected by a computer. In essence, computer software is trying to determine the meaning of your search. On the other hand, bookmarks are the result of discerning, deliberate human action. Furthermore, such bookmarks within a social bookmarking service are usually focused upon a certain topic or attract a certain kind of user.
For example, if you and I share an interest in celebrity gossip, then you are likely to benefit from my bookmarks list much more so than running a search in one of the major search engines.
Besides that, you will also have a certain ‘word of mouth’ recommendation about the site. You don’t have to waste time figuring out which is a good website to catch up on the latest Hollywood gossip – you would simply log on to the social bookmarking website and choose from recommendations by fellow gossip-holics.
Perhaps this is the most important advantage of social bookmarking. It has the ability to incorporate human intelligence. Furthermore, a community of like minded people can help you sort between good and bad content. This is something that search engines try to figure out by way of algorithms but is difficult to achieve.
With the millions of blogs and websites competing for the time and attention of internet users, social bookmarking can be a huge help in getting your website or blog noticed. Social bookmarking has proved to be one of the top techniques to promote your website and guide traffic towards it, and the beauty is that it is actually quite simple to do.
The first thing on your checklist should be visiting a few of the top social bookmarking websites, such as Digg, del.ic.ious, and Furl. If you are really clueless about social bookmarking websites, then do a simple search engine search and you will get a ton of results. Sign up for a free account at the social bookmarking website of your choice, and when you do so, you will get to select a ‘button’ that you can add to the end of each of your blog posts. What this does is enables users to bookmark your blog or website easily.
For example, if a visitor likes your website and is a member of the social bookmarking service ‘Digg’, he/she can click on your button and this will lead them to the Digg website where they will have to log in. After that, your blog post, article or website will appear as a bookmarked URL. This also gives the visitor the ability to post a comment on your post and this can prove to be very beneficial to your website in terms of traffic.
The more people that click on the social bookmarking link for your website, the more links you will have on the website pointing back to you website. This should increase the traffic on your website when people logging on to Digg are looking for posts relevant to them and find your site bookmarked. Also, as more and more people visit your website they may also social bookmark it themselves, either on the same social bookmarking network or on other sites, both of which will lead to even more bookmarks leading back to you.
However, just registering yourself with a social bookmarking service does not mean that your job is done. You shouldn’t simply stop after pasting a button under your blog posts and expect everyone to remember to click. You must become an active member of these social bookmarking sites.
What is meant by ‘active’ is that you must actively visit the social bookmarking site in question and find topics that relate to you or your online business. This allows you to bookmark, post and add comments of your own.
Believe it or not, this really does increase the traffic on your website. If you bookmark some one’s website, it is likely that they will also bookmark your site, and there should soon be a network of links pointing back to your site.
Here are some methods that you can employ to get the most benefit from social bookmarking. Many of them focus on how to organize your information so that your website shows up in more and more search results:
• When you create a blog post, make sure that the keyword phrase is as close to the beginning of the post as is possible. When you bookmark the post, use the title of the post and tag the keyword as well. This is great for search engine results. In fact, doing this is often termed search engine ‘bait’!
• Stay active on the social bookmarking website and bookmark every post. As mentioned before, social bookmarks are bait for the search engines, and this is an opportunity that is not to be wasted.
• Social bookmarking leads to more people reading your articles, posts etc., and over time this will create additional credibility for you. It can also lead to repeat traffic, referrals, sales, newsletter sign ups, comments on your blogs, emails from readers etc. In order to make the most of the social bookmarking website, you need to have all these functions working for you.
• Interaction is your biggest and most potent weapon in social bookmarking. Links back to websites rely on being bookmarked and getting read. With advancing technology, you can add video, audio, RSS feeds etc to get more and more interaction on your website and eventual links back to your website.
• The content on your website must be good. There is no substitute for good quality content when it comes to generating traffic. You must ensure that you get quality links as well, because the links that you receive on your website must be from reliable sources and have to do be relevant to your content.
• Related to the point made earlier about having good content is the fact that search engine spiders are always crawling good websites. Increasingly, social bookmarking websites are becoming a favorite of search engines. This is because there is a human element to social bookmarking. People are actively involved in organizing and tagging their favorites. This is a strong indication that the web page is extremely relevant to the search, much more so than a simple keyword search.
• When using social bookmarking you should work towards improving your search ranking. Get as many people – ideally those with similar interests – to bookmark your web site. The best way to encourage people to come back to your website is to provide great content and make it easy for people to bookmark your website.
www.digg.com is a popular website that involves elements of social bookmarking and blogging. It places an emphasis on science and technology but has recently expanded to included categories such as politics and entertainment. The latest stories and websites are submitted by registered users and editorial control is democratic. This means that news stories and web site links are submitted by users and they are only moved to the front page of Digg based upon a user-controlled ranking system.
This is how it works. Users can view all the stories or link that their fellow users submit. If a story gets enough ‘diggs’ it gets promoted to the front page of the Digg website. If it doesn’t get enough ‘diggs’ it remains in the ‘digg all’ area, where it will eventually be removed. A post may also be removed if enough users report a problem with the link.
All the content on the Digg website is free.Originally Digg carried fifteen categories in which to submit stories. These were deals, gaming, link, mods, robots, security, technology, design, Apple, Linux, music, hardware, movies, programming, software and science.
However, Digg was recently revamped and the previous categories have now been worked into the six new categories, which are: technology, science, world & business, sports, entertainment and gaming – with each category having subcategories.
On Digg, users can discover web content from just about anywhere. Whether it’s the biggest names on the web or the most obscure blog from the other side of the world, you will find it on Digg.
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