With the popularity of social networking sites, there has been a surge of social bookmarking sites too. Social networks revolve around the maintenance of relationships between members of the community. Social bookmarking, on the other hand, is responsible for connecting content that are made by its members. Because of its connectivity function, social bookmarking sites provide another business tool for site owners.
It is no longer uncommon to see icons at the bottom of blog posts and articles. When you hover the mouse, website names like Technorati, Digg, Furl or Delicious pop out. These are social bookmarking sites. A social bookmarking site is pretty much the same as an actual bookmark. Bookmarks are made to indicate a page or passage so it will be easy to locate. The same purpose goes for social bookmarking icons. A website can be marked for convenience. Others can also be directed to a site using a social bookmark.
There are many forms of social bookmarking sites. Squidoo deals with creating lenses that highlights a particular niche of the lens owner. Flickr’s specialization is on photos and images. Others deal with movie or music reviews.
For the business owner to utilize social bookmarks there is a need to choose the appropriate site. Always remember that traffic to the business site is the number one purpose. The content or information that is placed on the social bookmarking site should be interesting enough to let readers click on the website URL. The objective is to have the readers mark your page and make comments or inquiries. People will be interested in updates because they are informative and useful.
Content is very important. A business owner can have a following of readers and even have a higher search engine ranking because of the traffic. In order to have good content, visit popular bookmarking sites and observe the most popular sites that are being viewed. Analyze what others are reading and why they find the sites interesting and informative. Visit competitive sites and investigate how they are doing content and presentation. Be observant on what readers are commenting and what type of information that they are asking for.
With the use of social bookmarking sites, a business owner can increase visibility and makes it easy to get prospective clients. By adding social bookmarking icons to blogs or websites, it is an effective way to bring traffic to the business website and a strong possibility that the reader will add the URL to the favorite list on the browser.
Therese Prentice is a Social Networking Expert, Joint Venture Broker, Certified Marketing and Business Coach Tools and Resources for Lifestyle Entrepreneurs… http://www.socialnetworkingqueen.com http://www.inthelivingroom.com http://www.theoutsourcesquad.com
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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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Social bookmarking has finally got a foothold. Social bookmarking is being seen by many marketing experts as a cost effective method of augmenting distribution of content, branding and image building and marketing. According to a survey, it has been seen that almost 28% of users on the Internet on a normal day have been tagging online content while 7% of users on the Internet have been either tagging or categorizing content. This method is being seen as a highly successful idea and this can be seen with the amount of success achieved by http://Del.icio.us.
Del.icio.us had acquired their first million visitors in 3 years but they acquired the next 2 million visitors within a span of 6 months. So what is social bookmarking? Social bookmarking can be compared to linking. Social bookmarks are basically links that help an internet user to classify, share, store and even search for content using a process called tagging. Tags just make it easier for internet users to find the content they are looking for. You can apply social bookmarks to content or information in different formats like PDF, video, blogs, websites, images etc.
Some of the top social bookmarking websites include StumbleUpon, http://del.icio.us, Google Bookmarks and Furl. Reddit and Dig are two social news websites, which are also considered as social bookmarking sites. The idea is to create positive content about your services, products or overall business and then optimizing the content on these social bookmarking websites.
Social bookmarking is an interesting concept that can be used for enhancing the process of marketing and promotions. What marketers can really do is allow sharing of content by the visitors. As a result, the bookmarks encourage a kind of functionality that is most often referred to as forward-to-a-friend process. Apart from this, marketers can also post their own content on different social bookmarking websites, which will initiate movement of traffic to their sites. In a sense, this is an online version word of mouth advertising where surfers share their bookmarks.
But for social bookmarking to be a real success, you need to have engaging or interactive content, which users will find useful, interesting and entertaining. It should be the kind of content that most users can recommend to others or forward it. The content should attract users and this is where creativity plays an important role. You will have to look from the perspective of an internet user to gauge what he or she might be looking for and then provide it. There are certain tips you can follow to make social bookmarking a marketing success for your online business and they are:
Understand the requirement of your audience and try to focus on topics that will interest your readers, audience or users.
Content should be interesting and yet easy to read. The more heavy words and sentences you use, the more difficult and unfriendly it will be for the reader. Look at the blogs – most blogs have reader friendly and more personalized content. Apart from this, you can also add bold and colored or highlighted fonts to assist in increasing readability.
The title should be interesting and hint at what the article is all about. If you want to provide information only on Pay-per-click then there is no point having a title like “The best internet marketing tools.” Readers will think that this article encompasses all the methods and it will be useless for a reader who wants specialized information about Pay-per-click. On the other hand if you have a title like “Less money, more traffic using Pay-per-click” This title will attract the attention of readers looking for specialized information on Pay-per-click and other readers who want information on internet marketing methods.
Keywords are extremely important in bringing traffic to your website. Use of keywords is a key factor that drives search engine optimization. If you don’t use the required amount of keywords then internet users or readers might not be able to find your article using the Google or Yahoo search engines.
Using a content format that will ensure readability is important. If the size of your font is too small then it might be difficult for most of the readers to appreciate the content however important the information provided by you may be. If you want users to tag your content then it is important that you place buttons at the top or the bottom of your article. You can also avoid clutter by including bookmark option of only those social bookmarking communities that are best linked to your business.
These are some of the ways by which, you can use social bookmarking to your advantage.
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If you are new to Internet marketing you might not be aware of how much social marketing sites can do to boost the traffic coming to your Internet marketing start-up business. You may not even be aware of what social networking and social bookmarking sites are, or how to utilize them.
Sure, social sites give you a lot of interactivity and allow users to personalize their sites, compile a list of favourite links, videos, music, photos, documents and share it all with friends and visitors, but how exactly does that help you develop your Internet marketing start-up business?
Above all, you should be aware that social media marketing sites fall into two basic categories, bookmarking sites and networking sites, so you need to be clear about what you want to do?
Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking sites allow you to build and organize your favourite links (i.e. bookmarks) AND you can choose to restrict them to selected friends or make them public and share them with everybody on the Internet.
The big advantage of social bookmarking is that your favourite links are no longer tied to one specific browser accessible from just one computer in one location.
Social bookmarking services enable users to save bookmarks on a remote web server which can be accessed anywhere where there is an online connection.
Social bookmarking sites usually categorize links with a “tagging” system which allows users to choose keywords with which to “tag” their bookmarks. Sites can then be retrieved via the tags.
You may invite visitors to bookmark your posts. You can do this by adding a button to your page that links through to Stumbleupon, or Digg, or TwitThis and so on.
However, there are so many social bookmarking services, that if you added all their buttons you’d end up with more buttons than content on your page! Instead, use a service like addthis.com, which places one button on your site for a wide range of social bookmarking sites.
Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites offer a convenient method of connecting with people who share similar interests to you.
Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to post your advertisements and promote your products, as long as you do not simply (and stupidly) send out spam. Traffic will build on any site that has original, good quality, regularly updated content.
MySpace or Facebook?
It has recently been noised abroad that MySpace is no good for Internet marketing, but that is not so. It was simply a case of too many Internet marketers not knowing who their audience was.
The point is that MySpace tends to attract a younger age bracket with less money to spend than does Facebook. Get to know the sites and adapt your content to each one, don’t simply post the same stuff to both.
One other reason why social networking sites are sometimes dismissed as not being any good for business is that some people do little more than set up a profile. Then they get stuck, don’t know what to do, do nothing. Merely being there is not enough! Find ways to communicate with the people who are there on their terms, not yours.
Go careful, though, that you don’t go overboard with the crazy applications and the “late night partying confessions” stuff if it is not the sort of thing you want your clients to see!
Whereas social bookmarking sites are simply sites for you to collect and organize your favourite links, social networking sites, being more sociable, require more time and regular fresh content updates. With social networking sites you have to work on your image!
Search Engines Love Web 2:0!
Another reason why Internet marketers should build a presence on both social bookmarking and social networking sites is because search engines LOVE them!
Links posted on such sites are regularly followed by search engine spiders. So, by building up your links on these sites, your website backlinks will grow, and so will your search engine rankings, which is what you need if your Internet marketing start-up is to survive, grow and thrive.
If you found this article helpful you might like to visit http://grasp-the-nettle.com for more free articles on Internet marketing to help you master the net. You might also like to sign up to my FREE Internet Marketing Start-Up newsletter, which comes complete with a library of Internet marketing ebooks (worth a total of $136.75) for you to download free of charge. David Hurley lives in Japan, where he works as an English language consultant, editor, and Internet marketer.
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Social Bookmarking is a significant thing for your online shop! And here I’m going to tell you why.
No visitors – no sales. You own a web-shop (or even many web-shops) and you want it to be profitable. There are several thing, on which it depends: hosting, design, prices, payment methods, additional services etc. One of the most important thing is your web-shop RANK in search engines. Yes, exactly rank helps your site to be easily found by potential customers. The higher rank of your shop, the higher it is in the list of searched information between other (including competitive shops) web-pages. Usually, customers look through only 1-2 first pages for needed shop and you must do everything to be on those first pages! High rank of your online shop helps to increase your traffic – to get more visitors (read – potential customers). That is what you need!
How make your rank higher? It is easy to answer but not so easy to do. Of course, it’s search optimization (SEO). And an important part of SEO is Social Bookmarking.
Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users – Wikipedia.org
Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting your web store. The more people bookmark you shop, the more value it will get for search engines and the higher rank it has. It also gives your site more exposure. Your web-shop rank depends on quantity of links to your site on other sites. The fact is that links from social sites are more trusted than from commercial one (by Internet users and also by Google and Yahoo). But there is one “but” – social bookmarking by itself is quite time-consuming. Make bookmarking of your site easily and fast!
There are a lot of services designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website. I’ll shortly tell you about one of the best. It is unique solution which will let your customers to bookmark your site: any your product, category or page into social favorites / bookmarking services – Social Bookmarks Supercharged osCommerce Module
Here are the most important Social Bookmarking Module Benefits for your online business:
- very simple way to bookmark your site
- your visitors promote your website – for you, without you
- increase link popularity – Improves SEO results in long run
- multiple design templates out of the box
Module Features:
- flexible bookmarks pane position suitable for any store design: choice from multiple predefined layouts are available
- turn on or off any bookmarking service
- support of all most popular bookmarking services – 120 out of the box and adding constantly
- support of Advanced SEO for osCommerce
- improves SEO results in long run
The goal of the Module is to help you to get more visitors, higher rank and, as a result, increase your sales. Don’t miss this opportunity and download free trial version here http://www.magneticone.com/store/oscommerce.modules/social.bookmarks.supercharged…oscommerce.module
Successful bookmarking!
Martin Wann, MagneticOne Company,
http://www.magneticone.com/
Want to Live an Extra Trillion Years?
read more
Social Bookmarking is a significant thing for your online shop! And here I’m going to tell you why.
No visitors – no sales. You own a web-shop (or even many web-shops) and you want it to be profitable. There are several thing, on which it depends: hosting, design, prices, payment methods, additional services etc. One of the most important thing is your web-shop RANK in search engines. Yes, exactly rank helps your site to be easily found by potential customers. The higher rank of your shop, the higher it is in the list of searched information between other (including competitive shops) web-pages. Usually, customers look through only 1-2 first pages for needed shop and you must do everything to be on those first pages! High rank of your online shop helps to increase your traffic – to get more visitors (read – potential customers). That is what you need!
How make your rank higher? It is easy to answer but not so easy to do. Of course, it’s search optimization (SEO). And an important part of SEO is Social Bookmarking.
Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users – Wikipedia.org
Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting your web store. The more people bookmark you shop, the more value it will get for search engines and the higher rank it has. It also gives your site more exposure. Your web-shop rank depends on quantity of links to your site on other sites. The fact is that links from social sites are more trusted than from commercial one (by Internet users and also by Google and Yahoo). But there is one “but” – social bookmarking by itself is quite time-consuming. Make bookmarking of your site easily and fast!
There are a lot of services designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website. I’ll shortly tell you about one of the best. It is unique solution which will let your customers to bookmark your site: any your product, category or page into social favorites / bookmarking services – Social Bookmarks Supercharged osCommerce Module
Here are the most important Social Bookmarking Module Benefits for your online business:
- very simple way to bookmark your site
- your visitors promote your website – for you, without you
- increase link popularity – Improves SEO results in long run
- multiple design templates out of the box
Module Features:
- flexible bookmarks pane position suitable for any store design: choice from multiple predefined layouts are available
- turn on or off any bookmarking service
- support of all most popular bookmarking services – 120 out of the box and adding constantly
- support of Advanced SEO for osCommerce
- improves SEO results in long run
The goal of the Module is to help you to get more visitors, higher rank and, as a result, increase your sales. Don’t miss this opportunity and download free trial version here http://www.magneticone.com/store/oscommerce.modules/social.bookmarks.supercharged…oscommerce.module
Successful bookmarking!
Martin Wann, MagneticOne Company,
http://www.magneticone.com/
Want to Live an Extra Trillion Years?
read more
