VinniBatton84
Social Bookmarking is the practice of posting links to articles and web pages to various "link aggregator" or social bookmark sites, including Digg, Stumbleupon and so on. Bookmarking sites rise and fall in popularity fairly quickly, but they generally have a couple of common features:
1. Users can submit links which other users can browse, providing a good way to expose your content.
2. Links enter into large pages of lists, that are normally very easy to navigate, and are also usually divided up into a "main page" of the best links during the day, and various sub-sections which help one to get exposure in relevant circles.
3. Links can usually be "voted on" to determine which links have more airtime on the front page of various sections. The more votes your links get, the harder traffic they get.
4. Some sites, like Digg, fasten a weighting to certain actions and users, so an individual who submits very popular links will have a vote that carries excess fat.
5. Most social bookmarking site users are fairly jaded with regards to the internet, and will ignore things that aren't interesting, funny, or very entertaining. This isn't a place for your boring press releases.
6. Most bookmarking sites normally have some kind of "social" element in their mind, allowing users to produce profiles, have a friends listing of other users, etc., with the aspiration of getting users to share with you content between themselves.
These are the basics, so let's take a look at how best to approach social bookmark creating. I'm going to use Reddit and Digg as my main examples, but bear in mind that Reddit itself takes a great deal of familiarity with its culture before you are able to submit links that anybody even clicks.
Choose your niche
Social Bookmarking - Submitting an article on growing bonsai trees to the front page of Reddit won't do you any good - you'll get 30 visitors maybe, none of whom will buy your products. But submitting it to /r/bonsai, though it only has around 1,100 readers, will likely 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 the following is: know your subreddits.
Write an appealing title, and use a photo
Social Bookmarking - Standard newspaper/advert headline formats do not work too well on the net, because everyone has become immune to them. Instead you have to think of a clever title that interests people enough to learn more about what you're writing, or otherwise promise pictures of cats.
Most bookmarking sites incorporate a thumbnail from the page you're linking to, or one you provide. Consider the trouble to do this - it generates higher click throughs.
Keep at it, making your links an easy task to share
Social Bookmarking is focused on persistence, so if nobody selects your first link, make another article, think of a more clever title and attempt again. Put a social bookmarking widget on your website or blog, and encourage people to talk about your articles. If you've submitted them already, and they have accounts, it only takes an additional to click an "upvote" or "like" button.
Basically, having links to all of your articles on six Social Bookmarking sites is great for SEO.
