By Hostway
Social bookmarking sites offer a free way to drive traffic to and raise awareness of your Web site. Social bookmarking is a way for people to save links to Web pages they like in the cloud and access them from any Internet connection. It also allows users to share bookmarked pages with each other, increasing its value to users and making it more attractive to marketers looking to gain traction with a viral marketing campaign.
Free Doesn’t Mean Easy
Just because most social bookmarking Web sites are free to join doesn’t mean you can rise to the top of the rankings with little effort. People join to find useful or interesting Web sites and to interact with like-minded individuals. They’re not there to learn about products and services. If you’re selling something, you’ll have to build relationships before you launch your marketing efforts.
Most social bookmarking sites generally work like this: A user submits a Web page containing a news story, a video, unique content or something interesting or unbelievable. The user community votes on the Web pages. The pages with the most votes rise to the top on the Web sites, gaining even more visibility while the sites with the least votes remain buried.
Here’s how to get started:
- Sign up to create an account with the Web sites listed below.
- Find your friends and connect to them.
- Encourage any of your friends who haven’t already joined the Web sites to join.
- Start submitting and voting for Web pages you like.
- Submit your own site.
- Send your friends a link to your site and ask them to vote for it if they like it.
- Make it easy for other people to submit your content by including icons for each bookmarking site right on your page.
People who sign up for an account and use the Web site solely for marketing often get little to no new traffic to their Web sites.
Most Popular Web Sites
Here’s a list of links to the most popular bookmarking Web sites:
StumbleUpon
Digg
Reddit
Delicious
Yahoo Bookmarks
Google Bookmarks
Mr. Wong
If you have the time to commit to social bookmarking, it’s a great way to share your Web site with others, gain valuable inbound links and drive traffic.