WoodhamFairchild206

Social Bookmarking is the practice of posting links to articles and website pages to various "link aggregator" or social bookmark sites, such as Digg, Stumbleupon and so on. Social bookmarking sites rise and fall in popularity rapidly, but they generally have a few common features:

1. Users can submit links which other users can browse, providing a sensible way to expose your content.

2. Links enter into large pages of lists, that are normally very easy to navigate, and are generally usually divided up right into a "main page" of the best links for the day, and various sub-sections which help one to get exposure in more relevant circles.

3. Links usually can be "voted on" to determine which links have more airtime on the front page of numerous sections. The more votes your links get, the greater traffic they get.

4. Some sites, like Digg, attach a weighting to certain actions and users, so an individual who submits popular links will have a vote that carries more weight.

5. Most social bookmark creating site users are fairly jaded in terms of the internet, and will ignore things that aren't interesting, funny, or very entertaining. This isn't a place for your boring pr announcements.

6. Most bookmarking sites will often have some kind of "social" element in their mind, allowing users to produce profiles, have a friends set of other users, etc., with the hope of getting users to talk about content between themselves.

Those 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, having said that that Reddit itself needs a great deal of familiarity with its culture until you are able to submit links that anybody even clicks.

Choose your niche

Social Bookmarking - Submitting articles on growing bonsais to the front page of Reddit won't do you any good - you'll get 30 visitors maybe, none who will buy your products. But submitting it to /r/bonsai, even though it only has around 1,100 readers, will most likely garner you more attention from interested people.

Ironically, submitting to /r/trees will have much less of an effect, because /r/trees is dedicated to marijuana culture. The lesson here is: know your subreddits.

Write a catchy title, and use a picture

Social Bookmarking - Standard newspaper/advert headline formats fail to work too well on the internet, because everyone has become safe from them. Instead you should think of a clever title that interests people enough to find out more about what you're writing, or otherwise promise pictures of cats.

Most bookmarking sites include a thumbnail from the page you're linking to, or one you provide. Take the trouble to do this - it generates much higher click throughs.

Keep at it, and make your links easy to share

Social Bookmarking is all about persistence, so if nobody selects your first link, make another article, make a more clever title and check out again. Put a social bookmark submitting widget on your blog or website, and encourage people to share with you your articles. If you've submitted them already, and they've accounts, it only takes an additional to click an "upvote" or "like" button.

Regardless of anything else, having links to all or any of your articles on six Social Bookmarking sites is great for SEO.