Using Social Bookmarking Effectively To Promote Your Site

Social Bookmarking

It all started in 1996, when itList conceptualized social bookmarking for both, public and private use. Ever since then, bookmarking has evolved and become more products centric. However, social bookmarking is not only about promoting a website or product. It is indeed a useful tool to increase the number of users visiting the site, nevertheless, it is not considered to be a good practice to make use of social bookmarking for this sole purpose.

Ideal Social Bookmarking

Ideally, social bookmarking started off as a way to let people share some interesting websites or blogs, with their regular site visitors. It is possible to restrict the viewing of these bookmarks to only a set of people as well, in order to imbibe some privacy. But gradually, things changed and today we rarely see private social bookmarking. People have stopped sharing links and have started to simply paste their own links on their webpages. So, the noble cause of sharing information has twisted well enough to give rise to another social marketing tool.

Excessive Bookmarking-Ouch! That Hurts

A very general question that pops up in many social marketers minds is ‘If social bookmarking is a powerful way to boost your sales and reputation, why not make good use of it? Well, it is not a ‘good use if you actually exploit it; even bookmarking can come back to pinch you, if you try to misuse it.

If a user clicks on a captive link and gets redirected to a product promotion page or a page with less content and more hype, he/she will obviously not want to click on anymore bookmarked sites. Moreover, when your regular site visitors see the excessive bookmarking of your own sites, they will start to dislike your pages altogether, which can result in substantial loss of your original clientele. Hence, over usage of social bookmarking can bring down and affect your business! That definitely hurts!

To use or not to use Social Bookmarking?

If you come across a particular site or blog, which you are very impressed with, you can share the link on your page. If you stumble upon an important piece of information, which can help others as well, you can bookmark it. If you think that the article you wrote is good and informative, you can share it with others by bookmarking it on your site. When you do all these, you will be indeed attracting people towards your unique site. If they like your work, they will even start to follow it. Thus, an optimum use of social bookmarking poses no harm and can be absolutely used.

Describe the Bookmark

When you describe a bookmark, even before the user can actually enter the site, you are giving the user an idea on what to expect from the resource. Therefore, if a user feels the urge to read it, he/she will go ahead, or else they will not take the pains to download it and then discard it immediately. You may even add comments, supporting or opposing the resource, but only if you really think you know clearly understand what the resource is talking about.

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