WHAT IS SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
Social bookmarking is a service or process that allows internet users to store, organize and share their bookmarks. When you find a website that you like, you add a backlink to that website on your social bookmarking account. This allows other users to view that link and visit the site as well. For an example of this, just check out one of the most popular bookmarking sites: http://del.icio.us
HOW DOES IT BENEFIT ONLINE MARKETERS?
As an online marketer, our main goal is traffic.
There is benefit to us on several levels:
1. First we get some direct traffic from people clicking on our bookmark and going directly to our web page. This is usually won’t be a huge amount of traffic in most cases, but is very targeted. Also every once in a while we get a site that will take off and become very popular from this alone.
2. The next benefit is an increased potential for fast search engine indexing. When we post our bookmark on a bookmarking site, it will be displayed on the front page. Now these pages are usually a very high PR, ranging from PR5 to PR7 or PR8. What this means is that Googlebot and other search engine spiders visit this dozens of times each day. When it does, it will find our links and start to index site immediately.
3. The final benefit is an increased authority. Because Google considers many bookmarking sites to be trusted, authority sites, any direct link to our website will increase the power and importance of our site as well. Understand that this is different from indexing. Getting a site indexed simply involves getting search engine spiders to visit the site and log the pages into the search engine’s database. Increasing a site’s authority and trust will improve where the site will be in the search engine listings. Will the site be # 1 or site # 10,001? If Google has two sites for the keyword “dog houses”. Which will be #1 and which will be #2? Well, of course, the site with the most trust and authority will be #1. With Social bookmarking, Google will find our web page from a link on a very high PR, trusted site. This is the “best scenario” for building trust and getting a good search engine ranking.
HOW TO SOCIAL BOOKMARK
The actual process of bookmarking is quite simple. You simply create an account at the bookmarking sites, log in and then add your bookmarks. When adding your bookmark, you enter keywords (called tags) which categorize your bookmark and allow others to search, view and vote for your bookmark. Here’s a list of some of the top bookmarking sites. You can sign up and use any of these services for free!
http://blinklist.com
http://furl.net
http://del.icio.us
http://shadows.com
http://simpy.com
http://spurl.net
http://blogmarks.net
http://ma.gnolia.com
http://blogmemes.net
http://scuttle.org
http://de.lirio.us
http://smarking.com
http://backflip.com
http://looklater.com
http://wink.com
http://connotea.com
http://markaboo.com
http://linkagogo.com
http://feedmelinks.com
http://rawsugar.com
SEEMS TOO SIMPLE, WHAT’S THE CATCH?
There are two major bookmarking downsides you should be aware of:
1. It’s time consuming. If you have more than a few small websites, then logging into each bookmarking service and adding your web pages and relevant tags will take time. Lots of time. If you have websites with hundreds or thousands of pages, you will want to submit thousands of bookmarks. Not only will that take a long time, if you are not careful you can be labeled as a spammer… which leads us to #2.
2. You could be accused of SPAM. Even if you have all good intentions and are not a spammer, adding too many bookmarks to your account too quickly or adding too many bookmarks from a single website will get your account banned as spam. Bookmarking websites want to see their service used, but not abused. Trying to save time by adding all of your website bookmarks at once may save some time, but they do not like it!
SO, IS IT STILL WORTH IT?
Despite these points, the benefits of bookmarking far outweigh the negatives. To alleviate some of the time consuming work, there are several bookmarking tools that attempt to automate the process and allow you to bookmark your pages much faster than simply doing them all manually. Some of these are free tools and some will cost you. In the next part of this report, I will cover these tools along with their advantages and disadvantages.
BOOKMARKING TOOLS
I have divided this section into two parts, FREE and PAID tools and/or services.
FREE BOOKMARKING TOOLS
!Delicioso! Social Bookmarking Power Submitter
http://www.tagtooga.com/pg/delicioso
This is a totally FREE Windows application that allows you to submit your bookmarks to 8 different bookmarking sites in a semi-automated manner. To use, you must manually enter a list of URLS, then enter a title and tags for each URL. The software can gather your tags and titles by crawling your URL, but if you have more than a few pages to bookmark this can take a while and possibly crash your PC! Once all the data is entered, You click SUBMIT and the software submits the bookmarks
• NERD FACTOR: Beginner. Requires the ability to install software on PC.
• IDEAL USER: Those who have only a few pages to bookmark a month.
• ADVANTAGES: It’s free.
• DISADVANTAGES: Takes too long to set up large numbers of pages. It submits all the bookmarks to each site at once. So if you have 1,000 bookmarks you are basically just dumping them all into the bookmarking site around the same time… which is basically SPAM.
OnlyWire
http://www.onlywire.com
OnlyWire is a FREE online service that allows you to add a bookmark to 20 bookmarking sites from one account. So instead of logging into each bookmarking account separately to submit your bookmarks, you just log into OnlyWire and they will submit the bookmark for you.
• ADVANTAGES: Simple. All you have to do is create an account.
• IDEAL USER: Those bookmark only a small number pages each week.
• ADVANTAGES: Requires no installation of software. It’s FREE. They also have an API.
• DISADVANTAGES: You are using a third party service to submit your bookmarks so you are subject to their submission rules. Submitting a large number of bookmarks on a regular basis would get your account cancelled and IP banned. You cannot delay posting, so when submitting large numbers of pages, you run the risk of looking like SPAM.
Sociable
http://push.cx/sociable
This is not actually an automated bookmarking tool. It is a Wordpress plug-in that displays quick-links to some bookmarking sites. when your blog visitor clicks the link, they can then bookmark your blog post if they so choose. What I have found is that these types of plug-ins aren’t very effective in getting visitors to bookmark your posts. It’s very rare to see any benefit from this plug-in. I will also add that there are many, many plug-ins that perform a similar function as sociable. You can find many here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Technorati
• ADVANTAGE: Allows your blog visitors to easily bookmark your blog post.
• DISADVANTAGES: You are relying on others to bookmark your pages. Rarely used. Visitors must still log into their bookmarking accounts manually to bookmark the post. Unless you provide some exceptional content, most will not.
Socializer
http://ekstreme.com/socializer/
This FREE online bookmarking service allows a webpage visitor to easily bookmark that web page by displaying quicklinks to 40+ bookmarking sites. It is very similar to Sociable, EXCEPT it allows the visitor to bookmark a web page instead of a blog post. Like Sociable, visitors must still click each individual link, then log into their bookmarking account and bookmark the desired page.
• ADVANTAGE: Allows your blog visitors to easily bookmark your blog post.
• DISADVANTAGES: You are relying on others to bookmark your pages. Rarely used. Visitors must still log into their bookmarking accounts manually to bookmark the post. Unless you provide some exceptional content, most will not.
Tag Generator
http://www.evilgeniusmarketing.com/ice/tag-generator.cfm
Like Sociable and Socializer, this is not an automated bookmarking tool. This script generates a quick-link to the bookmarking sites. So if a visitor chooses to bookmark your website or blog post, they can do so easily.
• ADVANTAGE: Allows your blog visitors to easily bookmark your blog post.
• DISADVANTAGES: You are relying on others to bookmark your pages. Rarely used. Visitors must still log into their bookmarking accounts manually to bookmark the post. Unless you provide some exceptional content, most will not.
PAID BOOKMARKING TOOLS
Now at this point I’m sure you now realize that just because something is free doesn’t mean it’s actually worthwhile to use. The paid tools are divided into server side tools and windows applications.
WINDOWS APPLICATIONS
There are currently at least 4 paid windows based bookmarking products. I will not name individually, but they are all fairly similar so I will just discuss them all here. They are somewhat expensive and have several things you must consider before even thinking of using them:
1) They run on windows. Normally that should be enough there. MAC users are out and you are almost guaranteed run errors, system freezes and crashing. Not much of a time saver.
2) They are charging you an upfront fee AND a monthly charge to use the software. Now there is absolutely no reason for this except for the fact that they want more money from you.
3) None of these tools are totally fully automated. In fact, most are no better than the free tools I reviewed earlier. Why? Well all of them require you to manually enter your bookmarks and manually enter your tags for each bookmark. What exactly is the point?
I have 1,000 bookmarks to submit, I will spend hours manually entering each bookmark URL and then manually entering tags for each of those URLS! And then running the software to submit each bookmark! And I’m paying for this? The only thing these Windows based tools have going for them is that some of them can automate account creation at each bookmarking site. This can save you some time if you have tons of accounts to create (such as a spammer would). BUT if used too aggressively, bookmarking accounts will see this as spam, ban your IP and all accounts created with that IP. So still want auto create accounts?
• NERD FACTOR: Beginner. Requires knowledge installing software on PC.
• IDEAL USERS: Small website owners and beginners who don’t mind dealing with PC software and its issues, and can afford a monthly usage fee.
• ADVANTAGES: Automated bookmarking account creation.
• DISADVANTAGES: Can be seen as spam if bookmarking large numbers of sites at once; monthly usage fees; runs on your PC; limited scalability; semiautomated.
SERVER SIDE APPLICATIONS
These are bookmarking tools that run on your server. It doesn’t matter if you are a MAC or PC users, these don’t run on your PC. There are several benefits to this, but the most important is speed, reliability and scalability. No matter if you have 1 bookmark or 10,000 these tools can handle the load. They run 24/7, and you don’t have to worry about it crashing your PC or sucking up your PC resources.
Auto Social Poster
http://www.AutoSocialPoster.com
The Auto Social Poster is the first (and only) totally automated social bookmarking plug-in for Wordpress. It allows you to automatically bookmark new blog posts on over 24 different bookmarking sites. Once you set it up, it can run hands free. All you need to do is simply post to your blog as you normally do and the plug-in will do the rest.
Each time a new post is added to your Wordpress blog, it will bookmark that post to specific bookmarking sites or even a random bookmarking site. It will also add the random number of tags that you specify. Once completed you will receive a report via email.
Click here to watch a video demo:
http://www.autosocialposter.com/asp.html
• NERD FACTOR: Intermediate. Requires minimal knowledge of Wordpress and FTP.
• IDEAL USERS: Avid Wordpress bloggers who want to make sure they get their new content bookmarked without having to tinker around with bookmarking manually.
• ADVANTAGES: Allows you to fully automate the bookmarking of your new blog posts. One time purchase fee allows use on unlimited blogs. No monthly usage charge. Free Updates.
• DISADVANTAGES: The only disadvantage this plug-in has is that it only works for Wordpress blogs. It does not bookmark your website pages or posts from other blog platforms.
RSS Bookmarker
http://www.RSS-Bookmarker.com
RSS Bookmarker is a fully automated server side script that allows you to automatically bookmark pages of your website slowly. Imagine being able to slowly drip pages of your websites into bookmarking servers like simpy and furl over the course of weeks or months! You don’t look like spam and SE’s see that this as slow, NORMAL activity. It’s all controlled on a niche basis. You create a niche, select which bookmarking sites you want to post to from that niche and then enter your RSS feeds. The server side tool will then slowly post entries from your feeds to those selected bookmarking sites. This tool doesn’t dump all of your web pages into a bookmarking site at once like every other bookmarking software out there. It automatically submits your pages at pre-set intervals… hands-free. You set it and it runs on auto pilot. How it is different from the Auto Social Poster? Well the Auto Social Poster only bookmarks WORDPRESS BLOG posts. This RSS Bookmarker will bookmark any website that has an RSS FEED.
Check out a quick demo video here:
http://www.mass-automation.com/autobookmark/video/bookmarker.html
Don’t have an RSS feed? Don’t worry, this tool also comes with a totally separate script called the RSS FEED GENERATOR which spiders your website and creates an RSS feed for you.
• NERD FACTOR: Intermediate. Requires knowledge of FTP and setting up MYSQL Databases.
• IDEAL USERS: Any website owner that has lots of pages to bookmark and wants to get into bookmarking without wasting lots of time.
• ADVANTAGES: It’s totally automated and designed for large scale use. It can slowly drip thousands of pages, hands-free. If you have hundreds of websites that you need to bookmark, then this is YOUR SOLUTION.
• DISADVANTAGES: Requires your own server or shared server to run.
CONCLUSION
Social bookmarking is still in it’s infancy. As it’s popularity increases, we will see more and more people jumping on the bandwagon. To spread the word, feel free to redistribute this report to others who want to get started with social bookmarking. If you have any comments or questions, please don’t hesitate to post them on our forum at http://www.mass-automation.com/forum/
Here is some other great reading for those that want to learn more about folksonomy and social bookmarking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_%28metadata%29
Kind regards,
Mat Heller
http://www.massaccountmanager.com
http://www.rss-bookmarker.com
http://www.autosocialposter.com
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