Internet Marketing School

Social Bookmarking in Internet Marketing - If you do a quick Google search, it won’t take you long to realise that there are enough social bookmarking sites out there to sink a rather large yacht. And worse, every day there seems to be a new one, claiming that it is the ‘only site on the internet to offer community tools’ (er…which internet are you looking at? Because the one I look at has several hundred sites offering community tools) or that it is the ‘best social bookmarking site around’ (which is really a matter of subjective taste). So how do you know which sites to spend your time with?

Not another list…

I am not going to provide you with another list of sites, or extol of the virtues of Digg or Delicious. Nor am I going to recommend which sites I think you should be using. Rather, I am going to pose some questions for you to consider when you do come to decide which sites you want to spend your time on. That way you can ensure you have utilised your time effectively and not spent it on a site which does absolutely nothing for you.

How much traffic do you want?

There is no doubt that the more popular the social bookmarking site, the more traffic you are likely to receive from it if you are successful with it and become a well known and respected member of the community. Of course, the extent of site popularity is directly proportionate to difficulty of gaining that respect and familiarity. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious have very large, well established communities which are difficult to make an impact in. By all means, work on them and I would certainly include them in your arsenal, but don’t be disappointed if the flood of traffic, or the huge number of friends takes some time to achieve.

What is your subject area?

Some social bookmarking sites have a particular leaning towards specific topic areas. Delicious and StumbleUpon are both fairly balanced and generalised, but others have a techie/geek emphasis, or a political emphasis or a current news emphasis. If your area is technology, then find one of the social bookmarking sites that favour technology. Don’t spend your time on the political news site and wonder why it perhaps isn’t working for you.

What countries are you focused on?

Although many of us in the English speaking world may assume that English is the ‘language of the internet’, there are plenty of social bookmarking sites which are home to German speakers, French speakers, Dutch or Russian speakers. If your target audience is among them, or you want to find good non-English recommendations, it might be worth diversifying into some of the non-English bookmarking sites.

What is your purpose?

Are you looking for a good way to manage your bookmarks, or a clip file for posts or articles you have found? Is it recommendations that you want? Do you want to find random sites which you may never have come across before in your choice of areas? Do you want to write a review or not? How much interaction do you want to be able to have with the community? The answers to these questions will often determine which sites you spend time on. Bear in mind that not all of them are the same, and not all of them will offer what you want.

How close knit do you want the community to be?

It is fairly obvious, but the larger the community, the less close knit it will be and vice versa. However, human nature is such that a large community results in smaller groups within that community to form. And human nature further dictates that some of those smaller groups can become cliquey or insular. I am not going to say here which sites I think are cliquey and which aren’t because that is probably a personal assessment. But before you dive into a site and devote your every waking hour to it, do a search around the blogosphere for other people’s experiences.

Ok…I want a list

No. I’m not going to give you one. I have a spreadsheet with a prohibitively huge list of social bookmarking sites on it, but its probably easier if I direct you to some blog posts which have done the list thing already. Go for your life.

• Top 30 Social Bookmarking Sites in Internet Marketing
• Arsenal Marketing’s List with over 120 Social Bookmarking Sites

I am sure you get the picture…

This valuable article was contributed by Nancy Williams (United Kingdom), the Managing Director of Tiger Two Ltd, (ie. http://www.tigertwo.co.uk).

Published on the IMS community blog portal by the Internet Marketing School team.