by Sherry Heyl,
I personally think social bookmarks are cool. In fact, when asked what my favorite social media site is, I consistently point to Delicious. However, I think social bookmarking gets the least amount of media attention and is therefore the least understood tools on the web. So this week I will review the whats and whys of social bookmarking.
Overview of the Adoption of Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking is a way to save, organize and share links on the web. There are currently hundreds of sites dedicated to social bookmarking and almost all social networking sites enable their members to share links with each other. The following graph is from Compete.com, shows that there is a continuous growth in the use of social bookmarking tools.
Currently Stumbleupon.com and Reddit.com seem to be leading the pack. However, in the world of social media, quantity does not always equal quality.
People are using different social bookmarking tools for many different reasons. The features and benefits of each site often determines how the site is used and ultimately who is using the site as well as the site’s culture. Primary uses for Social Bookmarks are:
➢ Save and organize links
➢ Search for content that has been “vetted” by the community
➢ Share content
One feature that seems to be universal to all social bookmarking sites is the ability for an individual to share content with their networked community. Considering the many various statistics suggesting that people are spending more time on social networks and trusting messages that are shared by their peer groups more than other sources, many online publications have developed ways to promote having their content shared within the various networking sites.
One popular tool is the Add This button which is easy to install on almost all platforms, provides the audience a one click option to bookmark content to all of their online communities and provides the content provider statistics on what content their audience is sharing and where.
Different Features and Benefits
Each Social Bookmarking site offers a variety of features and benefits for their community members as well as content producers. Some of the more common ones the extend across most sites are listed below. Features and Benefits for Community Members
➢ Ability to save articles of interest
➢ Ability to organize content by different tags or categories ➢ Ability to post comments on saved links
➢ Ability to discover new and relevant content from “like minds”
➢ Ability to leverage the benefits of RSS Features and Benefits of Content Producers
➢ Content is optimized for organic search
➢ Content is discovered by like minded community members
➢ Gain insights into your audience content consumption behavior
➢ Build a trusted relationships with community members
➢ Ability to leverage the benefits of RSS
Increase Traffic to Your Site
There are many sites and services that promise to significantly increase traffic to a website by submitting content to various bookmarking services.
The first question that should be asked is “is this relevant traffic, our target audience?”
The second question should be “is this traffic sustainable?”
Often times a site will experience a significant spike in traffic, such as the FinalFantasySeries.net site below.
However this is because the bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon have recognized new content (fresh blood) and is testing the content with various members to see how they will respond. If the response is good, more people bookmark the content in their account, content from the site will continuously get ranked high. If the response is not so good, future content will not get ranked very high.
The best way to build and sustain traffic from the various social bookmarking sites is to join the communities, get to know your audience, and create content of value that they are eager to share. Below are three key steps to creating sustainable traffic and viral distribution of your content.
1. Focus on Keywords. Because content producers have the ability to see how relevant content is being tagged by the community, they can leverage the insights of those tags to enhance their own tagging strategy and keywords to enhance their chances of increasing their search results. This is also a great way to join the community. Other community members of the social bookmarking sites can see the content that has been recently tagged and view those pages that interest them.
2. Enable and encourage your readers to bookmark your content in their various selected communities through tools such as Addthis.com
3. Join relevant networks and develop relationships based on sharing content of value. Be sure not to submit only your content. That comes across as self-serving and spamming.
Truly share content that is of mutual interest from various sources.
Identify Communities of Like Minds
In the mid-nineties the way we discovered new content was revolutionized by Amazon.com’s recommendation engine. Amazon.com’s technology “learned” the buying behaviors and preferences of their consumers and provided recommendations based on what similar consumers were buying as well as provided a platform for their consumers to rate and review products. Social Bookmarking sites work on the same ideas of connecting people who share common interests and providing a platform for them to rate and review, not books, but web content. Community members are able to “friend” people they know as well as people they do not know but have identified as having similar ideas and interest. This network of “friends” are able to view what each person is saving, subscribe via RSS feeds to each others accounts in order to be alerts when new content is saved as well as push content to their network.
The Unique Culture of Each Site
No Social Bookmarking site is created equal. Each site comes with unique features and functions which determines how the site is used, as well as who uses it. Also in consideration is when the site went live and what their “go to Market” strategy was. When Concept Hub, Inc researches the social media landscape for a client, we check every main social bookmarking site to identify if relevant content is being shared and which site has the greatest share of our client’s target audience. Although sites like Compete.com shows reddit with a significant lead in audience, Concept Hub, Inc has found Delicious is the favorite site among people in Atlanta. We have discovered Digg is still the favorite site for technology enthusiast and reddit is a favorite among the financial community. However we all have seen how fickle the online community can be and each new site makes it easier for community members to import their links over. It is important to always keep your finger on the pulse of what the community is doing and who is being active in which sites
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Posted by: Alex | October 26, 2009 at 12:08 AM