How to Market to the Social Bookmarking Crowd

Social Media — By bigoak on August 15, 2011 2:13 pm

Sharing a news article used to be easy. You’d cut it out of the paper and mail it to someone. When our postal system went virtual, we started emailing them. Email led to an innocent “Share this on Facebook” button, and today readers are bombarded with 40 different buttons letting them “share” this content however they wish. But what do all those Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit buttons do, anyway?

These are the buttons for popular social bookmarking sites around the web. But I already have a blog, a Facebook, and a Twitter! you wail. Isn’t that enough? 

Relax: If You’ve Got a Twitter, You’re Already Social Bookmarking

Every time you share a link on Twitter, you’re social bookmarking. You’re saying to your Twitter followers, “Hey guys, I think this is really interesting– I think you’d like it too.” What you share depends on what kind of brand you’re building. If you’re a health food company, you could tweet links to healthy recipes; if you’re a pet store owner, you’re probably more likely to tweet cute pictures of local pets. You know your audience and you cater to it.

Social bookmarking works the same way. You’re sharing content within your field; you’re building a brand. People will learn to trust you as a source of content about your niche– no matter if you’re a marketing guru, a foodie, or a photographer. The content you share on social bookmarking sites can gain a lot of traction if you’ve built an audience around what you share.

The Four Main Players in the Social Bookmarking Game

New social bookmarking sites are launched everyday, but the four mainstays are Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Delicious.

1. Digg: With 25,000,000 monthly visitors, Digg is the most popular social bookmarking site out there. When users find a link they like or want to share, they “Digg” the link. The most popular Diggs show up on a “Top News” feed; however, users also see a “My News” feed that’s based on their particular interests.
2. StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon first collects a user’s interests and then offers them a random smattering of links that like-minded users have shared. If you’re a first-time user, start with Stumble: it’s easy to use and will bring you a significant traffic increase in a short amount of time.
3. Delicious: Delicious truly puts the “bookmark” in social bookmarking. Whenever you bookmark a page through Delicious, it becomes visible to the entire Delicious community.
4. Reddit: Reddit is sort of like Digg’s less pretentious little brother. While most of the content that lands on Digg’s front page is submitted by the site’s top users, even new Reddit users have a chance of making the front page.

Social Bookmarking 101: Pretend You’re a Customer

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and search for related content on a social bookmarking site. You’ll soon learn that different sites are better for different marketing. For example, a Digg search for “SEO copywriting” pulled up several SEO content companies first; a Stumble search for the same term revealed mainly SEO-based blog posts and how-to articles. Your informative content may do better on Stumble…but your site as a whole may do better on Digg.

Spend a few weeks watching what’s successfully bookmarked in your field before you jump into the bookmarking fray. Remember, social bookmarking isn’t a one-way street; you’ve got to comment and share on others’ sites before you can become a truly successful bookmarker. It may take a month or two, but you’ll soon start seeing a significant increase in your site traffic.

Image Source: Ana_Fuji via Flickr

Related articles

• This Just In, Social Media Marketing And Advertising Works! (frommyexperience.com)
• Tips to Stay Safe and Private on Facebook – Social Networking Sites and Privacy (allenandallen.com)
• The Simple Way to Produce Killer SEO Web Content (seoscribe.com)
• Top 5 Social Bookmarking Sites That Can Drive Crazy Traffic To Your Blog (johnchow.com)

Tags: digg, facebook, foodie, news feed, niche, reddit, social bookmarking sites, stumbleupon, twitter