Home > Promotion Is Free – Social Bookmarking

Promotion Is Free – Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is another free self promotion technique that writers can use effectively. It’s also an excellent way of keeping track of your writing research, though I won’t say much about that here. If you’re interested I wrote a post on Why Writers Should Use Social Bookmarking which explains that function in more detail. So, what exactly is social bookmarking and how does it help you promote yourself?

What Is Social Bookmarking?

You’re probably familiar with using bookmarks or favorites in your browser to mark the sites you want to find again. Social bookmarking works in a similar way, but online. You can use a site such as delicious, which is one of the best and most popular examples, to store links to content that you like – and there’s no reason why it can’t be yours. You can use tags, as you do for blog posts, to categorize the content that you post.

Where the promotion comes in is with the social aspect. With social bookmarking sites you can choose to share some or all of your bookmarks with others. People who like the things you bookmark can become fans or friends, and you can participate in groups based on your interests.

Choosing A Social Bookmarking Site

There are many, many social bookmarking sites, but you have to be careful which ones you choose. For example, if you promote your own links too heavily on StumbleUpon, you will be penalised. Some sites regard self promotion as akin to spamming, but there are plenty of sites where it’s ok to push your own stuff. Some of the sites I use include delicious, Digg, Mixx and BloggingZoom. I also use several social networking sites, though I will cover those in another post.

Getting Started With Social Bookmarking

To get started with social bookmarking, choose the services you like best and sign up for accounts. With some sites you can import your browser bookmarks so that you can use those online too. I’ve found this feature quite useful in the past. Then start bookmarking any of your content that you think is worth sharing. Posting quality links usually results in traffic to that site or resource. (Watch out for the Digg effect; if you are running a WordPress blog, using a plugin such as WP-Cache or WP-Supercache will stop your site from buckling under the flood of traffic.) Submit your posts regularly and you will get more readers and more links in the search engine results.

Remember to participate in sites which are very social. Leaving comments on the links others submit will help you become a part of the group and will also increase your visibility.

You might also enjoy:

• Why Writers Should Use Social Bookmarking
• Promotion Is Free – Social Networking
• Promotion Is Free – Forums

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