Social bookmarking sites are an extremely valuable tool for those who
are looking at all of their small business marketing options. Of
course, in order to fully take advantage of the results that social
bookmarking sites can yield, it is important to look into social media
optimization, and to understand that it is up to you to make it easy
for your site visitors to bookmark your articles, news, press releases,
blog posts, podcasts and images.
Of course, before you will find
that you are able to take advantage of both the results of social
bookmarking for directing traffic to your website and making sure that
you will be looking into the appropriate social media optimization of
your site, you need to have a sense of which sites are the big players
and of why social bookmarking sites are important.
When you're
talking about social bookmarking sites, there are a few sites that will
almost immediately come to mind. The first of these sites is Digg.com.
When someone Diggs your story, your press release or blog post, they
will be able to bookmark the site, include a description of what they
read and to include some keywords to characterize the post. Another
common social bookmarking site is Propeller – a site that is connected
with the AOL network.
Perhaps the greatest advantage to social
bookmarking sites is that, because they are used so frequently by so
many people, they are an important part of a solid search engine
optimization strategy; social bookmarking is an opportunity to get one
way, incoming links to your site from websites with a high Page Rank.
Add to that the importance of appropriate tagging, and what you'll find
is that the more your pages, articles and posts are bookmarked, the
more likely it is for your prospects to find and visit your site.
Simply
put, social bookmarking is not just about making a list of your
favorite sites and news so that you can find them again later; social
bookmarking is a chance to connect with others who have similar
interests, to network with others in your field and – at least to some
extent – to see what your competitors are doing well.
There
are a number of reasons why you should include social bookmarking sites
when you are thinking about what small business marketing steps you
should be taking. Likewise, there are a number of key things that you
can do to take advantage of social media optimization for your website.
First,
if you do not have a blog, start writing one – and working to drive
traffic to it. Take advantage of search media optimization for your
website by making an effort to make it easy for your site visitors to
add a link to your site to the social bookmarking site of their choice.
Likewise, when you have a strong profile on a social bookmarking site –
whether you focus your efforts on Delicious, Propeller, Digg or even
Stumbleupon – make sure that your site visitors can find and join your
network.
The key to benefiting from social media optimization
and social bookmarking sites is simple: make it as easy as possible for
your site visitors to help you out by bookmarking your information.
When you do, you'll find that more of your visitors will bookmark your
site and that you will be able to benefit from the attention you get.