Social bookmarking sites offer a free way to drive traffic to and raise awareness of your Web site. Social bookmarking is a way for people to save links to Web pages they like in the cloud and access them from any Internet connection. It also allows users to share bookmarked pages with each other, increasing its value to users and making it more attractive to marketers looking to gain traction with a viral marketing campaign.
Free Doesn’t Mean Easy
Just because most social bookmarking Web sites are free to join doesn’t mean you can rise to the top of the rankings with little effort. People join to find useful or interesting Web sites and to interact with like-minded individuals. They’re not there to learn about products and services. If you’re selling something, you’ll have to build relationships before you launch your marketing efforts.
Most social bookmarking sites generally work like this: A user submits a Web page containing a news story, a video, unique content or something interesting or unbelievable. The user community votes on the Web pages. The pages with the most votes rise to the top on the Web sites, gaining even more visibility while the sites with the least votes remain buried.
Here’s how to get started:
- Sign up to create an account with the Web sites listed below.
- Find your friends and connect to them.
- Encourage any of your friends who haven’t already joined the Web sites to join.
- Start submitting and voting for Web pages you like.
- Submit your own site.
- Send your friends a link to your site and ask them to vote for it if they like it.
- Make it easy for other people to submit your content by including icons for each bookmarking site right on your page.
People who sign up for an account and use the Web site solely for marketing often get little to no new traffic to their Web sites.
Most Popular Web Sites
Here’s a list of links to the most popular bookmarking Web sites:
If you have the time to commit to social bookmarking, it’s a great way to share your Web site with others, gain valuable inbound links and drive traffic.
This article provided by Hostway Corporation.
Hostway Corporation helps small- and medium-sized businesses grow with innovative Web services that make advanced technology accessible and easy to use. Founded in 1998, the company currently serves more than 600,000 customers across the globe with domain name services and Web hosting packages that include an easy-to-use Web site builder and a built-in mechanism for driving traffic. One of the world's largest Web hosting companies, it operates over 250,000 square feet of state-of-the-art data centers with a direct presence in 13 countries, 17 worldwide operation centers and more than 700 employees. Visit Hostway online at www.hostway.com.