Social bookmarking is a great way to put your organization on the map, but it takes a certain amount of strategy to be successful. If you have ever heard that saying, ‘This isn’t a popularity contest’, you should realize that social bookmarking IS a popularity contest. It’s not about being the most beautiful or having the most friends. Rather, correct social bookmarking is more about having the most valuable content that resonates with the largest portion of your target audience.
The Most Popular Social Bookmarking Sites
Before you learn how to do social bookmarking correctly, you need to know where to go to find your target audience. The most popular social bookmarking sites are Twitter (yes, it is considered a bookmarking site), Pinterest, Reddit and StumbleUpon. All of these sites have one thing in common – They allow you to create a profile, submit content and communicate with others in the hopes of sharing common interests. And that right there is the basic idea behind correct social bookmarking. Most people make the process out to be much more complicated than it needs to be. Follow the basics and you’ll soon learn how to do social bookmarking correctly.
Creating Your Profile
Social bookmarking, like all other types of online marketing, is all about driving more attention to your organization, products and services and overall brand. In order to facilitate this, you must include your organization and all relevant information right there on your profile.
Use your company’s logo as your profile image and fill your About Me section and all other profile boxes with your company’s goals, benefits of your products, your company’s URL and anything else you think your prospective customers might like to know.
You can think of your profile as your trap. This is where you hope to lead prospects so that they will click-through to your site, and ultimately your product. In order for that to happen, you need to set the proper bait. That’s the next step in learning how to do social bookmarking correctly. You must entice your audience to visit your profile and you can do that by always providing valuable content that has your social bookmarking followers always clamoring for more.
Uploading Valuable Content
Before you start social bookmarking, it might be a good idea to keep a spreadsheet full of links, images, articles, blogs and other marketing materials that pertain to your business and that provide the most informative/educational/entertaining content. Then, start uploading this content to your social bookmarking profile.
The idea is that your followers will see your content and they’ll react. The action they take depends on the social platform you happen to be on. If you are on StumbleUpon, you’ll hope for an upvote and that the person will share your content with their own followers. If you’re on Pinterest, you hope that you’ll receive a re-pin.
The more your content is upvoted and passed around, the further you’ll spread your marketing message. The important thing is not to get discouraged if you don’t receive a lot of votes or shares and don’t get too complacent if you seem to be getting lots of votes and shares. Just keep the content coming, make sure it’s highly-valuable and you’ll soon see why it pays to learn how to perform correct social bookmarking.
Communicating With Other Social Bookmarking Users
Start paying attention to users who regularly upvote and share your content. This will be easy to do on platforms like Twitter, for example. When you notice it happening, send a message thanking them for their interest and make sure you notify them the next time you’re about to share a new upload.
Communicating with your audience is a big part of learning how to do social bookmarking correctly. Don’t be spammy with the messages and don’t send too many too soon, but just send them gradually and try to be entertaining when you do.
Return the Favor
Another aspect of learning correct social bookmarking is upvoting and sharing others’ content just as they’re sharing yours. Social bookmarking is social, after all, so become part of the community. Discuss ideas, share content and get to know your prospects and customers. If you can manage to get in good with the group and spread excellent content to boot, you’ll become quite popular on the social bookmarking site you choose.
Read All Terms and Conditions
So that you never get in trouble for the content you post and just so that you’re aware of the rules, always read the Terms and Conditions of the social bookmarking sites you plan to use. This may sound like one of those things you’re supposed to tell people, but it’s very important. Pinterest users especially have found themselves in trouble for sharing content that wasn’t theirs. Don’t get stuck in this kind of predicament. If you want to learn how to do social bookmarking correctly, you’ll always want to read the terms before you start uploading any content.
Keep Up With Changes
The Internet constantly changes and so all social bookmarking sites are bound to change right along with it. Keep up with these changes and you will never find yourself taken by surprise. For example, you may be able to take advantage of several new feature that your competitors don’t even know about yet, just because you subscribed to an industry insider blog that discussed social bookmarking.
It pays to understand correct social bookmarking behavior and it pays to keep up with the latest changes, but if you aren’t regularly uploading valuable content and if you’re not participating in any of the conversations, you won’t get as far as you could if you’d just learn how to do social bookmarking correctly.
Post the best content as often as you can and become one with your social bookmarking group and you will soon see that learning correct social bookmarking is just like turning on a never-ending traffic stream right to your marketing offer.
