What You Need to Know About Social Bookmarking

If you are wondering what you need to know about social bookmarking, in this post I will address some of the concepts which I think are central to social bookmarking in the context of social media in general. Hope you guys find it useful.

The first misconception I find time and time again about social bookmarking is that it's only a way to dump your content on websites such as Digg, Reddit or delicious and wait for the traffic to come streaming in. In the best of cases, people will do all the onsite optimization they can in order to keep visitors on the site and even get them to come back. But this, my friends, is taking the narrow view.

Social bookmarking, just like any social media, is all about the community. Just like if you only use YouTube to post videos and forget about commenting and generally engaging in conversation you will be making a mistake (as a company), if you only use social bookmarking sites as traffic bait you will be hurting your business.

Yes, I said hurting. Do not think that the consequences of indifference will be mere indifference. First of all, you will be losing a space that your competitors might grab. Second, by expecting visitors on your site and offering no payback - no information, no comments - you will probably annoy users. Third, if the quality of your content ever goes down or is not optimal to begin with, you will be considered a spammer. I know it seems tough, but the boundary between spam and information is often attributable to quality, and nothing else.

Next, and maybe most importantly, by not taking an active role in social bookmarking communities, you're not taking advantage of all they have to offer. Think of how useful client feedback is, and how before the dawn of the Internet, businesses were always racking their brains on how to get it. Now you can easily access it, specially by reading comments on bookmarks and responding to them as a business owner who is interested in getting better (not in insulting clients!), you can really get a lot out of social bookmarking.

However, how you participate is also very important. First of all, despite trying to become a member of a community, remember you are also a business owner. Be cordial and never engage in heated discussions. Treat other users as clients... to a point. Because you have to take into account that you are not only a business owner, but also trying to become a member of a community. Avoid using call to action expressions (buy, visit, check out, take advantage of...). Users want valuable information, and if you give it to them, they will go to your site on their own accord. Nobody likes the feeling that they are being herded somewhere.