What is SOCIAL BOOKMARKING? It is the process of saving bookmarks to an online service (instead of to your local computer). These bookmarks can be tagged (for searching) and shared with friends and others with similar interests. Basically, social bookmarking is a simple tool for finding people with similar interests and sharing information with them. One obvious benefit is streamlining the process of creating online communities for people with similar interests.

All well and good, but how do you, a website author/artisan/businessperson leverage social bookmarking to get your message out or get your products sold?

Tagging

Your new blog post about mittens for kittens is great, and full of relevant keywords like “wool”, “knitted”, “feline” and the manufacturer’s name, but when your post gets on Technorati it is devoid of tags. What happened? If you are using WordPress, you probably forgot to add Categories to your post. Categories are converted into tags on Technorati (and other sites that regularly scan your blog for your latest posts) and these tags help your posts show up in search results. This doesn’t mean you should “pack” your tags (cramming in lots of tags), because the community will start to get annoyed and you will lose Authority. Pick a few (1-8) that really cut to the chase, that you think people would use if they were searching for your post. Other bookmarking sites (like Delicious) have user-controlled tags. You won’t be able to manipulate these; rely on your writing here.

Chiclets

These are those little icons at the end of a blog post that are links to various social bookmark sites. You should put a few of these at the bottom of each blog post to remind users of the programs they may be familiar with, and invite them to bookmark and share your wonderful post. Choose popular sites and throw in ones you know your readers already use (check your referring links in analytics) but don’t get greedy! Too many icons make a helpful widget awkward and hard to use.

This should get you started. Having good keywords is the foundation of good SEO and Social Bookmarks. Adding Chiclet links to your posts is also helpful. Keep an eye on your analytics if you start using these techniques, and give attention to the things that don’t pay off (change out your links, try different tags, etc).

Let us know how it goes in the comments!