There’s Social Bookmarking; and There’s Social Bookmarking

Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 13 of March , 2008 at 2:18 am

Social bookmarking seems to be dividing into two distinct groups who are then using social bookmarking sites for different reasons.

The first group join social bookmarking sites that best reflect their genre and their interests. They interact within that social community slowly developing a group of friends (or at least acquaintances). Bookmarking is done on the basis of quality and interests and does not often reflect their own sites content. These users are more like your social butterflies in the offline world. If they find something new and interesting they like to be the first to tell others.

Part of this online socializing includes visiting other blogs from within your sphere of friends. If an article stands out then you will signal that fact to others by flagging it in someway. This then sets of a chain reaction where your friends refer that article to their friends. This of course is the viral principle at work.

The second group join as many sites as possible and make as many friends as possible. Their aim is to promotes their own content and get as much traffic to their site as quickly as possible. The quality of the article is not considered, in fact almost every article is either thumbed, dugg or flagged in some way in the hope that it will go ‘viral’.

Smart operators have found a way to have a foot in both camps. They sign up to as many good social bookmarking sites as possible. Spend as much time as they can to socialize and build a network. Once established, they then start to promote their own articles, often by getting their closest ‘friends’ to flag the article for them.

Which camp are you in? Social bookmarking that has been done carefully and with consideration to the friends list will generally drive more quality traffic, traffic that will stay and read and perhaps even subscribe.

Traffic that is driven from an artificially created viral exercise may be useful in pushing up the articles authority and search engine rankings. The traffic generated in this manner will generally have a high bounce rate and a very low conversion rate.

What is your preference? The buzz created from a close group of ‘friends’ that generates a reasonable conversion rate, or the buzz created from an artificial viral campaign that may boost your search engine ranking but has a low conversion rate?

Both can be effective. By gaining a higher search engine ranking the traffic derived will be quality traffic with a potentially high conversion rate. If you are smart, and can have one foot firmly planted in both camps, you will have the best of all worlds. A viral campaign that brings in traffic with a moderate conversion rate whilst boosting your search engine rankings. This intern leads to further traffic with higher conversion rates. Learn to work both ends of the social bookmarking scene. There are plenty of benefits to be gained.

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Category: Social Bookmarking

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