The Magic Of Social Bookmarking

The use of social bookmarking sites has quickly become a popular way of increasing traffic to one’s site.  Sometimes the traffic is not all what it seems. StumbleUpon is a good example. Someone ‘stumbles’ your post and before you know it you have a huge spike in your traffic. When you check your stats, there is also a huge spike in your bounce rate.

There are many people that sneer at social bookmarking and claim the time spent ‘socializing’ could be better spent elsewhere. For these individuals I fear the magic of social bookmarking has escaped them.

When undertaking a social bookmarking campaign, the last thing that should be on your mind is traffic. I agree that in many cases the traffic delivered is fleeting, stopping for seconds before deciding to move on. With the StumbleUpon system I compare it to a magazine. You flick through a magazine stopping at articles that interest you; flicking past those that don’t.  Likewise, you flick through blogs, stopping at posts that interesting you; moving on if they don’t.

That is not the magic. The magic that social bookmarking delivers is the link from the bookmarking site to your post. That link can be multiplied by the name of bookmarks or votes that your site receives. Every time your post is bookmarked, that bookmark is saved in the bookmarker’s list of favorite sites.

That is the first piece of magic. The second still concerns links, this time from your visitors.  Traffic from social bookmarking sites is free.  If 1 our 100 stop and read – that is one extra reader you have received. More importantly, if any of these visitors link to your post, that is a another one way inbound link received.

The time invested in social bookmarking is almost impossible to measure in outcomes. You will never know if the next link comes from a visitor through a social bookmarking site, or from search engine listing. The fact you have another inbound link is what is important. There is definitely more to social bookmarking than just traffic.