There are many different schools of thought when it comes to submitting ones own content to social bookmarking sites. The general consensus appears to be that it is considered inappropriate. However, social bookmarking sites are there to help individuals share information, so why not share your own?
The problem is one of spam. If submitting ones own work was accepted then every post ever published would end up on every social bookmarking site. Eventually it would defeat the purpose. At the other end of the scale however is a general leathargy in the promoting of other sites.
I wonder how many times you have read an article and though, that was good. It was informative, well written and I really got a lot out of it. Then moved on. Social bookmarking sites are designed to share well written interesting content. You have just read something that meets those objectives so why is it you don’t share? It’s a general malaise that effects nearly every user. Eventually many bloggers submit their own content out of frustration.
Where you can submit your own content is indirectly. If you write and submit articles to directories, find where the article has been reprinted (with your links) and submit those pages to the social bookmarking sites.
You can also undertake link searches to see who is linking to your pages. If you come across pages that have linked to you (particularly with a quote), submit that page to a social bookmarking site.
By submitting these pages to the social bookmarking sites, you are promoting them to other users. Your pages may not receive the increased traffic, however the site you have submitted will and the link back to your page(s) may increase in value. You will often see an increase in traffic from users following the link to your pages.
Social bookmarking is all about sharing interesting to finds to other users. Anyone who quotes my articles and links to my pages is going to be interesting – at least in my eyes – so I am certainly going to bookmark those pages for others (including the search engines) to find.
I agree with you that we should promote our content on social bookmarking sites. That is what we do in our office.