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July 1, 2009

Why You SHOULD Submit Manually to Social Bookmarking Sites

Why You Should Submit Manually to Social Bookmarking and Networking Sites

Why You MUST SHOULD Submit Manually to Social Bookmarking Sites

It can be extremely tempting to use automated forms to submit your website or blog to social bookmarking sites. After all, it saves you a lot of time and hassle. In fact, there are companies that you can pay to make automatic social bookmarking site submissions for you so that you don’t have to spend any time on the effort at all. There are even sites and software that allow you to press a button and instantaneously submit your articles to dozens of social bookmarking sites. It is very tempting to use these services. Posting to social bookmarking sites is a very tedious, time consuming task. It can take hours every day to perform a successful social bookmarking campaign. However, you will have a much better result if you submit your articles by hand. In fact, I think that it is crucial to always engage in manual submissions on the popular social bookmarking sites. I will discuss this further on in the article.

Why Do I think That it is Important to Manually Submit Your Articles to Social Bookmarking Sites?

(1) To ensure that your article was submitted correctly.

Some of the social bookmarking services have been reported to not work properly. The only way to ensure that your article is submitted correctly is to submit it by hand.

(2) To ensure that you don’t alienate users.

It sounds like an exaggeration but the Internet really is run by users these days and if you alienate enough of those users, you run the risk of ruining your business. Automatic social bookmarking submissions are considered bad form in the current online world and can greatly decrease your credibility with the users who can drive traffic to (or away from) your website. Bad word-of-mouth on social bookmarking sites is just like bad word-of-mouth out there in the real world; too much of it can destroy a business.

Even though there is software out there that will let you automatically submit your website to social bookmarking sites, people who use those sites regularly are opposed to the use of that software. The reason for this is that social bookmarking sites really are seen as a community, a place where users can get together to discuss the things that they do and don’t like on the web. Despite the fact that most people on social bookmarking sites are there to promote their own online work, the sites are still widely used for the purpose of community and online sharing. People who violate the community by not taking the time to manually submit their sites are essentially seen as outsiders who the community will ultimately shun.

(3) To ensure that you and your site isn’t banned or buried.

Being shunned from social bookmarking sites can have a devastating effect on your ability to use them for website promotion. Many social bookmarking tools have ways of not only voting for content that’s placed on the site but also of voting it down. Enough votes down and your content can be buried so that the time that you took to put it on the site is completely wasted since the content isn’t seen anyway. And the effects of automated social bookmarking can be even worse; some sites will actually ban your entire domain from the social bookmarking site if you are caught failing to manually submit your content. This means that you won’t be able to use the social bookmarking site at all in the future, even if you do decide to change your ways.

(4) To Continue to Expand Your Social Network

When visiting a social bookmarking site, you will be able to build up your social network. How? Well, by visiting the site, it is inevitable that you will see articles or sites that you will want to visit and therefor digg, stumble, or rate. Every time you rate another site or communicate with another user, you are building up your credibility and your social network. This is very important in a social networking campaign.

(5) Out of Respect of The Social Bookmarking Sites’ Members

The issue is basically one of respect. People who use social bookmarking sites want to know that you care enough about your content to submit it manually and to tell them why they might be interested in it. Get on the good side of these people and you can use social bookmarking sites to greatly increase the traffic to your site. But make a fatal faux pas like failing to manually submit your site to these places and you’ll quickly find that you’ve been ostracized from the online community to the point that you might as well just move out of the virtual town that you were calling home.

HOWEVER, Social Bookmarking Submitters Will Bring You Traffic

Yes, social bookmarking submitters will bring you traffic. You will just get tons more traffic if you submit manually. And your efforts will pay off.

However, if you don’t have the time to submit manually, these are my suggestions:

(1) Manually Submit to the Most Important Sites.

This would include the major social bookmarking sites as well as your article’s niche category. For this article, submitting to sphinn.com would be the most important for me. Sphinn is a social media / SEO social bookmarking site. And I consider the major social bookmarking sites to be Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Slashdot, and Simpy. If your submission is a video, then YouTube is the top video social networking site. Here is a huge list of social bookmarking sites.

(2) Only Submit Your Best Articles to the Social Bookmarking Sites.

There is no reason to submit all of your articles to the social bookmarking sites. If you aren’t crazy about one of your articles, you could be pretty sure that noone else will be either. There are some articles that just aren’t worthy of being bookmarked, so don’t feel that you have to submit every single article to the social bookmarking sites. Instead, reference your articles within other articles that you write.

(3) Use an Auto Social Submitter and then Follow up on Each Site.

I suggest this for only quality articles. Don’t submit your cr@p articles to social bookmarking sites. This isn’t fair to the users who value that community. These users shouldn’t have to wade through junk to get to the good stuff. My suggestion is to use a social bookmarking submitter to submit your article to multiple sites, but then follow up on each site to make sure that your article was submitted properly. Also, as an added benefit, if you visit each site, you might digg a link or make a new friend while you are there. At the minimum, check up on the major sites to make sure that everything was submitted correctly.

(4) Let Your Visitors Do the Leg Work.

If you already have a popular site, let your existing network bookmark your articles for you. I have tried a service called AddThis, and it worked great for me. Here are more social bookmarking widgets and tutorials that might help you:

3Spots

Add to Any

Add to Any Bookmark

Add to Bookmarks

Apostolos Dountsis Social Bookmarks Plugin for WordPress

Badged.net

Beautiful Beta: Dynamic Rollover DHTML Social Bookmark Buttons

The Bookmarketer

Bookmarkz!

Blogger Social Bookmarking Tool

Buttonr.com

Darxr.net: Social Bookmarks Sidebar Widget for WordPress

Dashboard Widgets

Easy Wordpress Widget for Social Bookmarking Sites

Ekstreme: Social Bookmarking Submission Code

Gath Adams: Build Your Own Social Bookmark Widget

GrayWolf’s Social Bookmark Scripts & Widgets

iFeedReaders

Oscandy: The Multiple Social Bookmarking Widget

Manhattan Service: Social Bookmark Tool

OnlyWire

Pheedo

PopMarks

Postli

PunchCard Manual

Romlet

Socialbookmarker

Social Bookmarks 3.1

Swicki Builder

Shout List Icons

Social Bookmark Script: Web 2.0 Optimierung

SocialBookmarkIt

Socialize It

The Socializer

Tips n Tricks Social Bookmarking Buttons

Top Ranks Social Bookmarks Creator

WebCosmo

WpBlogBMLet

WidgetBox: Ultimate Social Bookmark

WP Plugin: Gregarious

YouFame.net: Social Bookmarking Widget Generator

Your Minis Social Bookmarking

YourMinis: Web2Bar

Your Minis: Web2Bar

(5) Speed Up The Process

To speed up the process, I suggest using copy and paste.

Open up an email or text file and copy and paste all of the information that you will need on the post submission forms. This usually includes the article’s title, article’s permalink or url, articles tags (sometimes with a space, sometimes with a comma, sometimes with a colon), article’s description, and sometimes a clipping of the article.

What are Some Social Bookmarking Submitters (Auto Social Bookmarking Submitters That is)

Social Submit

Auto Social Poster

Only Wire

Social Poster

Tagenie

I hope that this article was helpful to you. I suspect that might people might disagree with my views. Please feel free to rant if you like. :-)

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June 23, 2009

How to use Reddit to get Traffic to your Site

How to use Reddit to get Traffic to your Site

Using Facebook for Web Site Traffic

Reddit is one of the social bookmarking sites that relies heavily on your interaction with the user community on the site. Reddit uses a point system in which users can vote on each post; the posts with the most points get pushed to Reddit’s home page for all to see. But Reddit is even more complex than this basic voting system implies; there are also ways to discuss the posts and to vote on the comments that are left on the posts which can affect their visibility as well. In order to be able to use Reddit to effectively direct traffic to your website, you need to get a handle on the voting system and user interaction that drives this particular social bookmarking tool.

In order to start using Reddit, you simply need to go to the site and register for an account. There are no toolbars to install and no confirmation emails to get you started which makes this a very easy site to sign up with. But once you’ve done that, you need to spend a significant amount of time networking on the site in order to gain popularity on the site and get traffic to head over to your site from there. The first thing that you should do is to begin submitting websites to Reddit. You should submit your website as well as relevant quality pages on your website (particular blog posts for example).

Next, you need to start meeting other Reddit users. This is best done by getting involved in discussions that are going on about other people’s posts. Do a search to find posts that are similar to your own and work your way into the discussions there by leaving comments. Be aware that your comments can be voted down so you don’t just want to spam posts with your own links. You want to leave interesting comments that show that you read the posts on which you are commenting. For this reason, it’s better to get involved in just a few discussions at a time and to contribute well to them.

You should know that Reddit is somewhat specialized in the kind of content that is found there. There are “subreddits” which are kind of like major topics that are of interest to Reddit users. The popularity of these varies depending on the day but top categories usually include programming, science and politics. If your content doesn’t relate to these categories or ones that would be of interest to people who enjoy these categories, you might not be able to get the attention of Reddit users. If that’s the case, you should consider using a different social bookmarking site instead of this one.

However, Reddit does get a fair amount of traffic, so if you have regular or occasional posts on your site or blog that are relevant to Reddit, you should think about using the site. It allows you to get into some interesting discussion which can prompt additional posts that will then be seen by Reddit users. The interaction that’s necessary to make it work can be time-consuming but it can also pay off in high traffic directed to your site.

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September 4, 2008

List of Social Bookmarking Buttons to Make it Easier for Your Users to Add Your Sites / Articles to Social Networking Sites

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING WIDGETS / BUTTONS - List of Social Bookmarking Buttons to Make it Easier for Your Users to Add Your Sites / Articles to Social Networking Sites

List of Social Bookmarking Buttons to Make it Easier for Your Users to Add Your Sites / Articles to Social Networking Sites

3Spots - Here are over 100 social bookmarking bookmarks (buttons) to place on your website.

Add to Any - One button for multipost to Social Bookmarking sites and RSS readers button generator.

Add to Any Bookmark - Let your visitors easily bookmark your pages using any bookmark manager. Add to Any is constantly updated to include every bookmark manager, and other alternatives.

Add This - AddThis spreads your content across the Web by making it easier for your visitors to bookmark and share it with other people, again…and again…and again. Our simple yet powerful widget is very easy to install and provides valuable statistics about the bookmarking and sharing activity of your users. AddThis is the perfect tool to help your visitors create a buzz for your site and increase its popularity and ranking.

Add to Bookmarks - AddToBookmarks is a small JavaScript you can add to your blog or website. The more links to your content, the more traffic and buzz you’ll have. Grab my free script to make it easy for your visitors to add you to their bookmarks.

Apostolos Dountsis Social Bookmarks Plugin for WordPress - Social Bookmarks is a WordPress plugin that adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them in a number of different social bookmarking sites.

Badged.net - Badged.net lets you add your favorite social networking badges to your blog or web site. Simply create your badges and put the line of code where you want them to appear.

Beautiful Beta: Dynamic Rollover DHTML Social Bookmark Buttons - This tutorial just gives you some simple instructions on how to implement DHTML rollover social bookmark buttons.

The Bookmarketer - A free social bookmarking tool to place bookmarking site links on your website. Or you can paste the simple TheBookmarketer script on each page. One link prompts your visitors to bookmark your site at whichever bookmarking site(s) they use. Plus, we keep updating this tool in the fast-changing world of Web 2.0. so you don’t even have to think about it.

Bookmarkz! - Use Bookmarkz (beta) to easily add “one-click social bookmarking” links for one to ninety four popular social bookmarking websites and what’s even better is it’s all done with virtually no setup!

Blogger Social Bookmarking Tool - This tool can be very useful for bloggers who wants to let readers to add “social” bookmarks to their posts. You can select as much bookmarking services as You wish and put them all in a line (with or without logotypes) with direct bookmarking links. There are some variations of how the result line looks, You can play with checkboxes and choose what You wish.

Buttonr.com - Free widget helps your visitors to promote your website and add it to social bookmarking services.

Darxr.net: Social Bookmarks Sidebar Widget for WordPress - The widget allows you to select a number of social bookmark sites which are displayed in the sidebar. This allows your readers to bookmark your blog or article, depending on the context, directly to the social bookmarking sites you have enabled. To install the widget, simply download the widget from below, and upload the contents of the archive to your wp-content/plugins/widgets folder and activate the “Bookmark Widget” under your plugin settings.

Dashboard Widgets - With “add this” you can quickly add the website you are currently watching to a few “social bookmarking”-services. Just start your dashboard, choose one color and a service and create your “add this”-widget. If you are now browsing a website only click on this icon and add your bookmark. The only issue I see is that it doesn’t bookmark the exact url.

Easy Wordpress Widget for Social Bookmarking Sites - The Wordpress Bookmark Widget allows you to select a social bookmarking site to be displayed on your sidebar. This allows your readers to bookmark your blog or article directly to the social bookmarking sites you have enabled.

Ekstreme: Social Bookmarking Submission Code - Social bookmarking tools such as Digg and del.icio.us can be seen as the latest tools to drive traffic to a website and to provide important links. These services allow varying degrees of automated submissions, and so this page was created to give you the required code to add to your pages to facilitate submission.

Gath Adams: Build Your Own Social Bookmark Widget - It’s important to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to bookmark your site - both so they can find it again, and also so they can share it with their friends. I have a bunch of sites, and I wanted to create a simple way to add bookmarking to all of them.

GrayWolf’s Social Bookmark Scripts & Widgets - Here a tutorial on how to implement some social bookmarking into your site just like the picture below.

iFeedReaders - One button for multiple postings to social bookmarking sites or feeds.

Oscandy: The Multiple Social Bookmarking Widget - OScandy is working on a new widget that will push the boundaries of multiple social bookmarking by provide a interactive interface that works direclt from the administrators blog/website. It is an application for mass social bookmarking of social bookmarking sites i.e del.icio.us, furl.com blinklist.com etc.

Manhattan Service: Social Bookmark Tool - Social bookmark tool to allow visitors bookmark pages or posts from your website / blog directly to social sites. Adding this social bookmark widget script on your pages, you don’t have to worry anymore about site submission in social sites like Digg, Technorati, Yahoo social bookmarks, Reddit, Furl, Delicious.

OnlyWire - Use One bookmarklet for all these services Backflip, Bibsonomy, Blinklist, Blogmemes, Blue Dot, de.lirio.us, del.icio.us, Diigo, Excites, Furl, linkatopia, Linkroll, Looklater, ma.gnolia, Markaboo, Rawsugar, Shadows, Simpy, Spurl, unalog, Wink, and xilinus.

Pheedo - Pheedo’s FeedPowered™ advertising platform converts your RSS feeds into rich, dynamically updating advertising that engages your audience. Leverage your existing RSS assets to extend your brand, drive traffic, and acquire new feed subscribers.Pheedo’s Engagement Triggers™ make it easy for your audience to interact with your brand and share your content and offers with friends - directly from the ad unit.

PopMarks - PopMarks is a pop up tool, one button, for Blogger, WordPress and TypePad that can do many things: Social Bookmarking, Read or Subscribe to RSS feeds, searching, translating… as you want.

Postli - Postli allows bloggers and website owners to replace list of buttons useful to post to social sites similar to the following: * old style list of buttons * with a single link that allows to post to every major social site.

PunchCard Manual - PunchCard is a javascript widget for simplifying content submission to social bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, digg, technorati, and 42 more. Every button is a tiny mark on a punchcard, and when the mouse hovers the punchcard a tooltip pops up, and the tooltip shows icon and name of the site corresponding to that mark.

Romlet - Romlet boasts your best site stats and provides both tools and incentives for visitors to boost your popularity. This simple but powerful widget is a brag badge, bookmarking tool and stats counter all rolled into one. Romlet is continually updated to display current on-site information to you and your readers. It also provides relevant and updated bookmarking buttons to make voting for your site as easy as possible.

Socialbookmarker - A free service designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website. Requirements The only requirement is that you need to be using FireFox when socially marking. All you need to do is simply drag this button SocialMarker.com to your bookmarks toolbar, in order to create a submission bookmarklet. When you are on a website that you want to socially mark, simply select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate the submission form with the selected information.

Social Bookmarks 3.1 - A really cool social bookmarking widget. There is text that says ‘Bookmark’ and then when you click on it, bookmarking buttons pop up. A new version (3.1) of the Social Bookmarks WordPress plugin is now available for download. This updated version includes Bloglines and Tailrank to the list of supported sites increasing their number to 26.

Social Bookmark Count Plugin -  Now by installing”The Social Bookmark Count” you can monitor StumbleUpon, Digg, Sphinn, Reddit and del.icio.us bookmarks daily.

Swicki Builder - An online social bookmarking button builder. Get the code to add the social bookmarking swicki to your site

Shout List Icons - Customize your social bookmarking and easily add a configurable icon list of networks. Currently enabled for 35+ networks, but you pick which ones to display!

Social Bookmark Script: Web 2.0 Optimierung - Use the Social Bookmark Script to automatically add link icons from the best social bookmark services to your web page in order to enable your visitors to set a public bookmark for your site by mouse-click. Two benefits to this script is that there is no maintenance for you because the script will be updated by social-bookmarking-script. And there will be no Pagerank loss due to social bookmarks, because you only need to use javascript links.

SocialBookmarkIt - SocialBookmarkIt.com provides the tools you need to quickly add all the major social bookmark links to your website.

Socialize It - You can now link to all the social bookmarking services using just one link. No need to dig into each website’s submission process and API ; no need to fill your site with 40+ icons just to be sure your visitors will find their favorite one

The Socializer - The Socializer allows you to easily submit a link to several social bookmarking systems. Instead of having a link to each social bookmarking website, you have a single link to all of them! The Socializer is a free web service from eKstreme.com.

Tips n Tricks Social Bookmarking Buttons - It is very important to provide the readers with a very easy way to bookmark the articles they find useful. This blog article author tells you how to add buttons directly on your blog or website.

Top Ranks Social Bookmarks Creator - This social bookmarks tool provides you with several easy to implement options to encourage visitors to your blog to bookmark your posts on the most popular social bookmark and news sites. You can decide how many or how few bookmaring services to display on your blog. There are also several display options including text links and a drop down menu to conserve screen space.

WebCosmo - With a single Web Cosmo Widget button, visitors can collect the content they come across and save it into their favorite bookmarking service, pass to to friends etc. Its easy to install and easy to use. It works with both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

WpBlogBMLet - This bookmarklet generate the code for posting the blog entry to social bookmark sites, directly from blog. The current script generates bookmark links for del.icio.us, digg, blinklist, furl, yahoo myweb2.0, simpy, shadows, spurl & buddymarks.

WidgetBox: Ultimate Social Bookmark - This widget will let readers easily bookmark your web/blog into about 50+ social bookmark services.

WP Plugin: Gregarious - Social bookmarking allows users to submit, comment on, and “promote” websites. The Gregarious plugin supersedes the Digg This Reloaded Plugin and allows for seamless integration between your Wordpress Blog and social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Reddit and more. Requiring no editing of templates, and a simple point and click interface, Gregarious is the ultimate social bookmarking plugin for Wordpress.

YouFame.net: Social Bookmarking Widget Generator - This widget will help others easily social bookmark your site. Just follow the steps on YouFrame, and then select your buttons, create the code and put the code on your blog or website

Your Minis Social Bookmarking - This widget allows you to bookmark and/or submit your URLs and news stories to various aggregating services. To properly use this widget, you will need to manually (or programmatically) add posturl=[URL to post] to the FlashVars string. This will tell the widget which URL to submit and/or bookmark.

YourMinis: Web2Bar - You can add this widget to your yourminis public page or blog to make it easier for users to post stories to the major web 2.0 bookmarking and news sites. All you need to do is change the address via the ‘edit widget’ or arrow button!

Your Minis: Web2Bar - You can add this widget to your yourminis public page or blog to make it easier for users to post stories to the major web 2.0 bookmarking and news sites. All you need to do is change the address via the ‘edit widget’ or arrow button!

I hope that you enjoyed this list. If you are into Sphinn (a Digg like site for webmasters, SEO, and social networking) then you should check out this list for some great tools. I will write a blog article about more tools and widgets soon. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

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November 1, 2007

Social Bookmarking FAQ

Social Bookmarking FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking FAQ

Answers to some of the FAQ about social bookmarking that you might have on your mind:

(Q) What is social bookmarking?

[A] Social bookmarking is a user-based online system in which individuals tag their favorite web content and store it in one place, sharing it with others.

(Q) When did social bookmarking start?

[A] Social bookmakring began in crude form in the late 1990’s. It then fell out of favor online due to changes in the web. It came back in 2005 and has been getting increasingly popular ever since.

(Q) What are the best social bookmarking sites?

[A] That depends on the content that you have, the tone that you use and the way that you network on the sites. Some of the most popular sites include Digg, del.icio.us, Furl, and Stumble Upon but many other sites are popular as well. Flickr is a site currently popular for social bookmarking of images. Check out the full list here.

(Q) How do social bookmarking tags work?

[A] Users can tag their favorite sites with different keywords which help them to organize the content. So they might have “music” as one category for all sites that are related to that. In recent years, tags have gotten more involved because they are used to help others find your content and to help search engines see your content. Choosing the right tags can help drive content to your site.

(Q) Can anyone do social bookmarking?

[A] Yes, but you need to spend some time to learn how to do it right if you’re doing it for business purposes. There is etiquette on the social bookmarking sites that you can only pick up on by spending time there and seeing how people interact and promote content.

(Q) Is social bookmarking just a fad?

[A] Social bookmarking is a new trend. In its current form, it may be a fad and we may see that many of the new sites that are cropping up only last a short time. But the general idea of what social bookmarking is – the trend of user-driven content that spreads the word about products and supports business – is probably here to stay.

(Q) Is social bookmarking really necessary or my business?

[A] If your business operates locally in a small area and you don’t want to grow out of that area, then you may not need social bookmarking. But for national businesses that operate primarily on the web, social bookmarking is a key tool. It drives traffic to your website, increases attention to your services and products and helps spread the word about your business. It puts you higher on search engines and lets people know that you’re there to meet their needs. And it’s what consumers want right now; so give it to them!

(Q) How do I get started with social bookmarking?

[A] Learning about it is the first step. Read blogs, articles and books about the topic. Then start playing around on the sites. See which ones you like, which ones make sense to you, which ones are popular among the readers of your site and then develop your own method of using social bookmarking tools to work for you.

(Q) Can You Set Up Social Bookmarking Services for Collective Projects?

[A] Yes. In an article called Social Bookmarking in Education, the author speaks of such a project. She speaks of a teacher who set up a group account on del.icio.us for her Digital Libraries class. Groups can use these services for collective projects. Either a group account can be established, with the password passed around to the group or, in what is probably a safer and more useful version, a group can establish a unique tag and tag all group-related links with it. This is a great way to set up a groups’ set of links and there is a possibility that this class could get people from all over the country contributing to their class reading list!

Please ask questions that you have and I will answer your questions and add them to the list in this faq.

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October 28, 2007

Tips for Viral Success For The Online Social Networker

Tips for Viral Success For The Online Social Networker

Tips for Viral Success : Viral Marketing and Networking Techniques for Social Networkers

Are you aware of the importance of viral success? If the term doesn’t mean anything to you, you’d better get on top of learning about your marketing or you’re never going to make it in the world of dog-eat-dog Internet business. Viral marketing is a term that refers to the way that a marketing campaign is picked up and spread around the world, or at least around the Internet, creating success for a business. Like a virus, word about the business spreads. Viral success is a critical component of business success in today’s world, so you should know the strategies for it if you’re hoping to succeed.

Some of the strategies for viral success include:

(1) Move People to Feel Deep Emotions

The most important step in viral marketing is to strike up emotions in people. Whether that emotion is:

· Laughter

· Love

· Hate

· Anger

· Excitement

· Compassion

· Deep Interest

· Feeling That Someone is an Idiot (not an emotion but this works)

Stop trying to please everyone with safe content and try get people excited, agitated, or laughing. Get people’s blood pumping and get those Diggs.

Note: Allow people a place to comment to vent their emotions:

When people are feeling emotions, they want to talk about their feelings with other people. Make sure that you have a place for people to make comments on your article. That is why blog software is perfect for viral marketing. Don’t delete negative comments unless they border on abusive.

(2) Social Bookmarking and Social Networking

Social bookmarking. Of course! What better way to spread the word about your work than through sites that are specifically designed for users to spread the word about what they like. Make the most of social bookmarking by getting your content on the best, most appropriate, sites on a regular basis through a targeted social bookmarking campaign. If enough people pick up on your content through these tools, you can see viral success just from this alone. I wrote an article on ‘Boosting Your Traffic Through Social Networking Sites’ that should help you if you want further help on this topic.

Tip: Take a Multi-faceted Approach.

Even if you do see viral success from social bookmaking, you’ll want to take a multi-faceted approach to your marketing to reach the broadest audience. Some people like to read articles. Others like to watch videos. Still others have their attention caught best by the blogs they subscribe to. Use a multi-faceted approach to reach more people (and then use social bookmarking for all of these things to spread the word further and more quickly).

(3) Tap into the Viral Power of Celebrities or Popular Fads

The idea is very simple. Take advantage of the popularity of a celebrity, fad, newsworthy story, or other highly searched keyword. For example, writing an article about Britney Spears has a higher chance of viral success than an article about dog farts. The below tools will help you find out what the most popular searches are for that day, week, month, and year.

· What is popular today from Google Content - http://current.com/topics/76253632_google_current?sort=currentness

· Google Trends -
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

· Ask.com Top Searches -
http://about.ask.com/en/docs/iq/iq.shtml

· Lycos 50 -
http://50.lycos.com/

(4) Sequels of Successful Content

Many webmasters make the mistake of not trying to take advantage of past successful content launches. If you created an article that was hugely successful then you should try making sequels of that article. You can post a Part II, Part III, etc. with useful tips, tools, or further in depth coverage of the same topic. Some ideas for additional things to add to a topic are:

· Online related resources

· Useful tools

· Real world examples

· Video follow-ups

· Discussions about the comments you received regarding that topic

· Extras or goodies

· Post about other articles on the net with opposite views from you and argue the topic

· Interview someone with experience on the topic who has your view

· Interview someone with experience on the topic who has an opposing view and argue your case

(5) Sex Sells

If your target market is male, half naked women will really get you far. Sex is known to sell everything from beer, cigarettes, guns, cars, and everything in between. Although sex has nothing to do with any of these things, it peaks the male viewer’s attention enough to listen to or click through to whatever you are promoting. I don’t use this tactic, but I know that it works.

(6) Offer Something Free

Offer people something valuable for free to get people to come to your site. For example, there are plenty of people who are hungry for useful information on specific topics such as “How to Drive Traffic to Your Site” or “How to Start an eBay Business”. When people are desperate for information, it is easy to get them to download a free ebook. If one person reads your ebook and it is helpful to them, they will tell everyone about it. You will soon have a huge number of people coming to your site to download your free ebook. Of course there will also be people who send other people to your ebook. How will those people know about your web site? They will know your url because your will plaster your url all over that ebook so that people who get your ebook from someone else will visit your site. Essentially, it is one huge advertisement for your site…unless your ebook is a piece of junk. Make sure to write valuable content that actually is helpful to readers, or nobody will send it to anyone else or add a link to your site.

(7) Video

Video is one of the hottest things on the web today so you should be incorporating it into your site. If you create a video that evokes strong emotions, people will share it and share it faaaaaaaaaaaaaast. That’s the essence of viral success. You will know quickly if your video clip is a success. Make sure that you have plenty of CPU and bandwidth available on your server…or it will crash and crash hard.

What sites should you submit your videos to?

At the minimum you should list your videos on YouTube.com, Google Videos, and Digg.com but there are other alternatives that you should submit them to if you have the time. Here is a list of alternatives to YouTube. I suggest that you take a look at these sites to see which ones are worth while for you. You should also submit your videos to the normal social bookmarking sites as well.


(8) Improve Your Content

Don’t have content for content’s sake. There’s been a big push recently to get as much content as possible on websites so that search engines see keywords in that content. But as users get savvier about the web, they are getting increasingly interested in the quality of content. It’s easy for them to just click away if your content isn’t good, so make sure that you’re not sacrificing the content just to get the right tags and quantity of content on the site. No one is going to spread the word about content that is bad.

(9) Text (SMS) Messages

People these days love to text one another so give them something short and easy to remember to text to others. Brand yourself with a great phrase that reminds people of who you are and what you do; your own slogan if you will. Make it text-worthy and brief and you’ll see your name cropping up in conversation.

(10) Forwarding Emails

According to a study done by MarketingSherpa, the top viral marketing strategy used by B2C companies in the US last year was email forwarding. I find this hard to believe, but I will explain to you what the process of viral email forwarding is:

You have received email forwarding campaigns before. I get them from my Mom, my Dad, My husband’s Grandmother and his Mother, as well as many of my friends. These are emails that have been forwarded from one person to another to another to another and so forth. Usually the ones from my family are emails that say things like “Don’t honk your car horn because there is a murderer out there who will shoot you if you honk your horn”. Do you get those too? I consider forwarded email junk and throw these emails away, that is why I am not the best person to explain email forwarding to you since I hate these campaigns. The great thing about email forwarding campaigns is that they can continue to accelerate as new groups of people are exposed to the campaign.

How Do I get people to forward my email to other people?

· The only way that someone will forward your email to other people is:

· There is a mutual benefit for them to send the email to others.

· Person shares your interests and thinks their friends will be interested as well

· Email has a great deal or free item.

· Upcoming event that they would like to share with others

· Scare tactic (like the above example) – please don’t do this.

(11) Use Signatures with Your Sites Info at the Bottom of Every Email

Every email that you send out should contain a signature. A signature is at the end of your emails and should look something like this:

Rachel Goldstein
Social Networking Articles
Social Networking & Social Media Articles
http://www.socialnetworkingarticles.com/
rgold@socialnetworkingarticles.com

You probably won’t get a ton of traffic from this but you never know when someone will see your signature and give you the big break that you have been hoping for. Every little bit helps.

(12) Networking on Message Boards, Chat Rooms, and Community Sites

Message boards and chat rooms attract individuals in need of advice. Take advantage of this. Just make sure not to blatantly market your services. This might infuriate people and you could get flamed or kicked out among other things. The way to network in this situation is to be as helpful and knowledgeable as you possibly can. If you are in a graphic design message board and someone is baffled about how to use layers in Photoshop, you could explain the process. You could maybe mention that you use Photoshop daily when running your design business. THEN at the bottom of the page use a signature.

Tip: I suggest searching the forums in your niche for specific articles that you have just written. This way you can say things like, ‘I just wrote about the topic of your question, take a look at this article.” However, you have to be established in that forum for a while before you try that or people will think you are spamming (I know because I run a large forum and I catch people doing this all the time. I don’t mind if they are already established and offer help to people who need it.)

(13) Become an Expert in Your Niche Market

There are Question and Answer sites all over the Internet. By offering answers on these questions, your name (and url) will get around quickly. Some Question / Answer sites are:

· AllExperts.com

· Yahoo Answers

· Answers.com

· Experts Exchange

· Wiki Answers

· MyLot

· CareerBuds

There are many more similar sites, and I will most likely link to them in an article later on.

(14) ‘Invite Friends’ or ‘Send Article to Friends’ Button

Placing a ‘Send Article to Friends’ button on your articles is always a good idea. Webmasters don’t use these types of buttons as often as they used to because of social bookmarking sites. However, if you have room on your article pages, I suggest that you place both social bookmarking and ‘send article to friend’ buttons.

On the front page of your site you should place an ‘Invite Friends’ button. If you have room to place it elsewhere, I suggest that you do that too.

(15) Submit Mini Articles to Article Banks

You want original content on your site so that you don’t get busted by Google for duplicate content. However, you still want to get your site’s url out on the net. My suggestion to you is to write great content for your own site and never send these articles out to article banks. My suggestion is to keep those great articles on your own site and write mini-articles to send out to article banks. At the bottom of the article, you can write the url to the full article. If this isn’t allowed, then you should write the full url in your signature. Make sure to utilize the signature with information about your site and list your urls.

I think this is all that I have in me for today…I will have to write a part II of this article at a later time.

Think of viral marketing as putting your name on the lips of the people that you want to talk about you. Basically, give them something worth talking about – in the form of good content – and give them a way to do it – through a social bookmarking site – and you’ll see viral success.


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October 26, 2007

Tips for Increasing Your Traffic on Social Networking & Bookmarking Sites

Tips for Boosting Your Traffic on Social Networking & Bookmarking Sites

Tips for increasing your traffic to your web sites via Social Bookmarking and Social Networking Sites

There’s a good chance that you’re already on one of the major social networking sites. You reconnect with former school friends on Classmates.com. You keep track of all your social contacts on MySpace. Or maybe you have a networking of professional contacts on a site such as LinkedIn. But are you harnessing the power of those social networking sites? Are you using them to direct traffic to your own site? If not, you could be missing out on a big opportunity for increasing your site traffic and generating attention to your site. Here is an article introducing you to the basics of social networking and what it is.

So What Are Some Ways That I Can Utilize Social Networking and Social Bookmarking Sites For Traffic?


(1) Utilize Your Existing ‘Real’ Friends

One great way to use social networking to increase traffic is to get all of your friends on a particular network to support your content on other sites. For example, you might post an article to a major social bookmarking site such as Digg or Del.icio.us. Then you can send a message to everyone that you know on your social networking sites asking them to take a minute to support your post on the bookmarking site. You can even encourage them to have their network support you as well. This increases your credibility on the social bookmarking site (because you’re getting a lot of Diggs on Digg for example) which will draw attention to your content there and send traffic to your site. **tip** If you are able to, organize an article post time so that your friends can digg, tag, or stumble your article within a 24 hour period (preferably within the hour). A site called exchangemytags.com will be useful for this task. Keep your eyes on exchangemytags.com which will be launching very soon.

(2) Make Friends with Strangers to Make a Large Network of Connections

Of course, you can also use social networking sites to make connections with complete strangers. This only works for some people because users tend to be wary of networking with complete strangers. However, if you develop a strong profile and a pitch to users of the networking sites, it can work. This is best for people who have a niche market that they want to work with. For example, if you work in the music industry, you can make friends with bands on a site like MySpace music; they’ll be interested in networking with you because it can be a mutually beneficial situation. Then you can use your increased network to drive traffic to your site.

(3) Bookmarks on Social Bookmarking Sites

Yesterday I published a blog entry with a few hundred social bookmarking sites. You need to utilize this list in order to submit your links and articles to these sites in order to utilize the strongest source of potential incoming links. Believe me when I say that it works. If you work hard enough at it, you can get more people coming to your site than from Google. At the minimum, you need to utilize the most popular social bookmarking sites which are:

Backflip

BlinkBits

Blinklist

BlogMarks

BlueDot

De.lic.ious

Digg

Diigo

Facebook

Furl (Looksmart)

Google Bookmarks

Magnolia

MyWeb Yahoo

Netscape

Netvouz

Newsvine

Popurls

Reddit

Simpy

Slashdot

Spurl

Squidoo

StumbleUpon

Technorati

YouTube / Flickr (media only)

(4) Picture Perfect

You may not realize it, but by passing on uploading your picture, you are also passing on an opportunity to get more people clicking on your articles. Why? Well, for one, it is known that spammers never take the time to upload a picture. Second, it is called ’social’ networking and ’social’ bookmarking sites. If you are trying to be ’social’ then you should put a face to your name.

(4a) Get a Funny or Extremely Cool Avatar for Your Picture

A great way to get pictures to click on your articles is by using a funny or extremely interesting picture as your avatar. You are trying to get people talking about you and your avatar so take this seriously. Find or create an avatar that matches your personality and one that is either very humorous, super weird, or just really cool. I found a lot of funny avatars and avatar tools on the following sites:

Avatarist

Avatars DB

Forums Extreme

A Parody Image Generator (really cool for avatars)

Gizmos (You can animate yourself talking)

Create My Picture (You can create a picture a cartoon face for an avatar)

27 Avatar Makers from Mashable

(5) Dress Up Your Profile

Think of your social networking profile pages as ‘real’ web pages … because really they are. Profile pages get spidered by search engines and they have links to other pages on the net, just like any other web page. You can utilize this profile to promote your web sites as well as your profiles on other social networking sites. For example, if I have a profile on MySpace, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn, then I will want to link to:

  • StumbleUpon and LinkedIn from MySpace
  • StumbleUpon and MySpace from LinkedIn
  • MySpace and LinkedIn from StumbleUpon

Not only will this increase the number of hits that I get on my profile pages via search engines and direct clicks, but it will also increase the number of friends that I have. The more friends that I have in my network, the more popular my profile and articles can become.

You should also add content and fill out information on your profile to show that you are an avid member. Add keyword relevant content on your profile page without being ’spammy’ about it. This will help with internal searches and possibly also with Google and other search engines. You can add content relevant feeds to some profiles with rss2image and other services.

(6) Add Social Bookmarking Buttons / Widgets / Chicklets

You might not like the way that they look, but I have to admit that social bookmarking buttons are what get me the most traffic. I use a service called AddThis, and it works great for me. Here are more social bookmarking widgets and tutorials that might help you:

3Spots

Add to Any

Add to Any Bookmark

Add to Bookmarks

Apostolos Dountsis Social Bookmarks Plugin for WordPress

Badged.net

Beautiful Beta: Dynamic Rollover DHTML Social Bookmark Buttons

The Bookmarketer

Bookmarkz!

Blogger Social Bookmarking Tool

Buttonr.com

Darxr.net: Social Bookmarks Sidebar Widget for WordPress

Dashboard Widgets

Easy Wordpress Widget for Social Bookmarking Sites

Ekstreme: Social Bookmarking Submission Code

Gath Adams: Build Your Own Social Bookmark Widget

GrayWolf’s Social Bookmark Scripts & Widgets

iFeedReaders

Oscandy: The Multiple Social Bookmarking Widget

Manhattan Service: Social Bookmark Tool

OnlyWire

Pheedo

PopMarks

Postli

PunchCard Manual

Romlet

Socialbookmarker

Social Bookmarks 3.1

Swicki Builder

Shout List Icons

Social Bookmark Script: Web 2.0 Optimierung

SocialBookmarkIt

Socialize It

The Socializer

Tips n Tricks Social Bookmarking Buttons

Top Ranks Social Bookmarks Creator

WebCosmo

WpBlogBMLet

WidgetBox: Ultimate Social Bookmark

WP Plugin: Gregarious

YouFame.net: Social Bookmarking Widget Generator


Your Minis Social Bookmarking

YourMinis: Web2Bar

Your Minis: Web2Bar

(7) Leave Valuable Comments and Reviews

You might not like taking the time to leave thoughtful reviews and comments, but this is what needs to be done to be a successful social networker. Think about it, don’t you like people more when they are nice to you? I know that I like someone much better when they say nice things to me, especially when they are saying nice things about the articles I wrote or the site that I designed. Try only writing comments that you really mean, don’t be insincere, people will see right through the smoke.

(8) Tag Effectively

Make sure to take your time and tag your articles and sites effectively. These tags / keywords are how people find you. Take some time out to see how other people are tagging and copy methodology that seems to work.

(9) Titles That Catch the Reader’s Eyes

Unless people find your article’s title titillating , they won’t click on it. Even if your article is just so-so, if you spin the title in a way that makes it sound exciting, you will get people to click through to read it.

(10) Content is King

Nothing is more important than content. If you are a good writer and you write about interesting topics, you are going to do well on the social networking sites. People seem to like top 10 lists, top 20 lists, etc. I suggest that you look at digg.com to see what gets the most diggs. I have failed multiple times on getting a post digged or stumbled, even when I thought that it was the best article ever. You don’t always win.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU KEEP AT IT AND DON’T GIVE UP … YOU WILL SUCCEED!

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October 24, 2007

What Is Social Bookmarking and How is it a Great Tool for Networking Online?

What is social bookmarking - it is a great tool for networking online - picture of a dictionary

What is the Definition of Social Bookmarking?

If you don’t yet know what social bookmarking is, you’re missing out on a powerful tool for networking with others online. Think this doesn’t apply to you? Social bookmarking is more than just a way to make some Internet friends and pass some time. It’s the way that websites are getting noticed today which means that it’s the way that your online business or blog makes money. No matter how big or small your website is, social bookmarking can increase the traffic to that site and get people interested in whatever it is that you’re doing. And if you don’t know how to do it, you’re going to get left behind because in the world of Web 2.0, social bookmarking is the common language that everyone is speaking.

But let’s get down to the basics. Social bookmarking takes place inside of particular websites. You join them as a user under whatever name you’d like and you can create a profile there. It sounds a little bit like MySpace or Facebook which is why many people think that they’re just a fun social tool. But true social bookmarking sites are different because they let each user archive information about their favorite web pages. You can create lists of information about where to find your favorite books, read your favorite blogs, or find your favorite locations on a city map.

Other users on the site can access this information, searching it through various methods including topics and tags which you create. So, you might create a whole series of information that you tag with “music” and then users of the social bookmarking site can sort your information by that tag and find all of what you’ve posted under it. This might still sound like a thing for high school kids to do when they’re bored, but it’s actually a powerful tool for directing traffic to certain sites.

What happens is that certain users on any social bookmarking site gain a lot of credibility on the site. This is usually because they post frequently, update their bookmarks regularly and provide people with content that is of interest. People on the site start paying attention to the suggestions made by this powerful user. And they lead their friends and other contacts to what this user is doing, increasing the power of that person’s suggestion. Because of this, you can use social bookmarking skills to gain credibility on the site and then direct people to the things that you want them to site – like your website or blog.

When it comes down to it, social bookmarking is the voice of the masses. This is one of the key characteristics of the Web 2.0 world in which users are generating and directing the content on Internet sites. Anyone with a profile on a social bookmarking site can have some input into what sites people are visiting on the World Wide Web. At a very basic level, social bookmarking can direct you to some interesting and useful information. But at a more complex level, it can be a tool that you use on a regular basis to improve your business and influence the people who use that site.

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Huge List of Social Bookmarking and Tagging Sites

List of Social Bookmarking and Tagging Web Sites

List of Social Bookmarking and Tagging Sites

30 Day Tags
30DayTags allows for user-contributed content and ranks results based on visitor feedback. Additionally, content on 30DayTags has a 30-day refresh, ensuring that content is both relevant and fresh data.

A1 Webmarks
A personal webmark server is a website where you keep all your webmarks in a well-organized way, so that your favorite sites are easy to find, and available from any browser, everywhere in the world, at any time. Anywhere 1 click away.

All My Favorites
Share your internet bookmarks with family and friends.

Ambedo
Tag your bookmarks and search engines.

Ask MyStuff
Tag and bookmark your favorite pages and pictures and find them from any computer.

A World of Help
on A World of Help, users can submit and rate resources in numerous categories. Just like with Digg, the highest rated links show up on the front page.

**Backflip
Discover whats hot on the web, save pages into your personal Yahoo-like directory, find pages again with your personal search engine, share sites with friends or publish them on the web, and more.

Best Stuff
Real lists of the best stuff in the world, for example what is the best coffee, what is the best stores, etc.

Bibsonomy
BibSonomy is a system for sharing bookmarks and lists of literature. When discovering a bookmark or a publication on the web, you can store it on our server. You can add tags to your entry to retrieve it more easily. This is very similar to the bookmarks/favorites that you store within your browser.

BlinkBits
Discover the wisdom of others by reading blinks other people blinked and shared.

**Blinklist
Real people with shared interests list the websites they care about. Rate sites you like or save them for later.

BlinkPro
A powerful bookmark manager. You can keep your bookmarks private or share them with others.

BlogHop
A directory and search engine for blogs. Everything is searchable by tags.

Bloglines
Create a personal bloglines page about the things you love and share them with others.

**BlogMarks
A collaborative link management based on project sharing and keyword tagging.

Bloodee
A Digg-like bookmarking sites for users who love horror movies and all things horrifying.

**BlueDot
A social discovery website in which Blue Dot allows users to find, share, and save interesting web resources and articles with friends and family. There is a wide range of topics that fit anyone’s interests.

Blummy
Blummy is a free tool for access to your favorite services via your bookmark toolbar. It is a drop down menu consisting of widgets that provide rich functionality.

Bmaccess
A social bookmarking site with screenshots.

Bookmark4You
A user friendly layout for bookmarking and tagging your favorite sites. View other users favorite sites as well by browsing through tags.

Bookmark Tracker
BookmarkTracker is a complete, easy-to-use web-application that allows you to safely store and organize your bookmarks online and securely access them from anywhere on the Internet. Share them with others anonymously.

BuddyMarks
At BuddyMarks.com you can store all your favorites on-line and be able to get to them from anywhere. Home, school, the library… at work, leisure, even on vacation in Tahiti. You can easily upload the favorites you already have, and adding new ones is as easy as the way you bookmark things now… and you can do it anywhere (did I mention that?)!

Butterfly Project
ButterFly helps you collect, redlining and share webpages.

Chaamp
A Digg-like site for sports related content.

ChipMark
You can get your bookmarks from any computer, anywhere, whether you’re at home, work, a library, or at school. A place where people can share their bookmarks with friends, family, and co-worker.

CiteULike
An academic papers social bookmarking site.

ClipMarks
Save your clips privately or make them public to share with others. Use clipsearch to find out what others are clipping. You can also post clips directly to your blog, email clips to friends, and print just the parts of your page that you want to print.

Cloudalicious
A social bookmarked page of past items.

Cloudy Tags
A site similar to digg. It is a collaborative resource discover site.

Cogenz
Collect, collaborate, and connect. Save links to interesting websites, share bookmarks with others, and fine useful links collected by others.

Complore
Share articles, bookmarks, and events.

Connectedy
On this web site you can add your links and categorize them in a heirarchial way.

Connotea
Free online reference management for all researchers, clinicians, and scientists.

CoRank
CoRank is the first service on the net in which you can create a site about any topic you like so that you could add it and save it. Then others who like your site can add to your site (if you allow it). Everyone can vote on submitted items and post comments, and much more.

CyLive
CyLive give you a place to store all of your photos, music, videos, bookmarks, articles, reviews, and much more. It also gives you a place to share all of these things with the public.

Dealoid
Dealoid.com is a digg-like deal sharing site. If you know about a great deal, coupon or freebie post it to Dealoid to share with others. Also, discover great money saving deals and more that other members have posted.

**De.lic.ious
Social bookmarking at its best. One of the most popular bookmarking and tagging sites.

**Digg
As a user, you can submit a website or article that you digg (that you like). Everyone who also diggs this resources, clicks on a ‘digg it’ button. The more diggs that a resource gets, the more popular it is and therefor lands up on the homepage. This one of the sites that started the social bookmarking craze.

**Diigo
The best way to collect, share and interact on online information from anywhere, even in groups. You can share, annotate, share, and interact on any web page.

Dogear
dogear is meant to be used as an in-page bookmarking tool. If you often read blogs, articles, online books, or e-texts of whatever kind, dogear can help you keep track of your position within a text. It also keeps a history of everything you’ve read.

DropJack
A Digg-like social networking bookmarks site.

DZone
A social bookmarking page for developers.

eSnips
eSnips is a social content-sharing site, where you can publish and share any media type. You have practically unlimited flexibility in choosing what you want to share, and with whom, in 5GB of free space.

Excites
Excites is a social bookmarking site in which you can save and manage your bookmarks and have access to them from any computer. Look for what you are interested in by browsing or searching for them by tags.

**Facebook
Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you. Upload photos, publish notes, get the latest news from your friends, post videos, tag your friends, join a network, and more.

Fark
The first thing you should know is that Fark.com isn’t a Weblog. Fark.com, the Web site, is a news aggregator and an edited social networking news site. Every day Fark receives 2,000 or so news submissions from its readership.

Favoriting
Unfortunately this one is in Spanish. It looks like a cool idea for a social bookmarking site.

FeedMarker
A bookmarker and newsreader with tagging.

FeedMeLinks
FeedMeLinks stores your bookmarks online so you can get to them anywhere. Import your favorites and share your links with friends. Add tags to organize your links. Discover new things. Open-source your interest.

**Flickr
A social bookmarking site for pictures. You can tag your photos, organize them, make stuff and more. Most of the pictures on Flickr are subject to public domain licensing (the are free to use).

Fungow
Social bookmarking using folders where each URL is tabbed single page.

**Furl (Looksmart)
By bookmarking any site you find of interest on Furl, you can easily annotate, find it later, refer to it, and share it with others. You even can save clippings of the page that you like.

Get Boo
Keep all of your bookmarks in one place, share some of your bookmarks with the world, and find new websites by reading other users favorite links.

Give a Link
Donate your bookmarks to the web community and to science. The goal of this site is to analyze bookmark files to build new web mining techniques including new ways to search, recommend, personalize, and visualize the web.

**Google Bookmarks
Save your favorite bookmarks and add labels and notes to them. Use personalize search to find the sites you frequently visit.

Googelens
Googlelens is similar to digg except that there are many more categories to browse through. Nice site.

Goowy
Because it gives you everything you need in a fresh, simple package, including an instant messenger that lets you chat with your buddies from multiple networks, powerful e-mail, contacts & calendar, customized news, rss, minis, file storage, sharing & finally some fun games when you just want to relax.

Hanzo
A social web archiving service, with 100MB of web archive space per month for a free account.

Hubsess
Hubsess allows people to tag news to Hubs. Hubs are many things, including towns, sports teams, technology products, ideas, politicians, and much more. Then people can gather the news from a bunch of Hubs into their own Newspaper.

HubPages
Easily publish blog-like content on any topic that you love.

Hyperlinkomatic
You can grab links, makes notes, set multiple categories, search links, import links from web pages, upload bookmarks, create bookmarks files, share links, publish links. It is, in short, a place to keep your links.

i89
i89.us offers a free service which allows you to submit and save your favorite
articles/news/website/links at one location that can be accessed from anywhere.

iGlobeCity
With iGlobeCity you can bookmark and share your favorite links, make personal start page containing all your favorite links, shorten long URL for easy accessing and sharing, access your computer worldwide with dynamic IP address, and create private community and virtual network with friends.

Iloggo
Create your own private Internet desktop and share it with others with ratings, groups, categories, and folders.

iKeepBookmarks
Keep and manage your bookmarks online and share it with your friends.

Jeteye
Simply drag and drop any content from anywhere on the web into the Jeteye™ companion to create a Jetpak. Create, add to, save and share your Jetpaks. Now you’ve got pages (Jetpaks) of whatever you want for whomever you want.

Jigg
A digg-like site with a larger number of categories. Not as popular, but it gets a decent number of visitors.

Kaboodle
Shopping is more fun with friends. Discover new things from people with similar tastes and style. Recommend and discuss your favorite products and stores. Simplify your life with wishlists.

Library Thing
Enter what you’re reading or your whole library—it’s an easy, library-quality catalog. LibraryThing also connects you with people who read the same things.

LinkaGoGo
Need instant access to your bookmarks from anywhere? Then Linkagogo is a good social bookmarking site for you. You can also expert Linkagogo into many different formats.

Linkatopia
A free web site in which you can save all of your bookmarks so that you can check them from any computer. You can also save a group of friends that you share those bookmarks with.

Link Filter
Linkfilter.net is just what the name implies, a link filter. All links are posted and moderated by users. Links can be ranked on several levels: clicks, votes, age, or a combination of all three called points.

Linkroll
At a personal level you can bookmark, categorize and comment on all the great web pages/links you find. All your bookmarks are then sortable and searchable by category and date.

Linkswarm
A swarm of social bookmarking links, meet other people and discuss things.

Listible
A very cool social bookmarking site that lists resources in tagged and listed formats. All lists are voted on by users and the most popular resources land up on top.

ListMixer
ListMixer is an easy way to track web pages that momentarily hold your interest. It’s handy for tracking blog comments or for pooling timely web pages among friends. No account is required.

**Magnolia
In social bookmarking, you only find the bookmarks that other people think are worth keeping. Ma.gnolia ratings and tags instantly give you an idea of what people think of a bookmark, making your web searches more informed than ever.

Markabook
MarkaBoo makes it easy organize your data and share it with others. Bookmark websites, files and notes side-by-side from your browser, email, or mobile phone.

Mobleo
Surf, bookmarks and share the mobile web.

MyBlogLog
If you have a blog or any other site where you frequently post new content on the main page, you don’t have a good way of tracking what people find interesting. One way is to track when people click on the links you provide. Up until now, outbound link tracking has been a pain in the butt, requiring CGIs and managed links. MyBlogLog makes this process easy.

Mybookmarks
MyBookmarks is a free Internet service that allows you to keep your browser bookmarks and favorites online so you can access them from anywhere.

MyFavorites
Place your favorites online and share them with friends.

My FoxMarks
Online bookmark synchronization with planned sharing.

MyLinkVault
MyLinkVault is a free online favorites manager. Other favorites managers can be so clumsy to use - trying to rearrange your favorites can be slow and frustrating.

MyHQ
Easily manage your bookmarks in a banner free environment. Import/export, create public pages, and share bookmarks with others.

MyPip
Make a personal favorites page. You can fill and organize this page yourself. You can share your favorites with other users.

MyProgs
Find new software in the category of your choice. Also, share your work experiences with other users.

MyStickies
To put it simply, MyStickies allows you to place little yellow squares of digital paper anywhere and everywhere you feel like in the whole wide web. Along with the ability to put sticky notes on webpages mystickies offers a powerful interface to browse, search, sort, edit and generally have a wonderfull time with your sticky notes from any computer that has internet access.

MyVMarks
With myVmarks you have access to your favorite web sites and bookmarks from any computer. Easily add, organize and share your favorite web sites! Share your bookmarks with the community.

MyWebDesktop
Connect your desktop to any other desktop (call) and collaborate with a person or a group of people by sharing files, bookmarks and notes and communicate via messaging and messageboard. Disconnect (hang up) when you have finished collaborating with that person or group of people. Of course this works two-way i.e. you call and you receive incoming calls.

**MyWeb Yahoo
This site combines Yahoo search with social bookmarking so that you can share all types of content.

**Netscape
A Digg like social bookmarking and tagging site except with a lot more categories. It is very popular too.

**Netvouz
Another good social bookmarking site, and a great place to meet others and share your bookmarks with them. You can access your bookmarks from anywhere.

Network Menus
Add your own menus to the toolbar, store your favorites, search your favorite search engine, and find people with similar interests.

**Newsvine
Updated continuously by citizens like you, Newsvine is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment.

OnlyWire
Do you use multiple social bookmarking services? Tired of having multiple shortcuts? Here is a simple free solution. One bookmarklet for many social bookmarking services.

Oyax
Oyax is a social bookmark manager. It allows you to easily add websites that you like to your own personal collection of links, categorize these links with keywords, and share your collection with others.

Philoi
Philoi is the first person-to-person online bookmark sharing community. Stay connected with your friends and the web at the same time.

PlugIM
PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community. Submit content, share articles, comment on projects and promote your favorites to the front page. If its internet marketing related, plug it on PlugIM.

Pocket
Well, say you find a web page that seems valuable — a picture, a blog post or video you want to save for later. Just put it in Pocket. If it’s on the web, you can put it in Pocket. With Pocket you can store, organize and share your bookmarks and feeds on the web. Pocket is great because it’s bottomless.

**Popurls
This is a great web site if you are interested in visiting just one social bookmarking site instead of many. In other words, this one site replaces about 25 social bookmarking sites and allows users to submit their bookmarks from one central place.

Raw Sugar
Web 2.0 is a technically and socially driven phenomenon that has made the internet world a platform for communication, collaboration and community learning.

Reader2
A social bookmarking site for readers of books. Social lists of books and recommendations of books in your category of interest.

**Reddit
Reddit is a resources for what is new and hot on the web, but personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so you need to let Reddit know what you like and what you dislike. Then Reddit recommends links to you that fit your tastes.

S.crumptio.us
Are you a billionaire? Then you can have one of your servents use this social bookmarking site for you.
An Italian social bookmarking site.

SEO News
A Digg-like site for SEO, technology, and web development type articles and news.

Shadows
A social bookmarking site with comments, ratings, and tags. Shadows will put you one click away from any discussion forum on the net.

Shared Dish
Shared Dish is a Web 2.0 social bookmarking recipe site. Add recipes, share recipes, and vote on recipes to make the ultimate community edited cookbook. There is quite a bit of spam here.

Shoutwire
Shoutwire is Digg-like site for Internet news.

**Simpy
Simpy is a social bookmarking service that allows you to tag, save, search, and share your notes, bookmarks, groups, and more.

Site Tagger
A bookmarking / favorite organizer through a bookmarklet that you can put in your browser link bar.

**Slashdot
A technology bookmarking site that is very popular. Only the ‘good’ technology content is actually listed on Slashdot.

Social Bookmarking
Share what you like, find favorites of friends & colleagues, connect with friends, and more.

Spotback
Spotback is a personalized rating system that recommends relevant content based on personalized ratings history.

Spotplex
Insert your Spotplex code in your blog. Whenever your articles are read, they will show up on Spotplex and you can also find how many people read your articles.

**Spurl
One of the first social bookmarking sites. This is a great site to create your own personal bookmarking system. You can write your own descriptions and reviews of each website you find.

**Squidoo
Squidoo is a very popular site for people who want to create pages about what interests them. You can highlight books, videos, blogs, online stores, or just spread the word about what you are passionate about. A bonus is that you raise money for your charity at the same time.

Stirrdup
This is a digg-like social bookmarking site in which posting controversial stories is welcome. The more users that vote for your story, the more popular it becomes. If it becomes popular enough, the story makes it to the front page.

**StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon will help you share and discover great resources from like-minded people. You make friends and share resources with friends on StumbleUpon. This is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites and one of the most addictive.

StyleFeeder
Stuff you like and people you like.

Sync2It
Clusters are intersecting groups of bookmarks categorized by descriptive terms. Similar to ‘tags’, BookmarkSync clusters contain multiple terms which allow for a more detailed classification system. Try them out by clicking on an interesting cluster.

Sync One
Save your favorite web site, webclips, books, music, links, podcasts, feeds, images and more in one place, organize and access from anywhere anytime. Add your review and comments for community and self. Search, compare and discover more. Share this with whomever you want.

Taggly
English and Italian social bookmarking site using tags and screenshots.

TagTooga
TagTooga is a wiki/shared bookmarking website. Integrates site listings, embedded video, PAD submissions, blurbs, code fragments, and MySpace friends.

Tailrank
Tailrank is a memetracker which finds the hottest posts from thousands of blogs so you don’t have to!

**Technorati
Technorati is the recognized authority on what’s happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

TeDigo
Search by keyword via the people’s consensus, not what a robot chooses. You can keep your favorites private or make them public.

TekTag
TekTag is a technical knowledgebase created by users. A social bookmarking technology site with a few bells and whistles - to let our users save, share, and discover technical information that’s useful to them.

The Things I Want
A universal wishlist social bookmarking site. You can add items to your wishlist from any site. Easily share these wishes with any family member or friend. Add your list to your own homepage or blog. You can state who you do and who you don’t want to see your list.

Thumblicious
Thumblicioius is a new way to browse the Internet by displaying screenshots of the most popular sites from Del.icio.us.

Toread
You can bookmark your “toread” web pages by just clicking the bookmarklet on your browser.

Unalog
An open source social bookmarking software. You can look at what various people and groups of people are reading on the web here. You can get an account and add your own links, and create and join groups here too.

URLex
With URLex system you are able to leave a comment regarding any internet link on any site. The comments are available either only to you and your friends, or anyone visiting the site. You now have an opportunity of expressing your thoughts regarding any information placed on the internet.

Voo2do
Advanced task and priority management for busy people. Social bookmarking and blog using heirarchical tags and categories.

Wazima
Coupons clipped by robots. Wazima scours the web and shows you the deals that you are most interested in. Not very much of a social bookmarking site, but everything is tagged so I am including it.

Web-Feeds
Web-feeds in a social bookmarking site where users moderate and decide which resources make it to the front page.

Windows Live
Windows live is a new set of services that brings your online world together in one place. Finally the information that you need, the people you care about, and powerful protection.

Wink
Better than white pages, wink free people search lets you find people at social networks like MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, & Friendster, and other online community.

WireFan
Save and share for your favorite websites and access them quickly from anywhere. A Digg-like site.

Wists
Wists is short for web lists, shareable image bookmarks for any page on the web. With Wists, your wishlists are not limited to one site. Sign up an install the Wists browser button, to automatically create picture bookmarks, for any page without having to upload anything.

wURLdBook
wURLdBook offers you a new way to unobtrusively navigate, collect, categorize, annotate, clip, archive, find, publish RSS (including enclosures) and share information with others that is important to you on the web.

Yahoo Bookmarks
Here you can import and organize your browser bookmarks.

Yahoo MyWeb
Save your bookmarks in a place where you can always find them. Share your bookmarks with friends, colleagues, and family. Discover new sites and resources by browsing categories of your interests.

Yattle
Online favorites management and mini-blogging website.

Yoono
Social bookmarking based on browser bookmarks and includes a search engine, an RSS reader, sharing functions, and web monitoring.

**YouTube
YouTube is one of the most popular websites on the net. This is ‘the’ social bookmarking site for videos. This site has amazing search capabilities and is very well laid out.

Add your favorite social bookmarking sites in the comments and I will update this list. Thank you.