Intro To Social Bookmarking
What are Social Bookmarks?
A social bookmark is a link created by a web user that is categorized
and viewed by the public. If you have ever had bookmarks at work
and moved to a new job and wanted access to your old links then
you will immediately understand the signifigance of the social bookmarks.
They offer a way in which users can access their bookmarks from
anywhere in the world with an Internet connection and a way for
users to have control over the classification of those bookmarks.
Social bookmark buttons on a blog are especially powerful. These
are buttons on a blog and/or website that allow readers to submit
articles they like to Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and other socially
moderated bookmarking/news/feed sites at the click of a button.
Readers will also be able to add articles to feed readers such as
Google Reader, My Yahoo! and Bloglines. This is a great way to advertise
as each link from another site (known as a back link) will give
more ranking on search engines. It also allows for something known
as social marketing optization.
Reference:
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking
Nature Publishing Groups. Social Bookmarking Tools (I). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html
What you
should know before you start:
This is
fairly easy to do but you should have a basic understanding of HTML before you
proceed. For those of us who are still learning, this will take patients and
some reading. Always back up the code before you change it. Have some access
to the code in its original state.
This
instruction uses specific Blogware/Blogharbor, Drupal and Blogger examples.
If you’re
content manager/Blogware gives you the ability to get down into Template
code you should
be able
to add these buttons. Hopefully, this will serve as a decent guide
regardless of
your tools.
Why Service
Links?
Consider
Social Marketing Optimization (SMO)
The best
thing about these social bookmarks (aka service links) is social
marketing optimization. Social marketing
optimization is where you allow your readers some control of the ranking,
content or look of your site. Social Bookmarking services allow your
readers to show their approval of your content by bookmarking it or saving
it
in
their
own
accounts across the web. These accounts, such as Del.icio.us, actually
publish all
user content to the web for all to see. The reader also chooses
the labels associated with your content and exposes that same content
to like minded
readers who may have been previously unaware of your presence. SMO is
allowing your readers to syndicate your content, that is what social
bookmarks do. This is
the current direction of the World Wide Web (Pakii/SMO).
Effective
Use of Service Links:
Service links
are a way to integrate your blog/site with the web service that you are
allowing your users to link with.
To
get the most out of service links you should consider getting your
own account
at web
services like Reddit, Google reader, My Yahoo!, Digg, Del.icio.us and others.
Once you have an account participate by adding your own content.
Some social
media services such as Digg discourage users from promoting their own
material. It is important to use the web service not abuse it or you could
find your self creating the wrong type of traffic and attention to your
site. Be particularly careful with Digg as one post deemed abusive
by the users
could
result in a whirlwind of bad press or worse a mob induced Social Denial
of Service attack from the “Digg Army.”
Although
a high quality and well liked article on the front page of Digg or
in the “popular” section of Del.icio.us can catapult your site to
A-List traffic in a matter of minutes, consider submitting all your
pages to
My Yahoo!, Google
Reader and Bloglines as these are among the most popular feed submission
services on the Internet. Submissions to My Yahoo! will get your blog
listed on Yahoo! News.
Reference:
