You may be actively using many of the social bookmarking and networking sites for promoting your articles these days. If you have installed plugins like AddThis or ShareThis, you realize that there nearly 300 to 400 similar social bookmarking sites out there where you can not only build your links but also use them for sharing and online promotional marketing.
However, social networking is not for everyone and for every purpose, there are certain benefits as well as several flaws with these sites which we will review now.
Link Building –
What exactly is meant by Link building? Whenever you promote any of your links in one of these social bookmarking sites, the search engines will immediately pick them up and submit them to it’s search results. By building your link presence like this, you can increase your SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). This is an important step towards better optimizing your website to improve the chances of ending up on the search pages, otherwise known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The upside to this is that once you build up a good number of connections, you have a built in audience for every link you share.
Increase Traffic –
Link building and sharing articles on social networking sites is a sound way of increasing traffic to your site. With your links all over these social sites, there are more number of chances that your friends and followers might click on the link and come to your site. If they like what you have written, they might inturn share it among their circles and thus there is a potential for your article to go viral. For bloggers or webmasters looking to attract more visitors to their websites, social bookmarking is a great way to do it.
Easy Networking –
Social networking is another way of making friends, though not personal, just like in twitter or facebook. You can build your audience by connecting to one another and thus improve your networking boundaries. This will enable your shared links to travel across these networks you have built and improve the chances of more people visiting your site. Most of the people on these sites are interested in connecting with communities with similar interests, thus you can target your audience more specific to your website needs. The upside to this is that once you build up a good number of connections, you have a built in audience for every link you share.
Privacy –
Think before you share on social bookmarking sites. This is very important because once you share a link, it is visible to each and everyone on the web. If you are writing controversial articles like politics or racism, it might have an adverse affect to share them in these sites since there is a every chance that a person who is against your thoughts might gain access to your post and take that personally. If you think you might run into such a risk, it is better to avoid sharing on these networks. If the link is something that you wouldn’t want your co-workers or your mother to see, then it’s not a good idea to share it on a social bookmarking site.
Terms of Service –
It is advisable to read the terms and conditions applicable to the bookmarking site before considering to share your links. Some of them may be against sharing links that point back to your own website (such as Reddit) while others might actually encourage such sharing. The network might consider your article to be a spam and thus adversely affect your PR. It is important to understand what the neworking site is for before signing up and using it for your blog promotions.
Over To You
Social bookmarking is a fun way of sharing articles of interest among friends and followers. For website owners, it is a productive method to build their presence and increase the number of followers. However, one should take precautionary measures before actually using them. It demands active participation and presence in these networks for actually realizing it’s benefits. So which of these several hundreds of social bookmarking sites do you use for your blog promotions? Have you had any negative impact of sharing links on these sites? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below. Thanks for reading.
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Hey Praveen,
I know there is a lot of potential in each of these number of networks, but I just focus on Twitter, FB, Google Plus and Stumble Upon – I don’t use StumbleUpon that often, but I do use it sometimes.
I believe that instead of going out and trying to be active on all these networks, we should just focus on the mainstream ones and be active there (Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus are the main stream social media sites). Of course, we could use automation to ping all these networks when we post an article).
Jeevan Jacob John recently posted…Facebook Interview Chat, Productivity Challenge and Podcasts!
Hi Jeevan – There are social bookmarking sites and there are social networking sites. I was concentrating more on the bookmarking which we use for sharing our links like digg, stumbleupon, reditt etc.
Yes, it does serve better if we pick and choose the right ones for our needs, for eg: digg is more relevant for breaking news and reditt is good for categorized articles. Stumbleupon is losing its charm now, since most of the traffic from that site is trash and has no value.
Thanks for stopping by.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Benefits of delaying your retirement
Informative post Praveen!
Yes indeed, social bookmarking sites are important, without which we can’t really spread word about what we have written, nor share the posts we like with others.
Like Jeevan, I also concentrate more on the main ones like Twitter, Facebook, G+, though also share my posts on others like Tumblr, Digg, Stumbleupon, Pinterest, and a few more – though I really have no idea if they really make a difference or not. 🙂
I certainly had no idea that some of these could also work against our blog, or would require us to seriously read their terms and conditions, something that I need to check out now.
Thanks for sharing and making us aware. 🙂
Harleena Singh recently posted…Why Does a Bad Marriage Happen
Harleena – Yes, those sites are really helping us bloggers to get our articles out there and spread the word among other active members.
Pinterest does draw a decent amount of good traffic, but very specific to the niche.
Thanks for leaving your comment, hope to see you around.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Benefits of delaying your retirement
Social Sites are best site for hetting back links. I like some of them which are best like digg, diigo, stumble upon etc.
Neha – good u find these sites useful for promoting your blog. I am sure you will gain a lot of popularity by proper use of the same.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…The Fake Science Approach to Copywriting
Hi Praveen,
I really don’t use any social bookmarking sites if you can believe that. I just purchased a program though a few weeks ago that I’m going to give a run for my money and they have a lot of social bookmarking sites they recommend using.
I used them in the past but never really saw any results from them so I just stopped altogether. I continue to be told that they are helpful yet I’ve never seen the proof of that myself. Doesn’t mean they aren’t good though.
Great post and wonderful job of going through the reasons for using them and of course for the trusty old backlinks.
~Adrienne
Adrienne recently posted…The Hidden Dangers Of Social Media
Adrienne – Glad to read your comment on this and am really surprised you are not using any of the bookmarking sites. Well, now I have to say that with you being popular without any sort of bookmarking or link building, i am sure there are other ways to promote your blog.
Your articles are widely read and discussed, if you bookmark them, am sure they will go viral !!!!
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…The Fake Science Approach to Copywriting
Hi Praveen, I am on the same page with Adrienne. I don’t use social bookmarking either. But…after reading this and how it will benefit me for making my site go viral.
Thanks Praveen
Donna
Hello Praveen,
I don’t use social bookmarking sites completely. Because I think its quite time consuming and not very much effective also. When we have tactics like blog commenting, social media, guest posting, and others which are more effective then social bookmarking and produces more results in terms of engagement as compared to social bookmarking.
Social bookmarking help us to get traffic but other tactics help us to get audience who really loves to read your content, share views. So, why bother for social bookmarking while we have major tactics.
BTW, Very informative post about social bookmarking. Thanks for sharing it. I just tweeted it. 🙂
Romy Singh recently posted…Just Do It: Six Steps to Achieve Your Goals
Hi Praveen… I’m the new visitor to your blog. Social bookmarking sites is very important one and it will very helpful to get backlinks to our sites.
Hi praveen,
Social Bookmarking is a must for every blogger. Not only it gives you back links in quantity but also gives you quality. Like stumbleupon, reddit, digg, these all sites are highly page ranked in the eyes of google. I dont think it’s time consuming as it only asks for a single click if you are logged into the respective social site. It can drive traffic as well. Alexa rank is somewhat determined by the sharing of your posts in sites like these. for me there are only pros that i can mention whole night long.
Nice article by the way. Glad I am here!