Starting a Social Bookmarking Network: Solutions for Expanding Your Brand
Andreea Townsend
If you’re having trouble attracting new customers, maybe you need to rethink your marketing approach. Becoming a trusted source and leader in your industry is one way to attract new business. Consider social bookmarking. Here is how you can use it to help your business.Social bookmarking in general terms is a way for web surfers to save and share a website they find interesting. For ecommerce businesses want their pages (website and offsite article pages) bookmarked. One way to increase that is to participate in social bookmarking, making it easier for your potential customers to find you by posting relevant information (that include links back to your website).
If you’re going to approach any aspect in business, you should always have a strategy. Consider a social bookmarking strategy in conjunction with all your other marketing efforts. Some would consider social media marketing to be fairly new, but really, it’s just a newer version of what small businesses have always done. The difference is that you use your online voice to broadcast your messages and industry info using multiple tools. The benefits include link building to enhance your website, brand exposure, and providing a more hands on approach to customer services. If you’re a newcomer to ecommerce business and don’t have a website, but like the idea of social bookmarking, you can use a free website builder to create a site. Once you have that, you can broadcast away and watch your website traffic increase.
Rules of Social BookmarkingAs with all marketing, tools can be used or abused. So effective social bookmarking comes with a few, let’s say, “rules” or rather “suggestions”. Following these will help you make the best use of your time and maximize your marketing impact.
Have a clear goal. People sometimes engage in social bookmarking without a goal, and they waste their time. A clear goal will help you stick to your strategy and ultimately increase your profits.
Adhere to your strategy, but leave room for growth. You need a strategy that allows you to be flexible so you can change subjects easily and dedicate more time as the situation requires. You may have allotted x number of hours for a campaign, but it really requires more time. That’s okay and it’s actually expected. Your strategy should include a selection of general topics, flexible timelines and a friending/following policy. For example, you don’t want to follow everyone who follows you…think quality vs. quantity.
Know your target audience. This is easy right? Of course, you should know whom you’re trying to target. Otherwise, what’s the point? You’d be surprised how often this gets overlooked. People think they can just post on a subject. But they’re not using their time wisely. It’s best to post to attract interaction, including valuable, informative pieces on relevant topics. Remember, you want to attract ecommerce business from your ideal buyers. Once you know who that is, you can find and bookmark articles with your incisive observations, as you address your ideal readers.
Listen. This is rare in many areas of life, but it’s such a powerful tool. Take the time to see what others are posting before you even begin posting yourself. Observe. This will help you do a better job of posting appropriately.
Be relevant. You don’t want to post articles just because you think it will help you. Read the article thoroughly and post it only if you think it aligns with your strategy. Get involved, care about what you read, and only post what truly matters to you and the community that is your industry niche.
Which social bookmarking sites to useYou’ll use social bookmarking sites that work for you. It depends on how public you want to be with your posts. Remember, the whole point is to drive traffic to your website, possibly connect with others, and build a positive presence online. The most popular social bookmarking sites are Twitter® and Facebook®. These heavy lifters can spread a message in seconds. If you want the biggest impact for your team, this is where you should start. Other good, smaller sites include Stumbleupon®, Digg®, Diigo, and Delicious.
If you want to start on a quieter note, there are hundreds of social bookmarking sites. Good sources to find them are SociaPoster and Ping.fm. SocialPoster lists dozens of sites and tells you their Google PageRank. The more powerful ones are above PageRank 6. SocialPoster also shows you the DoFollow sties. This means that when you put your link on the site, Google search engines will be able to move from the link to your website. This is what you want. If a link is “nofollow,” it won’t help you in the search engines. Both SocialPoster and Ping.fm will allow you to make multiple posts fairly quickly and easily. All you have to do is paste in the URL, title, and tags (keywords). But not to leave you hanging, Folkd, Fark, and Simpy are easy to use, albeit smaller social bookmarking websites (things change though, so small today might be huge next year.)
Setting up profilesYou may think this is optional, but it is actually critical to online marketing success. If you’re going to take the time to search and post bookmarks, you need to take the time to create a profile. Why? First, as a rule of thumb, if you attach your name anywhere online (especially as a business), you should create a profile to advance your networking objectives and to protect your online rep. You can place links back to your website and use keywords (both help with SEO). Second, a nice profile builds credibility. Readers will see that you’re a real person, not a “bot” creating spam. So, fill in as much information as you feel is relevant and make sure you upload a flattering picture that promotes you as an approachable, believable person. By the way, it’s not wise to use your company logo as a substitute for your friendly face. People want interaction and communication with “real” people, not companies spreading their messages. Keep this in mind as well as you write your posts as well. If your posts sound too salesy or too academic, the reader will click away.
Posting ideasThe items you choose to post should be current. So, if you’re doing a search in Google®, click on “latest.” If you don’t see much, keep going back. It’s best not to use an item that is more than 2 days old. You want to post information that will be new to your audience. Another idea is to search Twitter® on your focus topics. Since Twitter® content is typically the latest, you can search to find relevant posts for and from your target audience. Twitter® is also a great place for friending.
InteractingThis gets by a lot of big companies, but you’ll know better: You are a real person so you should act like a real person online. People are leery of spammers. So instead of just going through related topics and posting lots of links, interact and be active on social bookmarking sites. Find your target audience and re-post some of their posts (if they’re good). “Follow” them or add them to your network. Make comments on their posts. If they like you, they may follow you back.
One misconception, however, is that the more followers you have, the better. This is not true. You want quality followers that will click on your profile, see a link to website, and become a lead, if not a sale. Some out there do follow just to get others to follow. It’s kind of like “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” mentality. You don’t want hidden agendas. Rather, you want a following of legitimate lead opportunities, who care about the messages your posting. And you in return should only follow those who post relevant information on products or services that interest you. If someone follows you and it’s mutual, meaning you both have something to gain from each other, then follow them back. But if their posts are completely off target from yours, then maybe it’s not a good idea. Some think that they’ll increase their social media rankings if they have a high volume of followers. But what they miss is that influence-the quality of the message and how others respond (retweeting or starting a conversation with replies) is measured too.
Keep in mind…Social bookmarking: It’s a powerful tool for interacting with others. It helps you build a network, and sometimes a following. Which leads us to a final point: If you’re out there busy being social, remember that your house should be in order. Your blog or website should be in good shape, ready for your community to stop in and chat -and possibly buy. If you built your own site with software or using free website builder tools and templates, look it over and make sure it’s up ready for company. Are there widgets that came with your free website builder or blog that you can use for social bookmarking? Perfect! Use them. If you hired someone to create and maintain your site, ask them about site updates, improvements for “searchability” and more.
Social media/social bookmarking can seem like a big unknown, but it’s pretty simple. Once you break it down, it’s not that complicated. It just takes communication, something we do all the time.
Andreea Townsend is a copywriter for Network Solutions®, a champion for small businesses, providing tools and services to help business owners succeed. Domain name registration pioneer Network Solutions now offers online marketing, Pay Per Click, Web design services, DIY websites that include a free website builder and more.
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