social bookmark
Titus Hoskins asked:

Copyright (c) 2007 Titus Hoskins

Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportunity to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online marketing or site.

Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?

First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective.

In case you haven't noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon… basically these sites are driven by their users - that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss.

These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining.

But is this social bookmark traffic useful?

Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketing efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a sites like Digg or Stumbleupon?

As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I could use these sites from an online marketer's advantage; i.e. how can they help me create more online income.

Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportunity to really study these sites.

Of course, nothing happens without a reason… I did actually court these social bookmark sites by placing the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.

But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of these sites can drive 100,000's of visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server and crash it.

So be warned; if you're actively promoting to these social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.

In my case, it didn't crash my servers but unfortunately, the page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.

But still I am not one to waste an opportunity, so I put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic.

It pointed out some very interesting factors about this bookmark traffic.

Most of this traffic will:

* simply bounce back

* very few visitors will spend much time on your site

* very few visitors will even venture into your site

* very few will sign-up to your newsletter

* very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels

(The unknown variable here being the content on your site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)

Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites, it's very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last a few days… until your item is moved back from the front page.

These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone within seconds, never to be seen again. A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.

Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant, they grab the content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and surf on to the next item.

This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.

It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to my site.

So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the search engines over any other source of traffic.

So the question remains - is social bookmark traffic useless?

First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere.

Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it's game over.

The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search, visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what you're offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who will consider your offer, real your information, maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.

Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some saving graces.

Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand your site or business. It can get the word out about your site. Start a buzz.

If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.

These social sites are good for another reason; getting your links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can't hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although it has never been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar embedded - your site's traffic rank will increase. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa's traffic rankings are not a true picture of the web's traffic but it's a good measuring stick, nonetheless.

Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic voting structure… sites give a vote by linking to your content; wouldn't it also be reasonable to assume more traffic means more votes. So wouldn't getting a lot of traffic or being featured on a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content to the front be the ultimate vote.

One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded me, all traffic from these social media sites can't be judged with the one brush.

This whole experience also pointed out another important factor; it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general web surfer or t
he mainstream web. All my sites and content were planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.

If I or anyone wanted to take advantage of this social media traffic, you would have to create your site/content to appeal to these surfers and then somehow draw them into your marketing funnels. I don't know if the majority of the users of these bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not very likely, the nature of the beast. But it would largely depend on what you're offering on your site and how well it is suited to these users.

So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.

Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before making any final judgments.

For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much ado about nothing.

Create a video blog

- Hakcipta Terpelihara Masrule Hamid - Website. Sebarang penggunaan dalam tulisan ini perlu mendapatkan kebenaran daripada penulis terlebih dahulu. -

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  • Cheating On Social Bookmarking!
  • social bookmark
    Zaak OConan asked:

    You have probably heard a lot about social bookmarking lately. Social bookmarking is an online tool that allows anyone to easily bookmark their favorite sites into an online archive. As a matter of fact, you can spend all your time crawling the web today just to find out what Social Bookmarking is all about. Well, not here. I am giving you this information. I have done all the research on Internet Marketing and found this to be a super way to get more traffic to your site. The best news is, it's 100% FREE!

    To detail all of the available features at these social bookmarking sites is well beyond the scope of this article - It would require a small ebook. With social bookmarking you can tag the site with "clothing" or "fashion" or "footwear" for example and when you select any of these tags in your own bookmarking area the site will be listed accurately!. Human/Real people have decided to save (tag/bookmark) the sites; not robots.

    There are many different types of online communities that you can join and most will help you get a certain amount of traffic to your site. Social bookmarking is all about users adding their bookmarks onto websites so that they can then share them with other users that are signed up to that particular website. Some sites such as Blinklist allow you to keep bookmarks private - this makes those sites a good permanent replacement for offline bookmarks. After all. Put Social Bookmarking on Full Autopilot!

    In addition. Basically Social Bookmarketing sites allow users to create a set of content bookmarks. These bookmarks are organized by tags which are (usually) arbitrary words or phrases the user can assign to content. Check out http://www.trafficwebsecrets.com/socialbookmarking/bookmarking_demon.html.

    Just click on the cloud to see all the pages tagged with a particular label. I personally have hundreds of gigabytes of my own information and information of others connected to my notebook and socially bookmarked online. Tagging your sites is particularly useful when your browser based bookmarks have become unwieldy and totally unmanageable. By being added to the bookmark site, you have linked or pointed to your site from the bookmark site. Put Social Bookmarking on Autopilot!

    Website content

    - Hakcipta Terpelihara Masrule Hamid - Website. Sebarang penggunaan dalam tulisan ini perlu mendapatkan kebenaran daripada penulis terlebih dahulu. -

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  • Best Social Bookmarking Sites for Online Marketers
  • social bookmark
    Vanessa Arellano Doctor asked:

    Social bookmarking is one of the best ways of improving your online business’ profitability. It is a tool that allows online business owners to market the content of their website or Web page by exposing it to a lot of different Internet users out there, especially to those who are interested in the same subject or topic that their site is offering.

    Different online businesses using social bookmarking as their marketing tool will be able to direct traffic to their website or Web page, thereby increasing the site’s traffic, and chances of increasing its sales and profit. Using social bookmarking by registering with social bookmarking sites is especially helpful to those sites which are not known to a lot of Internet users.

    SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITE’S BENEFIT

    Basically, social bookmarking sites allows its users to save and share their bookmarked sites with others, as well as make it easier for these users to find sites and pages that have similar content to what they are searching for. These social bookmarking sites also help increase your website or Web page search engine ranking through the boost in potential traffic resulting from links that are spidered to different social bookmarking sites to your site.

    Although most social bookmarking sites build links to other users by giving other people the opportunity to visit your website, to vote on it, and even buy whatever it is that you are selling, there are other social bookmarking sites that gives a little something extra for online marketers to make social bookmarking, as well as online marketing, a whole lot easier for them. These are what some of the best social bookmarking sites do for your online business.

    BEST SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES

    Del.icio.us, as well as Digg, are two of those social bookmarking sites that most Internet users would like to use, especially since these particular sites make categorizing websites and Web pages that have a content that interests you very easy and convenient. These allow you to find your saved websites or Web pages again through the use of ‘tags’ that contains keywords or phrases that describes the website or Web page and its content, making it easier to find since these sites are saved in different categories. Not only this, but these two also allow your site’s visitors to comment on your bookmarked sites and content, as well as share your lists of bookmarks with others, including your comments. Plus, Del.icio.us social bookmarking site uses a desktop based tool called Delicioso, which basically allows its users to operate similar to onlywire, making it easier to submit bookmarks to other sites in one shot.

    Aside from these two, online marketers will also benefit from using other sites for different purposes, especially for acquiring tools that will help their online business thrive. Some of these tools from other sites will offer you with information that will help you improve your online business by increasing its generated traffic. Others help you optimize your search engine rankings, maintain your online business’ credibility, increase your Web content’s exposure, as well as teach you how to launch a viral marketing campaign to increase your profit.

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    http://wirefan.com

    Content - Members-Only Content for WordPress

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  • Social Bookmarking Is An Easy Way To Increase Profits, Traffic, And Links
  • social bookmark
    Doug Smith asked:

    A bookmark is an item that you place into a paper book to mark the place where you stopped reading. This bookmark allows you to easily return to the exact spot you were before, without having to memorize the page number.

    An online bookmark serves the same purpose. When you find an internet site you want to mark for later viewing, or that you'll want to find again, you tell your browser to set a bookmark. These are also called favorites. This bookmark allows you to return exactly to the same site again and again, without ever having to memorize the link.

    What Is Social Bookmarking

    You've been using social bookmarking, even if you didn't know it! When you forward a funny e-mail joke or picture to a friend, that's a form of social bookmarking. You are socially sharing a bookmark to a website with a friend. That gives your friends exposure to websites they might never find on their own. They do the same for you when they send these informal social bookmarks to you.

    Social Bookmarking Sites

    Social bookmarking sites began as a way for web surfers to upload and save their personal browser bookmarks online. That way, web visitors are not limited to their own computers. By saving their personal social bookmarks online, they can access them from any computer.

    The social aspect of social bookmarking is that everyone else saving their personal social bookmarks to these online sites can see and use everyone else's bookmarks! The social bookmarking site essentially becomes a giant collection of bookmarks contributed by many users.

    Social Bookmarking Tags

    Social bookmarking sites are built and organized by humans. However, there needs to be some kind of organization. Humans provide that too. Each social bookmark is submitted with one or more tags. A tag is nothing more than a keyword that describes the site being submitted.

    If you visit a social bookmarking website looking for information on cars, you might search for the words "car," "cars," or "automobiles." The bookmarks with those tags will be shown in the search results. If you are looking for a specific type of car such as a Ferrari, bookmarks tagged with the word "Ferrari" will be shown. It's that easy!

    Making Money With Social Bookmarking

    If you have a website that sells a product or service, why not submit that site to the major social bookmarking sites? When you submit your internet marketing site to social bookmarking sites, along with appropriate bookmarking tags, you are tapping into a huge, extremely targeted group of people looking for information - your information!

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  • Social Bookmarking And/or Social Networking - Which is Better for Your Internet Marketing Start-up?
  • social bookmark
    David Hurley asked:

    e new to Internet marketing you might not be aware of how much social marketing sites can do to boost the traffic coming to your Internet marketing start-up business. You may not even be aware of what social networking and social bookmarking sites are, or how to utilize them.

    Sure, social sites give you a lot of interactivity and allow users to personalize their sites, compile a list of favourite links, videos, music, photos, documents and share it all with friends and visitors, but how exactly does that help you develop your Internet marketing start-up business?

    Above all, you should be aware that social media marketing sites fall into two basic categories, bookmarking sites and networking sites, so you need to be clear about what you want to do?

    Social Bookmarking Sites

    Social bookmarking sites allow you to build and organize your favourite links (i.e. bookmarks) AND you can choose to restrict them to selected friends or make them public and share them with everybody on the Internet.

    The big advantage of social bookmarking is that your favourite links are no longer tied to one specific browser accessible from just one computer in one location.

    Social bookmarking services enable users to save bookmarks on a remote web server which can be accessed anywhere where there is an online connection.

    Social bookmarking sites usually categorize links with a "tagging" system which allows users to choose keywords with which to "tag" their bookmarks. Sites can then be retrieved via the tags.

    You may invite visitors to bookmark your posts. You can do this by adding a button to your page that links through to Stumbleupon, or Digg, or TwitThis and so on.

    However, there are so many social bookmarking services, that if you added all their buttons you'd end up with more buttons than content on your page! Instead, use a service like addthis.com, which places one button on your site for a wide range of social bookmarking sites.

    Social Networking Sites

    Social networking sites offer a convenient method of connecting with people who share similar interests to you.

    Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to post your advertisements and promote your products, as long as you do not simply (and stupidly) send out spam. Traffic will build on any site that has original, good quality, regularly updated content.

    MySpace or Facebook?

    It has recently been noised abroad that MySpace is no good for Internet marketing, but that is not so. It was simply a case of too many Internet marketers not knowing who their audience was.

    The point is that MySpace tends to attract a younger age bracket with less money to spend than does Facebook. Get to know the sites and adapt your content to each one, don't simply post the same stuff to both.

    One other reason why social networking sites are sometimes dismissed as not being any good for business is that some people do little more than set up a profile. Then they get stuck, don't know what to do, do nothing. Merely being there is not enough! Find ways to communicate with the people who are there on their terms, not yours.

    Go careful, though, that you don't go overboard with the crazy applications and the "late night partying confessions" stuff if it is not the sort of thing you want your clients to see!

    Whereas social bookmarking sites are simply sites for you to collect and organize your favourite links, social networking sites, being more sociable, require more time and regular fresh content updates. With social networking sites you have to work on your image!

    Search Engines Love Web 2:0!

    Another reason why Internet marketers should build a presence on both social bookmarking and social networking sites is because search engines LOVE them!

    Links posted on such sites are regularly followed by search engine spiders. So, by building up your links on these sites, your website backlinks will grow, and so will your search engine rankings, which is what you need if your Internet marketing start-up is to survive, grow and thrive.

    Website content

    - Hakcipta Terpelihara Masrule Hamid - Website. Sebarang penggunaan dalam tulisan ini perlu mendapatkan kebenaran daripada penulis terlebih dahulu. -

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  • What is Social Bookmarking and How Can it Help my Website?
  • social bookmark
    Liane Bate asked:

    Social bookmarking has been around for a couple of years, but for me, it's a whole new concept as I learn more and more about internet marketing and how best to get traffic to my site and blog. It is a process that is becoming more and more popular as a means of generating traffic and page rank, so it's something I want to get started with right away! Most of us who own a PC know that when we come across a website that we like, we can add that site to our list of favorites or bookmark it for our own future use. Social bookmarking takes that organizational process a step further by making public the list of sites you frequent. This article will discuss what social bookmarking really is, its advantages, and how it can help your website.

    What is social bookmarking? As mentioned above, social bookmarking is a system of organizing websites that you want to re-visit, but rather than bookmarking them in a folder on your computer, you bookmark them on a special social bookmarking website. If you do a Google search for "social bookmarking websites" you will find a list of the top social bookmarking sites that you can join to add your favorite sites to. The way you go about this is to use keywords that represent your favorite site's content, or in other words, you "tag" it. You can then make your entries public or private. The ones that you make public can be seen by anyone who visits the social bookmarking sites and looks up the keywords you used to describe your bookmarked sites. The public display will also show who created the bookmark, when, and how popular those keywords are.

    There are many advantages of using social bookmarking as opposed to simply bookmarking. By making your list of popular sites public, you have the ability to share information with others who are looking for the same type of information. They will be able to find a list of sites that display exactly what they want just by logging into a social bookmarking site and typing in some relevant keywords. This is a tremendous way of helping others find useful information, or sharing resources with a group of people. For example, a group of network marketers may want information on prospecting, so they would log in, type in "prospecting" and receive a list of bookmarked sites on "prospecting", and other related topics, just like that! Not only will you find links to sites that you are interested in, but you can find out who has bookmarked your own site and how popular it is. Also, if you want to contact others who are interested in the same topics and sites as you, or know more about it than you, you can easily make a new connection with someone! How handy is that?

    Aside from the benefits of resource sharing, social bookmarking can help generate traffic to your site and blog. You can set up your blog to link to your favorite tagged sites, and allow your blog visitors to easily bookmark your site. This will result in more traffic, possibly a better Google Page Rank, and potentially more sales! Some of the social bookmarking sites that you join allow you to add your bookmarks to your blog. In this way, your blog can be updated with tags and links on a daily basis! If you know how important it is to update your blog frequently to get the search engine spiders and traffic over to your site, then you will appreciate this feature! Not only that, but you can use your social bookmarking sites to post links to your website, thereby increasing your traffic and PR with a backlink from authority sites!

    I have yet to discover the disadvantages of social bookmarking, but its advantages, as listed above, are enough to get me excited about this relatively new way of marketing my website and blog! I hope you are excited too, and will take action to improve your websites and blogs! You never know, you may even connect with an expert in your specialty area that can help you achieve your goals and dreams!

    Create a video blog

    - Hakcipta Terpelihara Masrule Hamid - Website. Sebarang penggunaan dalam tulisan ini perlu mendapatkan kebenaran daripada penulis terlebih dahulu. -

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