Summary

Just as you probably have found yourself frequently bookmarking your favorite sites to your internet browser, social bookmarking is the process of bookmarking and categorizing your personal site preferences as well.  The difference is, social bookmarking allows you to share these preferences with other people online.

This invaluable tool can be used for research purposes, as a means for doctors, lawyers and other professionals to easily share pertinent information or files, or simply for friends and family to share links of mutual interest. Popular social bookmarking sites include, just naming  few:

• reddit.com   (Alexa Ranking 75)
• stumbleupon.com (Alexa Ranking 157)
• digg.com (Alexa Ranking: 489)
• del.icio.us / delicious.com (Alexa Ranking 1008)

I’ve listed them in order of popularity according to Alexa Rankings

Social Bookmarks in depth

Basically Social Bookmaking 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.  This gives the user a way to classify, rank and organize content using tags.

Social Bookmarking have a greater advantage over other forms of sharing / traffic generation as people chose to share.  They also chose how to bookmark and categorize, instead of relying in a program to do it.   If you think about it, there is an implied quality, in something that someone took the time to set up.

Social Bookmakers read other people’s bookmarks and add them to their own if they like them.  There are also RSS feeds so people can see what others are tagging, which I think is really cool, and a textbook example of viral marketing.

It is essential you do two things

1. Write good content to share and someone once observed about delicious, that the top bookmarks were lists, “how tos”, technical articles and humor.
2. Give the users the means of sharing easily, see below Plugins

Reddit

Reddit is a great website for making people aware of new things that are occurring with your business /blog. Upload info and blog sites to Reddit in order to drive web traffic.  As they share more quality traffic will result and a lot more people will see what  you have to offer.  This will mean much better client communication and building dedicated clients and enhance your online visibility.   Fair way of  doing less in order to generate income online.

StumbleUpon

The key to StumbleUpon is that its users can share interesting Web content. When they find something they like online, they have a Web-based outlet through which they can let others know about the site. Other users can then view that content, through topic-orientated browsing or purposeful searching, and reciprocate the favor by sharing their own interesting finds.

Digg

Every link on Digg is submitted by participants of the Digg area. So if you are creating appealing content on your blog, as an example, and you have a Digg buttondigg button to permit the material to be shared then somebody reviewing the short article can “digg it.” This shares it on the Digg internet site where it can now acquire extra interest as other users see it and continuously share with their connections.  This is exactly how your article could become viral.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is a free service where thousands of people store their bookmarks, this allows you to see what is trendy and what works.  Bloggers can encourage readers to add their posts, allowing greater reach for a blogger’s content.  During the time you comment to other blogs you can add the articles that interest you.

Other Social Bookmarking Sites

• Listible
• BlinkList
• BlogMarks

Here there is a 2013 list of Bookmarking sites

Free Plugins

Your blog or website have to have the means for your readers to share easily your content on those sites.

If you have a WordPress.org site my favorite plugins are:

• Shareahohic
• Sociable 

For non WP own hosting sites you could try: http://addtobookmarks.com/

My advice

Again is a question of time, my advice like I gave in my Social Media post, it is best to do one or two well, rather than be in all of them and spend too much time.
For your guidance I’ve listed the main 4 in order of traffic ranking.

Hoping that this is the year for your business / blog / website to grow.