Tips On How To Use Del.icio.us For Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking has become quite popular in recent years. The idea is to keep tabs on information you find interesting and to share that with others. It works best if you build a large network of people who share similar interests. Here are a few tips to help you do that more effectively through del.icio.us:

1. Bookmark something every day – Don’t just do it haphazardly. To be effective in social bookmarking you have to be consistent. If you haven’t used your account in two or three months people will notice and they won’t add you to their network.
2. Add the one-click add-on to your browser – Whether you use Firefox or Internet Explorer, you can add an extension to your browser that allows you to add bookmarks with just one click without having to sign in to your account. This is a major time saver.
3. Don’t just bookmark your own websites – Most people will tell you not to bookmark your own sites at all. I think it’s OK to do this as long as that’s not all you bookmark. You can even tell people that a certain bookmark is your own website by making that note in the comments field. But if you bookmark other people’s stuff – news, blogs, websites you find interesting, and anything that you like – more often than you bookmark your own stuff then you’ll make a lot more friends.
4. Add at least one new friend every day – When you bookmark an item, del.icio.us will tell you how many other people have bookmarked the same item. Click on that link and you can see their comments. Find a comment by a user that you like? Visit their bookmarks page and take a look at their bookmarks. If they have several bookmarks that you like then you’ve found a good friend. At the top of the page, click where it says “add to your network.”
5. Delete people from your network who do not reciprocate – There might be instances where you’ll ignore this advice, but on the whole you want people in your network who are active users. An active user is someone who adds friends to their network. Give them a week or two to return the favor and if they don’t then drop them.
6. Be prolific in the use of tags – Use lots of tags. The more the better. Of course, they should be relevant to the item you are tagging. If you bookmark an item that discusses collecting seashells by the seashore, for instance, then you can tag it with the following tags: collecting, sea, seashell, seashore, beach, beach combing; and if the article is about a specific beach or location then add the geographic tags as well: Florida, Jacksonville, etc.
7. Spend 15-20 minutes per day bookmarking and networking – It doesn’t take long to build a solid network of active users and a good list of bookmarks. If you bookmark five items per day and add two friends to your network every day then after one month you will have 150 bookmarks and sixty friends. This is easy to do in 15 minutes.

Social bookmarking is a useful tool. Now that del.icio.us is owned by Yahoo it is pretty certain that the social site will stick around awhile. By adding links to your favorite sites you encourage others to share their interests with you. This builds link popularity and drives traffic to your favorite websites. Furthermore, if you don’t already have an account, setting one up takes all of five minutes.

If you desire more exposure for your business, I strongly encourage the use of del.icio.us. Scratch the backs of others and they’ll scratch yours.

Caveat: Increase your own blog’s exposure by using bookmarking sites to promote your blog posts. Blog Content Provider can do this for you. Ask us how.

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