This is Part 3 of Blogging Success Mindset post series. In part 3 post I’ll explain about social bookmarking. To explain it, I have listed some questions to be answered and to be discussed.
- What is social bookmarking
- Who is using social bookmarking
- How does social bookmarking work
- How will social bookmarking affecting education
- Why is social bookmarking important to internet marketing
- Is there a down side to social bookmarking
- What is the bottom line of social bookmarking
Above issues will be covered in this post
Please read part 1 and part 2 for more understanding BECAUSE this is part 3 which is the last part.
What is social bookmarking?
According to Wikipedia, social bookmarking is defined as: ” Social bookmarking is an activity performed over a computer network that allows users to save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others.
Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others – a personal knowledge management tool.”
Who is using social boomarking?
In a word…..everybody! Researches have found social bookmarking sites to be an invaluable tool as they conduct research and find the need to share information about research with their colleagues.
Professionals like doctors, lawyers and engineers are using social bookmarking services in record numbers.
But social bookmarking is far more than simply a tool for research. People from all walks of like are using social bookmarking.
Users a popular websites like Facebook and Twitter have found that it is very easy to share information about websites that they find to be of mutual interest.
Networks of friends can be set up so that whenever a new posting is made to a social networking site other members of the network are notified immediately by RSS feed.
With all of this instant communication happening, you can see why those who are involved in internet marketing are very much in touch with social bookmarking sites.
These innovative marketers join such sites as Facebook or Twitter and while they are having a lot of fun, they are also selling their products and services.
They are getting visitors to their websites. They are improving their pagerank. They have found that social bookmarking is one of the very best search engine optimization tools that have come along in a very long time.
How does social bookmarking work?
The basic concept of Web 2.0 is that it is user-directed and social bookmarking is a part of Web 2.0 so it is, of course, user directed. Social bookmarking is a way of organizing and categorizing information with the use of ‘tags’.
Tags are user generated and are based upon keywords that identify the bookmark so this is a true user-directed way that information is organized and categorized.
When a bookmarked site is clicked on, the social bookmarking site identifies the person who created the bookmark and provides access to other sites that the same user has bookmarked.
Now, the person who created the bookmark and the tag is also provided information about how many times the link has been clicked on as well as who clicked on it.
This system makes it very easy for the like-minded people to make social connections and to identify others who have the same interest. Over time a community of users develops.
As a community of users develops, they sometimes develop a very unique set of keywords that define resources of common interest.
How will social bookmarking impact the web?
Actually it is pretty clear right now that social bookmarking is having a huge impact on the way that information is being classified, categorized, stored and exchanged.
It is possible to believe that in the future the impact will be ever even stronger. Web 1.0 was static but web 2.0 is fluid. The face is ever changing.
The technology that social bookmarking is based upon is really rather simple…There isn’t anything complex about it. It is user friendly. The level of knowledge need to gain huge benefits from social bookmarking is low.
People do not have to be computer gurus to make use of the technology at all. The technology is so simple and the system is so easy to use that it will continue to grow in popularity into the foreseeable future.
Because of this inevitable growth of social bookmarking and the easily used tagging of such things as multimedia files, it may well be just as inevitable that the design and function of databases themselves will also change drastically.
They may have to change just to be able to accommodate this new way of managing information.
How is social bookmarking affection education?
Teaching and learning are two components of education. The objective of transferring information and knowledge from one person to another person or a group of persons is being greatly affected by social bookmarking.
The exchange of information and the coming together of like-minded individuals into loosely knitted online communities are both are impacting education as a whole.
For so many centuries suffered up communication. Today the internet itself greatly speed up communication and social bookmarking has doubled that speed in the last few years.
Social bookmarking has created a method whereby bibliographies, papers, etc can be easily and quickly shared and accessed by multiple people at the same time. These same resources can be altered or edited in real time.
Why is social bookmarking important to internet marketing?
There are several ways in which social bookmarking is having an affect on internet marketing. It would be hard to determine just which effect is having the greatest impact.
The ability to create tags are using keywords which social bookmarking sites allow is very attractive to internet to internet marketers.
It didn’t take the internet marketing community long to figure out that these links and the backlinks that are created when the links are added to other favorites lists cause search engine spiders to visit websites and that pagerank can be dramatically increased along with the number of visitors to a website.
The more visitors, as any internet marketer worth his salt knows, means more sales of products and services.
So social bookmarking sites provide free advertisement, increase the number of visitors to a website and are a great search engine optimization tool to boot.
Another asset that internet marketers quickly became aware of that social bookmarking sites provide is that they are great research tools in and of themselves.
Is there a down side to social bookmarking?
If there is an up-side, you can bet there is always a down-side for anything and everything and social bookmarking is not the exception to that rule.
The very fact that social bookmarking is user driven is one of the potential down sides of it. Users are not professionals. Users are just people and the ability to use social bookmarking site for fun as well as for profit does not require a great deal of technical knowledge.
As a matter of fact, it requires almost none. And because users are ‘amateurs’, keywords used in tags are not consistent. The information is sometimes scattered and keywords that seem logical to amateurs don’t necessarily lead to related topics.
Yet another potential down-side and one that is happening more and more frequently is that users are abusing the system. Since it is a user driven system it is more susceptible to abuse and misuse.
There are spammers out there that are bookmarking the same site multiple times.
The idea, of course, is that the more times the link appears the better the search engine spiders like it and the more chances the link to be clicked on and the more chances it is that the site will be visited.
More visitors always equal more sales of products and services.
What is the bottom line of social bookmarking?
The bottom line is that social bookmarking is here and it is here to stay. People are using social bookmarking sites to make social connections as well as to form communities.
From the internet marketing point of view, social bookmarking is a tool that can be used to increase search engine optimization, the number of website visitors and ultimately increase sales but there is also the possibility of the system being abused.
Like everything else….the more social bookmarking is abused, the less effective it will become.
Internet marketers are learning that they can have lot of fun by using sites like Facebook and social bookmarking sites and make a lot of money in the process. It’s what is known as a win win situation and one that internet marketers are flocking to in droves.
Final Thought
Congratulations because you manage to read all 3 parts. This is the last part. Hopefully, you can get some benefits from 3 parts I wrote. Bloggers need a community to grow and social bookmarking does has that kind of community.
If you want your blog to be well known you have to find the community which where your potential readers are.
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Thanks for the post .. I got some new information regaiding social bookmarking. especially the reason for the social bookmarking impact on web ..
Your welcome. Hope we will use the harness of social bookmarking sites.
Hi Farzeen, first I congrats you for your new nice theme.
I have read your all part on blogging superstar, you have nicely explained everything that required for become one successful blogger.
Thanks Chandan. One of the reasons I try to make a great content is I have a reader like you. Very consistent reading my post. Thanks again
You’ve done good article here…People will know the important of social bookmarking =)
erk..great article. It’s really loooong articles..
Nice article and thanks for sharing here
Your welcome. Fell free to read the post series..
Great written…
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