I’ve been a bad little social whore.   With the number of social sites popping up each week, I’ve been pondering how one might start using these sites to help promote your own site without becoming buried by the sheer number of them.  In this post, I’m speaking directly to those sites that allow you to place a “bookmark” on them. 

A bookmark is really no different than you saving a favorite in your browser, except for the fact that they are either public or private, and Google and other search engines can find them.  Thus increasing the the number of links you have pointing to your site. 

I’ve found a site that will help save you time while bookmarking your links to a number of the social sites out there.  You’ll still need to spend the time to set up your accounts there, but the end results are going to be worth your time.

Why use a social bookmarking site?

In case you are wondering why you might want to use these sites, there are a number of responses to that.  First, you know you need links on external sites that point to your site, right?  This handles that. 

Secondly, having links to your primary domain is nice.  Having links to specific articles and posts is even better.  This is known as deep-linking.  This will help you place those links too. 

Thirdly, it’s yet another way of finding more people to visit your blog or web site.  As some of these sites provide a “friending” mechanism, you can thusly create a following on them to help bring more eyeballs to your site.

Follow the Rules

Each one of the social bookmarking sites listed below acts and behaves in their own way.  They each have their own nuances and community rules.  You should also take the time to become familiar with each one you intend to use on a regular basis.  No need to go and get banned from any because you didn’t know the rules, right?

Update!  Beware of Red Flagging

It has just come to my attention that Google and perhaps some other search engines look for excessive bookmarking and will red flag a site that appears to be abusing social networking for their own gain.  My advice is to use some common sense when bookmarking your own sites and blog posts.  The best way is still to get your visitors to do your bookmarking for you!

Use Social Submitter to speed things up

As one might imagine, there has been a need for a tool to help save people time in this regard.  No one wants to spend the time creating all these backlinks by hand if they can avoid it! There are tools and what-not for marketing a web page or site that exist out there, you just need to find them.  SocialMarker.com is nothing but extraordinary in the way it saves you time spreading your own link love across the Internet.

SocialMarker InterfaceSocialMarker allows you to enter the title, url, description and tags for a post and then visit 48 different social book-marking sites to post a blurb about your post.  Just hit submit and you’re moving along to the first site.

The first time through, you’ll need to create an account on those sites that you don’t already have an account, and that can take a little time.  Once you have an account on each one though, you’re rolling.  I took the time to establish an account with each and every social bookmark site they had listed, 48 of them.  I was able to spread links to 5 different posts of mine to 48 sites within the scope of 2 hours once I was rolling.

If you happen to want to spread some links around the Internet to some quality, high PR sites, you need to give SocialMarker a look.

The Supported Sites

Some Observations

I don’t normally Stumble my own stuff, so I just click next when that site comes up in the queue.  I also skip the YuppMarks, and HealthRanker, since they don’t look applicable to my blog.  You just need to go through it, and decide for yourself which ones you want to sign up with and may be beneficial to you and/or your site. 

When using SocialMarker, you should check to make sure the values that are being submitted are what you expect.  Some of them look back at your blog and grab from there instead of what you supply into the SocialMarker interface.

Also, some are specific to a particular niche.  Like Health Ranker, it appears to be primarily medical, so I skip that one too.

For those that set off to create accounts on these services, may I also suggest that you take a little time to dress up your profile there.  You can supply your homepage on some, and define an avatar too.  And don’t forget, while your there, add me as a friend and we’ll help each other grow.

Be A Friend?

I’m ‘waynejohn’ on most of these services (some won’t allow you to specify a username).  If you participate in any of them, why not add me as a friend there if you are also on there?  If you have any problems finding me, just let me know on my contact form, or simply leave a comment below.

Do you know of any social bookmarking sites that are not in the above list?  Leave a comment and tell us about it.