Networking Information

By Theresa Cahill

The word is out that social bookmarking is the thing, that special flavor of the month (or year or decade?), but only by taking it in small steps have I been able to figure out some of its ins and outs.

The long and short of social booking is, it is a way to save your Favorites folder (or portions thereof) online. This means no matter where in the world you happen to be, as long as you've got a connection to the internet, you just log into your social bookmarking account and voila! at your fingertips are all of the important urls you might find yourself needing - but without access to - since your computer is sitting home and you're not.

Now that is a good idea! Saves uploading a bunch of urls to your domain, or remembering to send them to your Aunt Sally before you visit, on the off chance you'll need to remember that special something while you're away.

(By the by, it's also a quick way to actually use your home computer. I don't know about you, but my Favorites folder is virtually useless at this point.)

But, there's even more to social bookmarking then easy access. You can also share this information with others. Your friends, family, co-workers, subscribers, whoever, can easily see what you've been uncovering on the web and decide, at that point, if it's something so useful and/or interesting that they, too, would like to access it easily through their own social bookmarking account.

The logical step from there (since I'm assuming that you are reading this because you, too, are interested in new ways to market on the net) is to find a way to tie bookmarking to your service and/or website.

If this is all new to you, too, head here: http://del.icio.us/ This is a very popular social bookmarking service.

You'll see numerous urls listed on their main page, and since we're just getting the hang of this (assuming you don't already have an account and are way ahead of my learning curve level), let's practice :)

Beside each of these web page entries are the faint words "save this."

Put your mouse over the "save this" and click. If you have an existing del.icio.us account, it will take you to the log in page for your account (for you smart ones!). If you don't have an account yet, you'll be given the opportunity to create one now.

After creating your account and logging in, you'll see an area on your screen where the url you've chosen to bookmark is awaiting your description and/or notes and/or tags.

For our purpose, initially bookmarking our first entry, you need not worry about this too much at this time. Give it a description and/or tag that will make sense to you. You can delete it later.

Hit the save button and voila! You've got the beginnings of your social bookmarking!

At this point, under your "settings" area (upper right hand of screen in del.icio.us) you can do any number of things. Importing your current Favorites folder (or portions thereof) is available. Explore!

Now that you're on the road to social bookmarking comes the fun part... telling others what you're doing.

If you have a website, you can easily add (assuming you do your own webmastering or know the rudiments of copying and pasting) a "save this page" to any and all of your important webpages within your site. Use the "help" link, then read "For Publishers" under the Feeds and Tools section. That's where you'll find the code.

In addition, you'll want to share you're newly found method of communication with others. Get your family, friends, subscribers, mailing list involved in bookmarking your small chunk (del.icio.us listing) of the social bookmarking web.

Then, make use of it! Don't just load it up with junk. If you're a writer and find interesting writer's resources add them to your account. If you're a news junkie and track particular newsworthy items, post those!

As you get more and more familiar with social bookmarking, you'll understand the importance of "tagging" your information correctly. According to del.icio.us, your page goes on the front page (I've yet to see any of mine though) and also is filed away under sub-indexing using those all-important tags.

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A LAYMAN'S EXPLANATION OF TAGS:

If you're just bookmarking stuff online for yourself, no worries, but tags are critical to your marketing social bookmarking success.

Tags are sort of like mini meta desciptions. Tags cannot be inserted into a regular html page (don't bother trying to put them on your website, they won't do anything but take up space).

Tags are basically equal to metas and content. However, tags are used in blogs and rss feeds. They are the trigger words for online feeds to categorize (more or less) what it is you're writing about and posting. Obviously tying your words to popular tags will be very important.

http://del.icio.us/tag/ is a huge list of popular and not so popular currently used tags. My advice would be to be sure you've got the Google toolbar installed. As you click on some tags, check the page ranking (little green bar) on your Google toolbar. That will help you see how popular (or not) that particular "tag" is... and remember you don't have to "follow the crowd." You can choose tags "not so popular." Then, when others pick up on those tags, you're already ahead of the game :)

In the future, give your tags some very serious thought! Your tags will brand your own posted entries.

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I'll admit, I've only just scratched the surface so far. I don't claim to be an expert (that's obvious), but I do know that with further education and implementation, social bookmarking as a marketing tool is definitely worth the effort.

And... like all new things takes a bit of fumbling around before we get it right.

So ahead! Get started! See where it leads you - the next brainstorm idea is only a few minutes (okay maybe hours or days) away! :)

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