10 Golden Rules of Social Bookmarking

By David Leonhardt

If you have a website, you should be social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is the process of saving a webpage in a place where other people can see it (that’s the “social” part) and in many cases others vote on your submissions.

Why you should do this for your website is obvious. The more opportunities to share your web pages with others, the more visitors you will have. The more places you post links to your content, the better your website will rank in the search engines. The benefits are strongest when your material is voted up to the home page; many more people see the material and on many social bookmarking websites your link becomes DoFollow only once the membership have voted it “popular.”

How you should do social bookmarking is quite another thing, and I see people being burned in the process every day. People who don’t take the time to understand what social bookmarking is all about will at best have their submissions removed and at worst have their account and even their website banned. Here are the ten golden rules. With these in hand, you are unlikely to be burned and, with a little effort, you stand a great chance of reaping some substantial rewards.

1. GIVE. This is very simple. Just as in every situation in life, you have to give first before people will want to give to you. If you want others to help you promote your submissions, take time to support theirs. Vote for theirs. Comment on theirs. Favourite and share theirs. If you have not already figured out that this is the number one rule in networking, in personal relationships, in community involvement, in office politics, in…in…everything social (including social bookmarking), please retreat from the human race for a while until you figure it out.

2. LEARN THE TERRITORY. There is no list of golden rules that applies to every social bookmarking website. Each one is its own community and just as any two neighbourhoods are different, every two congregations are different and every two workplaces are different, so too are every two social bookmarking communities. For instance, if you submit your own material on Digg or Reddit, expect the community to thump you, to be voted down as a dirty rotten spammer. But you are only trying to promote your website? Sorry, that’s not what the site is for and the community does not want to be marketed to. You will have to find other ways than submitting your own pages. Tipd and MMO Social Network encourage you to submit your own material, and so the community is built of many self-promoters. Go figure.

3. FOLLOW THE RULES. In addition to the unwritten rules – what the community will accept – there are some basic rules that distinguish various social bookmarking websites. Some are topical. Zoomit accepts only Canadian pages. Tipd accepts only financial pages. MMO Social Network accepts only online money-making pages, whereas Sphinn accepts only online marketing pages (careful…there is a lot of overlap between these two, but not completely). Other rules are process-specific.  TipBo accepts only tips and advice; don’t try submitting news or funny videos. Newsvine accepts only news stories; don’t try submitting tips or amusing photos. At Plime you risk losing your account just by submitting and content you have a self-interest in. Break these rules, and you are not only a dirty rotten spammer, but a dirty rotten former member.

4. SUBMIT QUALITY. Don’t submit everything you see or everything you write. Most people will grow tired of you and the fluff you submit and gloss right over your submissions. Pick the best to submit.

5.NO HOME PAGES. Don’t submit your home page. It’s like the cover of a magazine; you wouldn’t tell a friend to read the really cool magazine cover, but rather a really interesting magazine article. There are some social bookmarking websites where anything goes – so it pays to take the time to know the territory and the rules – but at most social bookmarking websites, a home page is not considered content.

6. SUBMIT FOR FRIENDS. This is a great way even to make friends – submit the content of other users. I find myself doing this at Tipd, reading a blog post of another Tipd member, liking it, and submitting it. It’s a great way to earn brownie points from others who will be happy to help promote your submissions, too.

7. BE LOYAL. One way to establish a strong network of friends who will vote for your submissions and even submit your material is to make sure to constantly watch for their submissions and vote for them/comment on them. This does NOT mean you have to vote for everything they submit, even if you disagree with it, but if you disagree with much of what they submit, perhaps they are not the right friends for you.

8. BE ACTIVE. The more active you are, the more you’ll be seen. The more you are seen, the more people will check out your submissions and the more votes you will get. Vote, but also take some time to comment.

9. COMMENT. Commenting make you stand out. Not everybody pays attention to who votes for what, but they do pay attention to comments you make. You don’t have to comment on every submission you vote for. I tend to comment when a) a thought occurs to me and I feel like speaking my mind, b) the submitter is someone whose attention I would like to capture or c) when I realize I have been less active of late. If the submission is the submitter’s own blog, leave a comment there, too. They will appreciate it. It’s OK to leave a dissenting opinion, just make sure to always be respectful and polite. Toilet mouths might attract attention, but not the kind you want.

10. CUSTOM AVATAR. Avatars are those little pictures of you or of some image that is the visual representation of your account. And the obvious golden rule that so many people overlook. A “default avatar” says “spammer” at worst, or simply fails to attract interest at best. When I scan submissions on a site, I look for topics of interest in the heading of each submission and I also watch for friends in the avatars. If you don’t have a custom avatar, chances are I won’t even see you.

Follow these rules and you have a good chance you’ll get some of you material to become “popular” at some of the better social bookmarking websites.

Author Information

David Leonhardt is a professional SEO consultant in Canada who provides a free social bookmarketing tool for bloggers and webmasters.