Social Bookmarking, What Do We Need to Do to Make It Work for Us?
To make Social Bookmarking work let's look at an example of how it might work for a University professor.
When a site is added to the professor's account he tags it with a few keywords that are relevant to the site.
His list is public so he can direct other teachers or students to the site by them using the keywords he has chosen.
The bookmarking site will tell him how many have bookmarked this same site.
When the number is clicked on he can tell who exactly has bookmarked the site and when they found it.
A further click will show him the bookmark collections of others that were interested in this same site.
If a common tag is chosen then the professor can see all of the other sites with that tag.
This makes a group collection and a gathering of bookmarks very easy.
The advantage is that a web of resources and connections that represent the interests and thinking of a community is created.
Most bookmarking sites have a front page with the most popular sites.
To determine what site gets on this page varies.
The most common method is a voting system.
Digg.
com was one of the first bookmarking sites to really make voting work with its Digg system.
You vote when you click a Digg button, when you think you like the content, or a bury button, if you don't like it.
When you do this you have voted on the content.
Digg.
com tracks both of these and has a formula known only to them that determines the success of your content.
Another voting method used by Delicious uses twitter.
The content that receives the most tweets moves up the popularity chain faster than the one that doesn't.
Here's the rub, the content that becomes the most popular lands on the first page and is seen by more people.
The keyword here is content.
Content is king, it needs to be unique, current and attention grabbing.
This is the key to getting bookmarked and what we need to do to make social bookmarking work for us.
Search Engines like Google look for and bring up relevant content in the searches.
It seems that relevant content is not always the best content.
Search engines use algorithms to look for specific traits within content in order to rank it.
Here is the catch; algorithms don't necessarily look for the same things that you and I look for in good content.
The advantage to social bookmarking over SEO is that real people see, read and rate the content.
When you bookmark a favourite site, others can follow the link and decide if it is good or not.
The more votes your content gets means the more people get to see it.
The end result is that you are going to get noticed based on relevant content.
In conclusion let's compare Google page rank, in the more votes a page gets, the more important it is considered.
In social bookmarking a page with more bookmarks leading back to it is considered more important than a page with a few bookmarks leading to it.
Something we are told is that to make it to the first page of a bookmarking site is short lived.
Making it to the first page of Google is much longer lasting.
The experts tell us that, making it to the front page, even if for a short while can create a dramatic increase in traffic.
When a site is added to the professor's account he tags it with a few keywords that are relevant to the site.
His list is public so he can direct other teachers or students to the site by them using the keywords he has chosen.
The bookmarking site will tell him how many have bookmarked this same site.
When the number is clicked on he can tell who exactly has bookmarked the site and when they found it.
A further click will show him the bookmark collections of others that were interested in this same site.
If a common tag is chosen then the professor can see all of the other sites with that tag.
This makes a group collection and a gathering of bookmarks very easy.
The advantage is that a web of resources and connections that represent the interests and thinking of a community is created.
Most bookmarking sites have a front page with the most popular sites.
To determine what site gets on this page varies.
The most common method is a voting system.
Digg.
com was one of the first bookmarking sites to really make voting work with its Digg system.
You vote when you click a Digg button, when you think you like the content, or a bury button, if you don't like it.
When you do this you have voted on the content.
Digg.
com tracks both of these and has a formula known only to them that determines the success of your content.
Another voting method used by Delicious uses twitter.
The content that receives the most tweets moves up the popularity chain faster than the one that doesn't.
Here's the rub, the content that becomes the most popular lands on the first page and is seen by more people.
The keyword here is content.
Content is king, it needs to be unique, current and attention grabbing.
This is the key to getting bookmarked and what we need to do to make social bookmarking work for us.
Search Engines like Google look for and bring up relevant content in the searches.
It seems that relevant content is not always the best content.
Search engines use algorithms to look for specific traits within content in order to rank it.
Here is the catch; algorithms don't necessarily look for the same things that you and I look for in good content.
The advantage to social bookmarking over SEO is that real people see, read and rate the content.
When you bookmark a favourite site, others can follow the link and decide if it is good or not.
The more votes your content gets means the more people get to see it.
The end result is that you are going to get noticed based on relevant content.
In conclusion let's compare Google page rank, in the more votes a page gets, the more important it is considered.
In social bookmarking a page with more bookmarks leading back to it is considered more important than a page with a few bookmarks leading to it.
Something we are told is that to make it to the first page of a bookmarking site is short lived.
Making it to the first page of Google is much longer lasting.
The experts tell us that, making it to the front page, even if for a short while can create a dramatic increase in traffic.
