Marketing Evolution - The impact of social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking has become a phenomenon over the past two years. As more people join these social networks, news, and what is considered important now is driven by consumers - a fundamental change in how information was given priority in the past. Social bookmarks are changing the way of thinking about information and how we sell to them.

Imagine telling your friend a story recently that you just heard. This story could be interesting, providing information about a particular topic of interest, or perhaps you saw a video online that I had rolling around in laughter. Once communicated to your friend, he went ahead and sent an email to 4 of his friends who then forwarded the e-mail to dozens of others - and so the story goes.

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. With the help of the Internet, this type of marketing has grown in importance and has been accelerated with the advent of social bookmarks.

Popular bookmarking sites allow users to identify, with a single click of a content, online and feel worthy of sharing. As individuals increasingly identify the content itself, receives a higher priority on social bookmarking sites and continues to grow in importance. Social bookmarking sites are like the dream of a multi-level marketing is!

The most popular social bookmarking site Digg.com is that it has an Alexa ranking of 98 and has more than 8 million monthly visitors. Other popular sites like Technorati (1.4 million monthly visitors) and del.icio.us (1.3M monthly visitors) show how big the social bookmarking has become. Taken collectively, these sites continue to collect the largest number of supporters and changing the way consumers share the information they deem valuable.

From the marketing point of view, this creates an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of our marketing practices. Word of mouth has always been an effective means of marketing, but it was hard to start and manage. Today, with the help of social bookmarks now there's an easier way to encourage and promote the sharing of information.

Recently, I added a footer on my blog to encourage users to information "share" you deem valuable. This has created the opportunity for users to interact with the content and start the viral marketing effect all online marketers are looking for. When considering the merits of social bookmarking, there are some guidelines to consider.

1. Your content must be unique and provide value. Social bookmarking does not happen by itself. You need to provide content that is worth sharing. Whether the content is useful for those seeking guidance, unique, novel, entertaining, or simply need to provide a value to be shared.

2. Make easy bookmarking. You put the appropriate social bookmarks icons on your web page in a place that is closely aligned with the content you want to share? Bookmarks are easy to identify? Make sure your customers and prospects do not need to work that hard in order to share your information.

3. Encourage communication. Do not just paste some social bookmarking icons on your site, ask for support. Common phrases as: "Share this" or "bookmark us" are a great way to get the wheels of social media in motion.

If you're not using social bookmarking tools then you are word-of-mouth campaigns are not optimized. Reach more people, more quickly, taking advantage of your website visitors, prospects and customers. Ask them to share information and create valuable content that encourages viral marketing. Using social bookmarking as a favorite marketing tool can help improve the awareness of your products and develop a preference for your brand .....