***What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking, what is it exactly and how can it help me? That's definitely a thought that has run through my head, what about yours? The act of bookmarking things for myself and my own use sounded ok, even useful, but to share with others, "what's the point?"

If you spend a ton of time online you likely run across websites, articles, recipes, and more that you want to come back to again at some point. A great way to be able to do this is to bookmark the site. These days there are a variety of ways that you can "bookmark" your favorite places on the web, and all the great sites, articles and other things that you want to "store" for a later time.

Social bookmarking sites are a place that allows you to "bookmark" and return to your favorite places online again and again. There are several options when it comes to social bookmarking, which gives you the ability to share your bookmarks with others on the web, hence why it is a "social" task. While social networking sites build upon the relationships of its members social bookmarking sites create connections through the types of content generated (or bookmarked) by members. It is these connections that make social bookmarking such an effective business tool for Inte
et entrepreneurs.

There are two different main types of social bookmarking sites, there are those voting sites, such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Mixx and then there are the standard social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, furl, Blinklist and Ma.gnolia.

The difference between these sites is simple, voting sites such as Digg allow users to vote for the bookmarks of others and creates a ranking on the site itself, basically whoever's bookmarks are found interesting are voted for and then ranked according to how many votes they have received. Your website being stumbled or Dugg is a great way to gain exposure as well. The ultimate goal being to get enough votes to be on the front page, which gives you the most exposure.

Standard sites allow users merely store and share their bookmarks with others. Either can serve a specific purpose and are found to be quite useful to users.

Before choosing a bookmarking site, find one that caters to the content or type of business that you conduct. That will draw the most traffic to your business. If there is more than one, then join all that apply. One thing to remember is to create content that people will be interested in and used to track back to your business website. Remember that your site readers will mark your pages and posts on these sites because they find them informative and useful and think others will too.

Social bookmarking uses tags to help bookmark items, then the items are stored on the person's profile and can be shared with others. Social bookmarks rank high in the search engines and can help a person to find information that they are looking for quickly and easily. When you use a social bookmarking site, rather than a search engine to search for information you are getting a more targeted batch of information to look through. These targeted items are also ranked in how useful they were to others. The information found on such sites was already thought to be useful by someone else.

So, as a business owner, you can take advantage of social bookmarking by having others tag, and rank your information, your blog posts, articles, and other information that you put out there. This will help to rank it in the social bookmarking sites and therefore it will be more easy and more readily found and utilized by others, increasing your credibility and visability.

Utilizing social bookmarking has become a simple, but effective way to bring traffic to a business website. Add bookmarking icons to your blog or website to help increase the chances of someone adding it to their favorite list of content.