Social bookmarking, according to Wikipedia, is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of "metadata.
" Before there were so many social bookmarking sites, people browsed web sites on the Internet saving the pages that they liked and found useful to the 'favorites' folder in their web browser.
Over time they developed quite a list of links, but it was only visible to that individual user, and only on their computer.
When users found a web site that they liked that they wanted to share with friends, they would have to email that link.
There really was no central location where people could access their bookmarks on the Internet.
Enter social bookmarking.
In this article we will discuss how to use social bookmarking to grow a steady stream of traffic to your site.
Now, social bookmarking allows people to basically upload their 'favorites' folder to a public web site such as del.
icio.
us.
com.
Users can then apply descriptive tags to each item that they submit and share them with friends and the general public.
According to Wikipedia, "A tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file).
" Users assign tags to the bookmarks they submit to describe the site.
When visitors search on for those specific tags, sites that have those tags associated with them will come up as results.
Tagging is an integral part of social bookmarking because it helps others find your favorite sites you have bookmarked and shared.
The main idea is that the best content will rise to the top and generate lots of traffic.
~Del.
icio.
us.
com is a social media web site that describes itself as, "a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source.
~Digg.
com is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.
" Users submit content, which, if it's good is voted on with 'diggs' to move the popular content to the front page.
~technorati.
com Time Magazine said of technorati.
com, If Google is the Web's reference library, Technorati is becoming its coffee house.
Technorati collects, organizes, and distributes the global online conversation for blogs.
~stumbleupon.
com StumbleUpon is a free service that helps you discover and share websites with others who have similar interests.
Stumbleupon is a combination of a toolbar and web site that generates traffic and quality back links.
You can also give each site a "Thumbs up" or a "thumbes Down" grading.
~reddit.
com Reddit.
com is another social bookmarking site where users submit content and users vote it up or down, similar in some ways to StumbleUpon.
Tips for using social bookmarking for getting traffic and links using: oCreate good, useful content oCraft catchy headlines oWrite a concise and compelling description that makes users want to click through to the article oMake it convenient for your web site visitors to bookmark or vote for your site by adding bookmarking buttons oNetwork with other social bookmarking users.
On some sites such as stumbleupon.
com, having a strong friends and fan base can help to boost the number of links and 'likes' that you get thereby increasing the traffic you receive.
Check out Social Traffic Intelligence for manymore social Traffic methods.