With the number of social bookmarking services, social networks, url shortening services, and other ways to share links with others, it can be too much overload on your browser to install each network’s toolbars and extensions. Even with the tools that allow you to add a link to several social networks, your favorite network may not be included in that list. Or, if you are not on Firefox or Internet Explorer, there may not be any add-ons for your browser at all.
What are Social Bookmarking Browser Bookmarklets?
Bookmarklets are links you add to your browser’s bookmarks bar that have a javascript code to open the specific page you are currently viewing in their system. For example, while you are viewing this page, you could click on your Delicious bookmarklet, and it will open a separate window to save this page to your Delicious bookmarks. Social bookmarking and link sharing bookmarklets make it easy to save the link of the page you are viewing for future reference. For website owners and bloggers, these bookmarklets will make it easy for you to promote your newest page or article in your favorite network for traffic generation.
While there are many ways to promote your blog articles through social networks, I have noticed an increase in messages via emails, groups, and forums formatted with options to push an article via a variety of sites. They go beyond “here’s my latest article about this topic, hope you like it” to being well constructed messages with direct links to the articles on networks that the blog author would like their article to be promoted.
These messages help the blogger target the networks where they know their article will most likely be well received, beyond the major networks like Twitter and Digg.
Social Bookmarking is a way for internet users to save, or bookmark, a website, article, image, or video to an online service. When you Google “social bookmarking”, the second result, after the Wikipedia definition of social bookmarking, is Delicious, the leading online bookmark service. This is by far my favorite service to use in terms of organizing online bookmarks, and the one that this article will be based upon. So if you do not already have an account with Delicious, take a few moments to register, and then let’s begin.
The Basics: How to Add a Bookmark to Delicious
The quickest way to add a bookmark to your Delicious account is to install the Delicious Toolbar for Firefox (always my recommended browser) or Internet Explorer (if you insist). Once installed, all you have to do to save a page that you are currently viewing to Delicious is to click on the “tag” button. Or, in Firefox, simply right-click and use the Bookmark in Delicious option.
When I first started blogging, I thought that all I had to do was design my site, post great content, tell a few friends, and I would have a relatively popular site in no time. Little did I realize then all the things I would be doing now. In not-so-particular order, here are the almost daily things I do to keep my blog running at full steam.
