Automate Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is just like using the "favorites" feature in your web browser. The difference is that you save these bookmarks on a remote site where you can share them with the public or designated friends. Social bookmarking sites are just one type of the new social marketing or Web 2.0 sites that have become extremely popular in the last couple years.

There are several different types of websites in this genre that also include some that are a mix of two or more types. There are social bookmarking sites, social media sites, social news sites, and social networking or community sites.

Here are some examples:

• Social Bookmarking - Delicious, Technorati, Sphinn, Furl, and Blinklist (for complete list click here)
• Social Media - share videos and pictures - YouTube, Flickr, Google Video, Photo Bucket, My Heavy.
• Social News - Digg, Propeller (formerly Netscape), Reddit, Newsvine, Fark, Slashdot, Mixx.
• Social Networking (Community) - Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, Bebo, Ning, Yahoo 360.

These types of sites, along with blogs, have taken over the Internet. They can be used as very powerful tools to generate traffic and boost your page rank and search engine rankings. This is accomplished by creating back links. Every time someone bookmarks your website, submits a news story, or submits a video that links to your website, there is a transfer of page rank and authority.

Jack Humphrey is arguably one of the top rated experts when it comes to using social marketing to generate traffic. Last year he wrote the "Authority Black Book" and gave it away for free. It went on to become one of the most downloaded ebooks of the year and is considered the social marketer's bible.

If you are interested in using Web 2.0 techniques and marketing strategies, this book is a must have. Hold on before you run off to download it. There is a new version for 2008 that was just recently released. Make sure you get Authority Black Book 2.0 instead of the old one. Oh yeah, it is still free!

I am 4 days into my free trial using SEnuke and I can't beleive everything it does. It is absolutely the most complete search engine optimization tool I have ever seen. Here are just some of it's features:

• Easily Determine What Your Chances Are of Dominating The Search Engines For A Specific Keyword By Examining The Number And Location Of Web 2.0, Video, RSS and Social Bookmarking Sites in the Search Engine Results!
• Automagically create blogs, hubs, articles and wikis at 13 HIGH PR, HIGH Authority Web 2.0 sites that Google is absolutely in LOVE with.
• Instant video submission to the top 14 (and growing regularly...) video websites on the Internet!
• Instant social bookmarking to the top 22 (and growing regularly...) social bookmarking websites on the Internet!
• Instant RSS feed submission to the top 16 (and growing regularly...) RSS aggregators and RSS directories on the Internet!

This is just a sampling of what it can do. Go see for yourself and sign up for your free trial here. 

Bookmarking Demon is the best social bookmarking automation software that I have seen. The first 2 versions out did the competition but version 3 has put it way over the top as far as I'm concerned.

Social bookmarking is a great way to create powerful one way back links to your websites. The problem is that because of it's effectiveness, the spammers have run roughshod over the social bookmarking sites which have caused them to monitor accounts very closely. Some are checking IP addresses and it is very easy to get banned.

That is why it is very important to use certain techniques to make your bookmarking look as natural as possible so that you don't get your accounts banned. The new version is loaded with features to help you accomplish this.

The most effective of these is the feature that lets you randomize almost every aspect of your submissions. The software lets you randomize:

• user accounts
• titles
• tags
• descriptions
• time of submissions (scheduler)

Bookmarking Demon version 3 also has a proxy down loader and checker that you can use to keep your IP address anonymous. By using the random features and the proxy, you will leave a very small footprint and shouldn't have any problems with the bookmarking services. Your bookmark submissions will look totally natural to the search engines and you will have awesome results.

Check out the video to see all of the features. (the video shows version 2, I am working on a video that shows version 3 and will update it as soon as possible.) If you want to see a video of the new features than check out the Bookmarking Demon sales page.

If you sign up for the newsletter, you can get a free report on how the creator of Bookmarking Demon uses the software and you can get a "lite" version of the software that is semi-automated.

Web 2.0 Submitter is designed to automate the submission process for sites like Digg and Propeller. These kinds of social news sites are very much against self promotion and it is easy to get your account banned. You need to use a multiple account strategy to be effective, but you also want to be careful. Do not submit a story from the same url more than once. I would also advise using a proxy.

Web 2.0 Submitter does not have a built in proxy finder and checker like Bookmarking Demon. You can use a free proxy like Tor. The software doesn't fully automate the submission process, but lets you save stories and auto fills the information for you at each website. This is still a huge time saver.

While Web 2.0 Submitter doesn't have all of the features that Bookmarking Demon does, I have not found another program that is designed to work with the social news sites. They have just released a new version of Web 2.0 Submitter and it will semi-automate the process for twice as many news sites than previously.

Now you can save time with your submissions to :

• Digg
• Propeller
• Reddit
• Mixx

• Plime
• Shoutwire
• Newsvine
• I Am Bored
• Indian Pad
• Link Filter
• Hugg
• Stumble Upon

• Onlywire
• News Cloud

• Plug Im
• Sphinn

That's almost twice as many sites as the first version. They have also fixed a few bugs that were occasionally occurring in the first version. The software functions better than it ever has. I know because I have been using it ever since it came out almost a year ago. I also use Bookmarking Demon but just recently started using it.

The reason that I like Web 2.0 Submitter so much is because of the traffic potential. A story that becomes popular on a site like Digg, can produce a tremendous amount of traffic. We are talking about a site that gets over 20 million visitors a month. Get a story posted on the front page of Digg and your server may get overwhelmed.

It still takes a little time to submit your news stories, but not near as long as if you had to do it manually. I don't know how much value you place on your time, but Web 2.0 Submitter will definitely pay for itself the first time you use it.

The first two products I talked about are arguably the best that the general public can get their hands on, but will require an outlay of cash. Not a lot of cash,(under $100), but cash no less. The small amount of money is nothing compared to the amount of time that either one of the aforementioned programs will save you.

Now I am going to give you a couple free options, for those of you on a very tight budget or perhaps, no budget at all. I completely understand. When I first started out Internet marketing, I fit into this category. All of my advertising came from free sources like traffic exchanges and safelists. Web 2.0 had not become mainstream back then.

Onlywire is a neat little free service that lets you submit to 15-20 social bookmarking sites with one click. You enter a title, some tags, a description, and one click bookmarks to all the services that you have entered your log-ins for. I say 15-20 because the sites they add new sites occasionally.

You do have to create accounts at the 15 or so bookmarking sites and enter your information. The Onlywire site will save your login information for you. Here is a list of the bookmarking sites that are currently being supported by Onlywire right now (6/30/08):

• Backflip
• Bibsonomy
• Blinklist
• Blogmemes
• Blue Dot
• De.lirio.us
• Del.icio.us
• Diigo
• Excites
• Furl
• Linkatopia
• Linkroll
• Looklater
• Ma.gnolia
• Markabo
• Rawsugar
• Shadows
• Simpy
• Spurl
• Unalog
• Wink
• Xilinus

That's a total of 22 bookmarking sites that you can submit to with one click. Now here is the catch. I am sure that you have heard the expression,

"You get what you pay for".

I have found this to be mostly true. I started using Onlywire when it first came out and was still relatively unheard of. The service functioned pretty well. Lately, I have run some tests and I found that a lot of the submissions weren't going through. I am not sure why this is happening. I put in a support ticket and they said it was due to huge amounts of traffic.

Hopefully, they will resolve this problem. I have not been using Onlywire since I purchased Bookmarking Demon. The other big dis-advantage of using Onlywire is that your submission to the 22 bookmarking services are identical, thus leaving a big foot print for the search engines to see. Don't get me wrong, used Onlywire extensively when it first came out and it helped me to get several websites indexed within a week, (in conjunction with other Web 2.0 strategies).

Social Marker is another free tool that semi automates the bookmarking process. I would call it a scaled down version of Web 2.0 Submitter. It doesn't have as much automation as Web 2.0 Submitter but it does submit to more sites which include social news sites and social bookmarking sites. It will also post to Twitter.

Social Marker will only work with the Firefox browser. It has a "bookmarklet" that you can drag into your toolbar, like Onlywire, that lets you submit the site you are viewing by clicking on the bookmarklet. You will be taken to the Social Marker website with the title and url already filled in. You can also highlight some text on the website, before you click on the bookmarklet, and it will auto fill the text into the description box.

You then use the site interface to navigate to each of the social news and bookmarking sites, which you select beforehand, and submit your site or story. The service does not store your login information, so you will have to login manually to each of the social sites as you go. Not the most automated service in the world but it is free and it will save you time.

If you have a blog, I highly recommend you download the social marker widget. It will let you add a single button (see above) to your blog instead of having a bunch of bookmarkets at the end of every post. That is, unless you like your blog looking like a Christmas tree.

Your visitors can click on the button and they will be taken to the Social Marker website where they can submit your post to their favorite social news and bookmarking sites. Click on the link to get the plugin and check out the video to see a demo of how it works.