Social listening and data analytics are akin to rock-climbing, where you’re always looking for a handhold. It scans consumer, competitive, and market intelligence to help you make the best of your situation in the market.
And let’s face it – sometimes finding whitespace in a crowded market seems like an effort in futility. However, just because every avenue looks crowded doesn’t mean there’s nowhere to turn. There’s an old Latin proverb that says audaces fortuna juvat – fortune favors the bold.
That may seem over the top in a brand growth context, but it’s really not. Seeking new areas for brand traction means you need to go outside the yawn-inducing strategies everyone else is using. So, perhaps on the social spectrum – fortune favors the crafty. To that end, we’ll look at the top ten social bookmarking sites to grow your brand.
Specifically, we’ll dig into the following:
Getting traction with social bookmarking is critically important to increasing your brand’s web visibility. Here are a few SEO statistics you’ll want to take into consideration as we continue:
It may have been a while since social bookmarking has crossed your mental radar. If it has, lets jump in for a little refresher!
Social bookmarking is a method of saving websites on a third-party service such as Digg or Pinterest for later reference. This is often used in lieu of saving bookmarks on a web browser. The benefits include the ability to search, organize, and store web content that users find useful. Often, these include a sharing or searchability function that users find helpful to uncover content similar to their interests.
Social bookmarking gives value to brands as when a user saves a web page from their site it creates a backlink to the content. Backlinks provide a link from one website to content on another. Search engines see these links as votes for a page. Therefore, pages with many backlinks are pushed up in search engine rankings as they’re seen as the most relevant to organic searches on your subject matter.
In short, when someone uses a social bookmarking site to save your content, it indicates to Google and other search engines that people found your content useful enough to save it. Naturally, this boosts the SEO score of your content, pushing you closer to the front page.
That’s why brands should keep social bookmarking in mind when creating content. Providing valuable content that keeps people’s interest enough to bookmark it is a net win for your efforts. That’s because as more people save it, the more people are likely to see it.
As a brand, it’s critical to strategize for social bookmarking to boost your SEO rankings. After all, a recent study found only 0.78% of people searching Google clicked anything on the second page or beyond.
While there are many social bookmarking sites around the web, we’ll look at some of the top contenders. A few you may know – and others you may not. Either way, this will give you ten options to consider when creating shareable content for social bookmarking sites.
Pinterest is one of the most well-known on our list. It’s social media and social bookmarking rolled into one. Users save interesting web content as pins on their pinboard. The site is infinitely searchable so you can peruse other users’ boards and save their content on your own boards. Sharing functionality allows users to share the content that inspires them, creating more delicious backlinks in the process.
You may remember Digg from the old days of the internet. It has gone through some hiccups over the years, but it’s back. Essentially, Digg aggregates news articles and web pages into a curated front page. Articles and web sources are upvoted by Digg users, which boosts visibility for popular content.
As a brand, you can submit your own content and articles but it’s important to engage in the community. Users who just submit links and never vote on other content are considered spammers.
Reddit bills itself as the front page of the internet. Users find content by subscribing to subreddits which usually are centered around a theme – and there’s seemingly a subreddit for anything under the sun.
Bookmarks are created whenever a user upvotes, downvotes, or comments on content shared on the site. If your content gets enough upvotes it will hit the front page, a subreddit entitled r/all. If you get that far, you can expect tons of traffic. Get to know why Reddit matters to marketers – and acquaint yourself with the community, and the content that performs well before you dive in.
BibSonomy is a social bookmarking site that specializes in scientific and research-based publications. Users can create bookmarks or add new links, as well as create or join interest-based groups.
Group members see an aggregated view of the groups most popular publications. While BibSonomy is niche social bookmarking, it may be of particular interest in generating traction around your research and development projects.
Slashdot is a social bookmarking service with a focus on science, tech, and politics. If your brand has any tech slant at all, Slashdot is a social bookmarking site to consider as their tagline is “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.”
Users routinely bookmark articles about computer hardware, cloud computing, security, gaming, and other tech-related media. Stories are shared by users which then generate discussions within the community.
Fark is another community-based news aggregation site. Users submit articles for approval which generates a curated list of news articles displayed on the main page. And they add funny headlines when they do it. Farkers, as users are called, vote on their favorites – creating social bookmarks in the process.
Additionally, there are sub-topics concerning entertainment, sports, politics, business, fandoms, and food. The site certainly has a humorous slant and could be a winner if your content is weird, funny, or fascinating.
Tumblr allows users to create blogs on the platform. It’s actually part blog, social media, and social bookmarking rolled into one. Users often share outside content to their blogs which shows up in their followers’ dashboards. Tumblr users reblog and comment on each other’s content raising visibility in the process.
8. Folkd
Folkd is another social bookmarking site powered by the community. This one lets you attach a browser extension that allows you to bookmark any webpage with the click of a button. That’s important for brands as you can bookmark your own content easily. By engaging in the community, you can increase your reputation rank if they like the links you’re sharing.
9. Diigo
Diigo is a social bookmarking site configured as a research tool and knowledge-sharing community. Users can not only bookmark and tag web content, but they can also annotate parts of web pages in their bookmarks with sticky notes.
10. Dribbble
Dribbble is not only a social bookmarking site, but it’s also a social media platform geared towards designers and other creatives. As such, it’s a Mecca of sorts for anyone interested in graphic design, illustration, photography, web design, etc. Dribbble is great for social bookmarking as it boasts an extremely engaged community for sharing content, finding freelance design jobs, or hiring your next designer. Brands that lean into the artistic will want to check this one out.
The key takeaway for brands here is that social bookmarking sites can seriously give your SEO rankings a boost. They may fly under the radar of major social media networks, but your brand shouldn’t overlook their importance in giving traction to your web content.
And don’t forget, you can use your social listening tools to find your target audience using the social bookmarking sites you’re interested in. That way, you have a leg up on the content most likely to get their attention. Reach out for a demo, and we’ll help you up your social bookmarking game!