Blog Promotion: Social Tagging & Social Bookmarking (Part 1 of 3)
In my recent searches on the internet on blog promotion tools, I’ve yet to find an up-to-date true listing of the different tools that can help bloggers in promoting their blogs. Whether it’s an individual or a corporate blog, just because you build it, you write in it and you keep it up to date, does not mean that the traffic will come.
There are actually a lot of different facets of promotion
for blogs, and taking the time to understand and research which ones are right
for promoting your blog is essential. From the social networking of de.licio.us
and digg, to the traffic promotion of Blogazoo, knowing what will bring the
readers to your blog is essential.
Knowing the goal of your blog is even more important. Do you want to make money, give advice, promote a product or brand, or are you just blogging for fun? Each one of those reasons can take you on a different path when marketing your blog in the search realm. For example, if you are blogging news stories, making sure that your postings are in digg, is a vital component to having your stories found on the internet, whereas if you are blogging just for fun, digg, might not be the best route to go.
So with that in mind, this will be a 3 part series
discussing the different ways of search marketing promotion of blogs. I’ll take different types of blog promotion,
discuss it on a high level and then provide some resources. First I’ll tackle blog promotion by social
tagging and social bookmarking, then move on to blog promotion with traffic
generator sites, and then finally wrap it up with blog promotion with rss feed
providers and blog directories.
So without further adieu, let’s get started.
Blog Promotion by
Social Tagging and Social Bookmarking
On a high level, social tagging and social book marking can
help generate interest in your blog by assisting you to market it to other
members of each specific community. Generally, there really isn’t a whole lot of SEO (search optimization)
value in these sites, unless you have a lot of people bookmarking, “digging” or
“dotting” – and by then, your blog is probably rather popular.
If you are just starting out with your blog and you are
looking to spread the word, beyond your immediate realm of family and friends,
social tagging and social bookmarking are a nice place to start. In a small sort of way it’s almost viral
marketing on a very small, very limited scale, in that one person finds your
bookmarks, reads them, adds it to their own bookmarks/tag list and then their
friend does the same.
Although there are many different sites out there, they are
all based on the same premise of “sharing” information with your friends and
the active community in which you are bookmarking. Each site has its own special features and
assets, so take some time and figure out if one or many will work for the
purpose of your blog and what you are focusing your entries or articles on.
De.licio.us - The world of social networking
recently jumped into the limelight when Yahoo! bought the social tagging
company de.licio.us. With de.licio.us,
you can bookmark blog posts, and then share them with your family, friends and
the general public. The catch with the
bookmarks is that you add what you feel is the important “tag” (keyword) to the
url. Once your bookmark is in the system
and its being shared, it will then be placed with other bookmarks related to
the keywords you’ve tagged it with, allowing others to find the links and save
them as well.
Tagworld – If your blog is about your
music and you are trying to get your name out there, then Tagworld is a
definite stop for you. This social
networking site, caters to musicians, although it is not limited to them. The
site in itself is very reminiscent of mySpace, but combines the blogging with
tagging and social networking. For those
of you keeping up on entertainment news Tagworld’s most notable recognition as
of late is the promotion
of the movie “Snakes on a Plane”.
Wists – Another social tagging website,
very similar to de.licio.us, however the focus on the site seems to lean
heavily towards retail commerce. There
are a couple of “added” touches to this website, one being the addition of
images in relation to to the bookmark created, the other is a toolbar option
that you can instantly created bookmarks with. Although not as popular or as well known as de.licio.us, Wists is a nice
alternative with some added features that search marketers can put to good use.
Bluedot – Social tagging that has a “Dig”
familiarity to it. I doubt it was
intentional, but upon first looking around, that was my initial thought. Then I “dug” a little deeper into the site,
and was pleasantly surprised at the ease of use with this website, along with
the level of personalization. This site
actually goes a bit further in personalization and promoting “friends” and
their uses of bluedot. A nice touch to
this social tagging site, is the “tagging suggestions” where the system will
automatically give you suggestions for tag on you “Dots”.
Digg – Got a story on your blog that you
want to promote? Well then get it “dugg” on dig. Much like de.licio.us, you submit your url,
however, there is no tagging involved. I
like to term this as “Social Bookmarking”, since it closely resembles the
tagging environment and helps to promote blogs and news stories by still
allowing users to bookmark(in a round about way)for others to read. Stories are submitted by users and then put
into “upcoming” stories and are then voted on by community members. The more “diggs", the longer your story
stays in circulation, and the higher up in the listings it climbs. Of course the added benefit is the traffic
the story brings to your blog.
Next blog post will be on blog promotion with traffic generating sites.
The way you post here make me understand social bookmarks better.Thanks for your kind contribution.
Posted by: K.Charanyanond. | January 19, 2009 at 08:59 PM