Aggressive Social Bookmarking – How Much Is Too Much?

If you’ve been trying to market your brand, products or anything else via social bookmarking, then you may have found out the hard way that if you get a wee bit zealous with bookmarking your links you may end up getting either your account, or worse, your IP address banned by the offended service.

Most of the time you’re not even really trying to game anything, but simply trying to market as aggressively as possible, and in doing so run afoul of the site’s terms of service. Here’s some tips to avoid being kicked off these various sites, and still get the job done at the same time!

• Make sure not to “discover” your own sites, if possible. Have a friend submit it the first time.
• Don’t only bookmark your own stuff. Make sure you bookmark other sites you find interesting as well, particularly in your niche.
• Consider creating your own bookmarking network, made up of friends who will bookmark each others sites. Don’t get too large or advertise, for obvious reasons. After all, this is what friends are for. This is why you been developing following on all these social sites, right?
• Consider outsourcing your social media marketing. This definitely keeps it at arm’s length!
• Focus on a select  few of the bookmarking sites, taking into account their relative value to your niche. One of the things that will get you ejected is aggressively bookmarking your dating site on a hard news site. Doesn’t fit. Find appropriate venues.
• At least glance at the site’s terms of service. That way, you’ll know where you’re treading on thin ice!
• Don’t rush out and bookmark every blessed post you make. Be selective, show your best!
• Be an active part of the community on the bookmarking site if there is one, (and there usually is) as active contributors who are giving into the mix do very well, and create followers of their own.

The bottom line here as you may have guessed is to use a healthy dose of common sense, and not to treat these sites like a spammer. You may very find that you can translate this to a healthy dose of unique visitors to your sites.

~Keith