Google the other day quietly unveiled what is to be their in-house answer to Digg. Since they opted out of outright ourchase of Digg, (more than likely because they felt; rightly so, that they could do a better job anyway) there was much speculation about what Google would do. Well, here it is.

Kudos to Chris Lang for bringing “Google Reader Adds Friends List, Sharing, Bookmarking and Blog Recommendation Engine” to our attention.  In his post Chris goes into much detail as to how Google will be using this new capability, and what it may mean for those of us who use social bookmarking services, want to keep up with Google, or who merely want a sane alternative to the capricious whims of Digg.

Some of the more interesting items to me include the ability to add individual pages (posts) to your Google Reader, amd then share them with your friends, which you can now import from Gmail. They even provide you a sweet little bookmarklet to make the task ever so much more simple. It also appears that your Google Reader profile will take on more significance, and that Google may even use this to base rankings upon. More to come on that one. However, it is interesting to note that does follow links that appear in each shared post. It uses the permalink to the blog post and also links to the domain in each shared item.

Another tool for the toolbox!

~Keith

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

Well, yeah, it does. But only to the extent that you’re interested in search engine rankings and organic traffic. Some of the social bookmarking sites carry a pretty heavy weight, and are definitely worth the link juice you’d be getting were you so fortunate to get a link from them. (Not that it’s that hard…) 

Others, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and others are valuable despite the nofollow tag they append to your links simply because there exists the possibility of immense traffic from them should your content become popular on these sites.

So what it boils down to is this: you need to decide as part of your social media marketing strategy which of these social bookmarking sites you want to go after, and do so aggressively. Half measures count for next to nothing here. We’ll talk tomorrow about just what I mean when I say “aggressively”. There are ways to be aggressive without getting yourself in hot water, and we’ll talk about those.

~Keith

If you haven’t considered yet what your social bookmarking strategy is, or what it might be, or even if you need one, then here’s a few things to think about. A good social bookmarking strategy is essential on many levels, not the least of which is that if you do this wrong, you’ll find yourself locked up in the social bookmarking pokey in short order! (Don’t ask me what sites I’m banned from: wait for the T-shirt!)

Even the term “wrong” is relative, because each of the social bookmarking services is a bit different. What is cool at Mister Wong may be taboo at Digg, and vice versa. Certain subjects or topics are not in favor at certain sites, and you find this out the hard way sometimes. Anyhoo, here are a few things we’ve found that are usually not what you might consider a best practice:

• Promoting your own content - A big no-no on sites like Digg. Many of lesser elite sites don’t mind so much, but for the most part, you’re much better off letting your friends or network Digg, Stumble or otherwise discover your site.
• Multiple accounts - This is a tactic used by people who wear dark color hats! They register many accounts, use proxies, automated posters and other means to “game” the system. This one is against most all TOS of any of these sites.
• Duplicate content - Not in the sense you’re probably thinking. What I mean is the use of the same exact wording, headlines and text at every social bookmarking service you use. Mixing it up a little is at the very least a way of testing different headlines, anchor text and keywords. At best, it creates even more unique content with just a small tweak. 
• Frequency - Social bookmarking every single solitary post you make is not only not necessary, but can be looked upon askance. Bookmark your best stuff. What I like to do is rotate where I bookmark, kind of spreading the wealth, so to speak.
• IP addresses - If you do a lot of bookmarking for clients or friends, be aware that most of the bigger services, like Digg, monitor your IP adddress, and will come down hard on you of they suspect you’re trying to spam the system. Remember, moderation, and not your own stuff!
• Social Bookmarking AutoPosters - These software tools are an accident waiting to happen to your rankings.  A bunch of bookmarks with the same text, timestamp, and IP address all pointing to your site? Hmmmm….
• Google Slap Rumors - There are rumors rampant that Google may come down with one of it’s infamous “slaps” soon, this time targeting all the spam associated with social bookmarking sites. We shall see…

Those should give you plenty to obsess about over the next few days! Seriously though, a sane, well thought-out social bookmarking strategy can be implemented and should be. Just make sure you’re doing your level best to use the services the way they were intended to be used. The real winners when this all shakes out will be the people who’ve taken the time to create a following that will naturally bookmark and otherwise vote for their posts. This after all is the essence of the social web.

~Keith