Social Bookmarking Strategy – Stay Out of Jail!

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