Apparently no one actually READS anything online, they scan it for content, and just read things that catch their eye. Except for my faithful Guerilleros, you guys read every word of these posts, right? Right?!

Since people are only reading what catches their eye, you need to make sure you draw attention to what you want people to be sure to read. How?

Write it in big letters!

You probably saw that before you even actually read that far. Now there are two ways to look at this. Either put what you want to make sure people read in the big letters, or, and this is a trick I use sparingly, make it kind of obscure.

What? Don’t make it clear? Well, here’s where a little knowledge of psychology is useful. People are curious. If they see big words, telling them something that seems a little random, they are more likely to read the surrounding info to see why you capitalized it. This gets them to read even more than just the words in big letters. But if you over do it, they will get frustrated, and not read any of what you wrote.

Another trick is to use bold letters. Again, the eye is naturally drawn to things that stick out. Bold letters certainly do. They also add emphasis to your writing, such as what I did in my last paragraph with the word “why”.  And again, the obscure trick works here too. People read more of the surrounding content to see why that one particular word or phrase is bold.

One more trick I’ll share is using bullets. Bullets have several uses.

• They also draw attention
• They present your info in a clear manner
• They allow you to make several points with out all the damn commas
• They make people think your presenting a lot of info
• They allow you to summarize all your important info so hopefully they’ll read it in the bulleted list

Again though, don’t over do it. Maybe one bulleted list for every 250 words or so.Also, don’t get crazy on the length of the list. Five bullets, maybe six. Otherwise people just start scanning the list.

Your bestbet is to combine all three, like I did in this post. You can even combine all three together for maximum eye draw. Here is an example”

Tips to get people to actually read what you wrote!

• Write in big letters!- People are drawn to them.
• Use the bold key!- Use it to draw the eye, or for emphasis.
• Bullets, bullets, bullets!- Present your info in a neat and orderly manner.
• I didn’t give a fourth tip!- Bulleted lists are kind of pointless if you only put three things on it.

See? Did you read this whole article or just the things I drew attention to?

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That, my brother&sister-in-war, is a huge social media guerilla opportunity, and it’s so powerful that it’s giving Google a hard time to track.

The thing is that with the record-keeping of your favorites in a remote, public location, you’re creating a link from that platform to your website/blog.

As you already know, the more links you have pointing to your website, the more Google will enjoy you. And being friends with Google is like nuclear weapons to North Korea: it makes you untouchable.

Of course, Guerilla Marketing is not about blowing radiation on the competition, but achieving massive results under the radar, without turning spotlights on your campaign. it involves subtle moves, and social bookmarking is extremely subtle.

Boring, but subtle

Stop the atomic talk and tell me: What is Social Bookmarking?

You’ll see on the bottom of this post a button that says “share/save”. Hover your mouse over it and lots of icons will popup, some of which you may recognize; those are social media platforms that will accept your bookmark entry.

Average users usually pick one of those platforms, and stick to it. The widely known Del.icious is one of the most famous social bookmarking services.

As you post your bookmarks, other users will see it, and they may go visit it as well. If they like it, they bookmark it also – get the hint?

This bookmarking cycle generates ‘buzz’, and what is the point of any guerilla marketing campaign? GO VIRAL!

But.. It’s not that easy to create viral content..

Exactly – social bookmarking alone won’t get your content to go viral or bring much traffic to your website. For that, you need to actually BE SOCIAL: make friends on Del.icious, Diig, Diigo… so you have people that pay a bit of extra attention to your bookmarks.

However, building relationships take time and can be a pain…

So why bother using social bookmarks?

Remember what I said in the beginning of this post about creating links to your website?

While you’re making friends and socializing in one network, go ahead and post your website to ANY bookmarking service available. Even though some services are less populated than a desert, they may still share some link juice.

Below is a screenshot of this very own blog, with less than a month of existence, showing the results of posting to only two or three social platforms:

Backlinks from social bookmarking alone

As you see, Yahoo! Site Explorer has 8 incoming links pointing to us – and that’s from 5 platforms alone: Diigo, Facebook, FriendFeed, IceRocket, and MyBlogLog.

What are the best services?

• Delicious
• Diigo
• MyBlogLog (for blogs, duh!)
• BuddyMarks
• SocialMedian
• Mister Wong
• Jumptags
• Reddit

And those are just a few… You can use the ‘Share/Save’ button below (you BETTER USE IT!) and get some ideas of networks to use.

What If I don’t have time to bookmark in all of these services?

(lazy…)

Well, if you’re really short in time, you can use a social bookmarking software.

Even though highly effective, this technology is rather new and it’s difficult to guarantee results. The best strategy is to create  a large, active content syndication network, that will leverage your content throughout multiple social platforms.

And be sure to come back and share your results with us! Comments ARE APPRECIATED!!!!

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