Guerilleros, you’ve probably heard about the Del.iciou.s trend: bookmarking your favorite websites into online services, so you can access it from any computer, and even share them with friends.
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!!!!
