Web 2.0, the ability of the user to contribute content and share information with other users, is adding new methods and strategies to effective internet marketing. Effective internet marketing in this environment is dependent upon having the users get excited about your product or content and want to share it with others. The fastest way this is done is something called social bookmarking.



You know how to add a site to your favorites list, right? You see a site that you like or that you plan to return to so you add it to your favorites list. There is one big drawback to this "old" system of listing your favorite sites. Your favorites list is locked onto your computer. There is no easy way to share your favorites list with your friends and associates.

What if, when you found a site you wanted to add to your favorites, instead of adding them to your favorites on your computer, you could add them to a list of your favorites that is on the internet. Then you could find your favorites no matter what computer you were using and you could direct your friends to your favorites list by sharing the web address with them.

This is in essence what social bookmarking is. Social bookmarking is creating a personalized list of your favorites on an internet site built specifically for this purpose. The site is constructed so that everyone who visits can see your favorites list and can visit the sites that you think are important.

Visitors to your social bookmark list not only can visit your favorite sites, they can add the sites that they like to their own social bookmark list. Then others can view their list and so on and so forth. A really interesting site could start to spread virally on these social bookmarking sites. That would be a tremendous benefit to anyone's web traffic.

Another function of social bookmarking sites is to keep track of how many times a site is listed on someone's favorites list. This number is used to rank the sites popularity. Of course the highest ranking sites are featured by the social bookmarking sites and of course that brings even more traffic to those sites.

How do you start getting listed on these social bookmarking sites? First you have to be listed at least once, so logically you set up your own list and put your sites on it. Some sites have buttons you can add to your site to allow readers the option of listing it on their social bookmark list. There are plugins for some blogs that can do this. Obviously the better and more useful your content the more likely your site is going to end up on readers lists.

The object is to get your site listed on as many social bookmark sites and lists as you can. A few popular sites are: del.ico-us, backflip, netvouz, Digg and stumbleupon.

Getting involved in social bookmarking is good internet marketing, taking advantage of the interactivity of Web 2.0. Social bookmarking is one more tool to use to boost your sites popularity and increase traffic.