Social Bookmarking with Beth Hewitt

There are two very distinct reasons for using Social Bookmarking. The first is a way to allow internet users to share, organise, search and manage resources they find on the web. This might include: information you find on websites, blog posts, videos, articles, useful forums or pod casts.

The second use of social bookmarking that I use every day is a way to generate free traffic and to then direct that traffic to a piece of web space that you own, such a blog. It is also a free and easy way to increase your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or in plain English, increase your presence on the Web.

There are literally tons of different Social Bookmarking Sites. The most common Social Bookmarking Sites include: Del.ici.ous, Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit.

So why do we need Social Bookmarking?

Well whether you know it or not, we have entered the information age. Never before, have we had so much information being blasted to us from all angles, through, video, on social networking sites, through email, through our TV even on our mobile phones.

And whilst this might have its advantages, it also means that it is harder to keep people's attention for very long. You might be researching social bookmarking on the internet and before you know it you have half a dozen videos to look at, some half useful blog posts and hundreds of results for social bookmarking listed in search engines like google. Arrrgh!

It's easy to feel overwhelmed and not know where to start looking first. Itis also easy to forget where you found that first article you read just ten minutes ago.

Enter Social bookmarking.

A social bookmarking service such as del.ici.ous, allows you to save all your bookmarks online, so not only can you find the information again easily in the future, but you can also share what you find with friends, colleagues and other people who might be interested in the same things as you.

In fact, if you hadn't even started bookmarking information yourself yet, you could simply see what other people have already bookmarked on a particular topic.

You are able to do this by either tagging content (giving it a relevant name) or by searching existing tags. So for example if you are interested in chocolate (like me) you could see what else has been bookmarked about chocolate.

Social bookmarking differs from traditional bookmarking through the ability to access your social bookmarks from any computer, anytime and anywhere. There are obvious benefits therefore for people who regularly work from different computers. Social bookmarking also always groups of people to access the same bookmarked information and also to collaboratively add bookmarks for their team and other colleagues.

Traditionally folders on individual computers were the best way to organize bookmarks usually in the favourites section on your PC. Bookmarking in this way is OK if you only have a few folders that only YOU want access to, but as you add more and more web pages to your collection it soon becomes difficult to decide what goes where.

The way that social bookmarking sites overcome this, is by using Tags. A Tag is simply a way to describe a bookmark. So for example, if you are interested in cookery, you might have bookmarks like 'baking' or 'smoothies', to easily find your favourite recipes. It would also mean that every bookmark you tagged with strawberry and Smoothy would automatically show up in your smoothy and “strawberry collection.

You can easily share your tags with others by sending your specific URL (web address) to your friends and team mates. So for example if I wanted to share my tags and bookmarks with people I would simply share with them my URL which would be http://delicious.com/username.

Furthermore, tagging is super easy to do by simply installing a delicious button and tag button to your web browser. Watch the video above to see how to get set up on del.ici.ous.

Beth Hewitt, is a Social Media and Personal Development Mentor from the UK. She is passionate about helping as many people as possible become empowered by social media. A Local Government Officer for 5 years, Beth helps councillors, council officers, communities and voluntary groups discover new ways of being heard in their community. Beth is considered one of the most well respected bloggers, social media savy mentors and personal development coaches around the world. Beth puts her rise to s

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