Content marketing is about optimizing, publishing, and distributing content to educate, entertain, and/or empower your ideal audience and in doing so attracting them to your service or product. Social bookmarking is about planting the seeds of your content marketing efforts while building links that contribute to your SEO efforts. Its one of many tactics that will give your content marketing the one-two punch it needs, when done consistently and with purpose.
Let’s learn about what social bookmarking is, how it plays into your content marketing efforts, the benefits of including it into your marketing activities, and how to use a service like SocialMarker.com to help you seed your content efficiently.
What is Content Marketing
Content marketing is basically the creation of content (in any format) and/or sharing content with the intent of attracting customers/clients. In the IMPACT Marketing Formula (Target+Engage+IMPACT+Convert+Monitor=Success), content marketing is a key part of Target — the art of getting found by your ideal audience. Its also a part of the Engage and IMPACT because when your content marketing educates, empowers, and/or entertains you literally attract your ideal audience leading them into relationships that turn into leads and sales. Needless to say, content marketing is very important to your success in online marketing.
What is Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a means for users to bookmark, share, manage, and build community around topics, webpages, bits of information, and pretty much anything else on the web. The bookmarks themselves are only valuable in as much as the link they help build to your site, helping with your SEO efforts. The real value of social bookmarking is the community of users around the bookmarking. Social bookmarking your content and providing opportunity/encouragement for others to do so, helps seed your content on the web and build links.
Tying Social Bookmarking to Content Marketing
Smart content marketing is about systems and leverage. For example, when you post to your blog or create content, if you’re smart, you’re repurposing that content into different multimedia formats, optimizing that content for purposeful SEO efforts, and publishing that content in a way that lets you get found easier by your audience. Your goal should be to create a system for content marketing, one that is certainly adjustable, but also efficient and scalable.
Social bookmarking to seed your content should be a part of your content marketing action plan. It build backlinks (links to your site), relevant traffic (if you’re strategic), and your links/content can get indexed in Google within minutes.
Smart Ideas
- Working from your editorial calendar (you do have one I hope), create content around a particular topic.
- Turn that “bucket” of content into a blog post (better yet, a series of blog posts).
- Take that same bucket (or blog post series) and turn it into a podcast or audible form of content.
- Take it again and turn it into a series of videos for video marketing.
- Take it again and turn the blog post series into a slideshow for slideshare.
- Take it again and turn the blog post series into a whitepaper or PDF for document sharing sites.
Now, publish that content in appropriate areas where your audience is at. Then, social bookmark the blog post to begin the seeding of your content and build some initial links.
A Word of Caution
I have to say this, because inevitably there will always be someone who will take a tip and run away with it. Seeding your content with social bookmarking is not simply about spamming bookmarking sites with your own links. That, my friend, will get you no where. It’s also not about “pretending” to be a user sharing your content. When you social bookmark you need to already have a presence, sharing resources — your content just happens to be a resource that is included. You also want to encourage others to social bookmark your content by making it readily available on your blog or website.
How to Social Bookmark with Social Marker
There are plenty of tools that can help you social bookmark more efficiently. We prefer SocialMarker.com because it’s free, easy to use, and saves time. SocialMarker allows you to sequentially bookmark your content to over 30 social bookmarking and social news sites across the Internet. Its not automated, which you DON’T want, but allows you to save plenty of time. In most cases you’ll want to be very selective of where you social bookmark your content anyways.
DIY Marketing Mastery: How to Social Bookmark with Social Marker (Video & Guide)
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Step-by-Step
- Go to www.SocialMarker.com
- Add the bookmarklet to your browser toolbar (drag from homepage to bar).
- Determine websites you’ll consistenly bookmark to, start with “best” list of site if you’re unsure.
- Create your social bookmarking accounts from the list above (make sure they are real and human!)
- Go to the post you want to social bookmark and click bookmarklet (this fills information in).
- Fill in description/text — remember to entice and use keywords (from title and content).
- Fill in tags/keywords — use up to 5 keywords (from title, description, and content).
- Click “submit”
- Complete each site’s process to bookmark, clicking “next” to move forward
Remember: Never, ever spam your content. Publish your content in communities (social bookmarking and beyond) you’re already active in.
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About the Author...
Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!
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Love the Smart Ideas suggestions, Maria. And yes, people often get the wrong idea and think that sharing on social bookmark sites just means sharing their own. Ummm…. But that's not really sharing now, is it?
You're so funny, yes it's not. Those that don't “get it” will continue to fail in their social media efforts, plain and simple
Nice post on social bookmarking. Social media has really been powerful. There are many people who have been using it, might be a celebrity, a businessman a politician or even an ordinary person. It has already made a mark on every individual.
I love your Smart Ideas list, i'm posting it over my computer! I don't use twitter enough for sharing ideas like this, but i do notice that when i do it really does get around. Same with facebook sharing.
thank!
Thanks, I appreciate it
I love your Smart Ideas list, i'm posting it over my computer! I don't use twitter enough for sharing ideas like this, but i do notice that when i do it really does get around. Same with facebook sharing.
thank!
Thanks, I appreciate it
Good job! It was a nice idea using social bookmarking in content marketing. I believe that content marketing has to do with delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. It has a lot of benefits in terms of getting reader's attention and and improving brand loyalty better than traditional marketing techniques.