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If you’re wondering about the play on words and aren’t familiar with social bookmarking, I’d like to introduce you to the concept. It’ll revolutionize the way you keep track of information online.
On the other hand, if you’re quite familiar with del.icio.us, I have something for you too. I thought I knew all the ins and outs of using this service since I’ve been using it for years. But apparently in all that time, I’ve only scratched the surface. Suffice it to say that there’s a world of information at your fingertips and practically limitless ways to put it to use. More on that in a future post.
Social bookmarking with del.icio.us
Your browser’s bookmarks folder can only take you so far. If you work between two or more computers, you deal with two entirely different sets of bookmarks or deal with what can be a cumbersome sync process. Social bookmarking solves this problem and offers the bonus of easily sharing your bookmarks with others.
A button for every browser
Two del.icio.us bookmark buttons simplify the process of saving and viewing your bookmarks. If you use Firefox as your browser, you’ll need to install the del.icio.us extension. There’s a similar process for Internet Explorer. After a quick and easy installation, two buttons will appear on your browser’s toolbar, one for saving, the other for viewing and working with your bookmarks.
How can social bookmarking benefit your business?
Although this is primarily a small business marketing blog, it would be a disservice to jump right into the marketing aspect of del.icio.us without first discussing the social part of social bookmarking.
Tagging
Browser-based bookmarks rely on you to organize information into folders. Del.icio.us allows you to organize your information with tags. Use multiple tags for each bookmark to create multiple ways to find the same information.
For example: This morning I bookmarked an article from Winning the Web, called How to Double the Effects of Your Promotion in Half the Time. It contains useful information that I want to be able to find again easily, so I gave the article an assortment of tags: InternetMarketing, efficiency, blogging. When I want to retrieve the article, I can type the tag name into the del.icio.us search box, or scroll through my entire list to click on the tag. Either method returns every article with that particular tag.
Social Tags
Now let’s turn that around and use tags for research. Let’s say you want to learn about applying for a US trademark. Type “trademark” (without the quotes) into the del.icio.us search box, but click the drop down menu and expand your search from your bookmarks to the entire del.icio.us network.
Many times, I find more meaningful results using del.icio.us as my search tool than using Google or another search engine. The results are from human bookmarking, rather than a search algorithm. Many times those results are accompanied by a short note about why the bookmark is relevant.
Collaboration
Through a shared del.icio.us account, users can easily build a shared database with a team or throughout an entire organization. Let’s use a web redesign project as an example. In the early stages, each member of the team can bookmark pages that he/she finds attractive and functional. They can also tag competitor sites, analyze and note their online strengths and weaknesses (while marking the entry private). Tag other sites that have a distinctive voice or style. The final result would provide a compilation of all the best ideas … easily shared with your web site developer.
This is truly just the tip of the iceberg. In future post(s), we’ll talk about how the wise use of social bookmarking can improve your online visibility and reputation.
Each of the tiny colorful buttons at the bottom of this and every post provide an easy way for you to social bookmark any of the articles you find useful. Just hover over the button to see where it links. If you’ve found this post useful, please bookmark it.
Talk back to me. Do you already use del.icio.us or other social bookmarking sites? Why or why not? What tips do you have for the social bookmarking novice?
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on Feb 10th, 2008 at 3:58 am
This is a very timely article for me. I am doing a lot of research to learn more about the social bookmarking sites. I had not read much about del.icio.us, and you have saved me a lot of time. Thanks.
on Feb 11th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I’m glad you found it helpful, Coryan. There’s more to come. It looks like this will be a three part series. Stay tuned for part two.
on Jun 12th, 2008 at 3:10 am
del.icio.us is a new social bookmarking site for me, I just signed up the other day. I’m thinking it’s about the same as stumbleupon which I have used quite a bit. Social bookmarking continues to become more and more popular these days and for good reason. They really help get my information distributed further and faster than most other techniques, and its all free. The search engines seem to spider a site quickly after it has been spread around a bit on these bookmarking sites. Thanks for the informative article.
on Jun 20th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I do social bookmarking on Digg, Mixx and Delicous on a regular basis. Thanks for mentioning that firefox plugin I can definitley use that foo shooo.
great write up!
on Sep 22nd, 2008 at 9:00 am
[...] Are Your Business Bookmarks Delicious? Shari Voigt describes how tags can be used for market reseach and how teams with a joint account can organize references and links for a project. [...]