Make your mark

Photographer : ajkohn2001

What is social bookmarking?

Once upon a time, if you liked a webpage you could “bookmark” it in your web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer) to make it easier to find later on. Social bookmarking takes this to a whole new level and allows you to share these bookmarks online instead of simply storing them. These bookmarks are stored on a website, and are then given keywords or “tags” so that other users of the website can search through the pages to find them.

As social bookmarking has become popular, websites all over the web have added buttons which submit their content to various social bookmarking websites. Many social bookmarking sites also have a rating function so that users can vote for more popular articles to be more prominently displayed. Because it increases web traffic, social bookmarking has become a big part of web 2.0 design, and it’s hard to find a website these days which isn’t covered in social bookmarking buttons.

What’s so great about it?

Social bookmarking brings two main advantages: it directs web traffic to your site, and helps increase your ranking in search engines.

Web traffic increases because the user who clicks on your social bookmarking button enters you into the bookmarking site which sends other users to your website. Users often have to nominate their topics of interest, so you’re also more likely to be seen by users who are interested in what you do.

The increase in search engine ranking is something of a welcome side-effect. Whenever your webpage is displayed by another website, it increases your website’s external links, which means there are more connections to your website, and as far as the internet is concerned, this makes your website more popular. When a search engine (e.g. Google) lists your website in the results of a search, you could now be listed 12th instead of 24th.

Both traffic increases and a higher search engine ranking mean that the internet and its users become more aware that you–and your cause–exist.

Sifting the gems from the junk:

The temptation to cover your webpage in hundreds of social bookmarking buttons can be hard to overcome. Keep repeating to yourself “clutter looks unprofessional and goes against all things web 2.0.” Ideally, you should allow yourself only 5-7 buttons. But with literally hundreds of buttons available, how will you choose?

1. Pick the big four: Digg it, Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us and Reddit. These are the dominant social bookmarking websites, and each allows users to vote for their favourite content.
2. Then you might want to consider some of the social networking website buttons such as Facebook or Twitter because of their reach.
3. Major internet names like Google or Yahoo are also popular choices.
4. Finally, you might want to take the time to research social bookmarking sites which are specific to your field. For example, if your organisation focuses on environmental issues, you might want to add Hugg.com, which is a green media bookmarking site.

How do I actually get the buttons?

Selecting your own choice of buttons is the best design option, but adding them to the site individually gets pretty technical. Pick the ones you want and then ask a web developer to put them on for you.

If you don’t have access to a web developer, don’t despair! There is an excellent social bookmarking service called AddThis which is easy to use. It gives you one button, which when clicked provides a drop down menu of over 50 different social bookmarking sites for your users to choose from.



The website walks you through the process of customising the button and your display options, and then provides the code which you need to add to your website’s code in order to display the button. If you’re still a little shaky on the process, watch the AddThis film tutorial above.