Social Bookmarking - Helping Readers, Helping You

I was helping a client establish a new blog a little while ago and one of the questions they had in the process was what are those little icons at the bottom of posts? I was not sure what they were talking about at the time, but after a little of back and forth I figured out that they were talking about the social bookmarking icons that are on the bottom of so many posts. They simply did not understand what was the point of having them. I tried to explain that social bookmarking can be a great service to your readers since it allows them to bookmark your post and share it with others.

Social bookmarking sites also have the potential of sending users to your website or blog. I have mentioned StumbleUpon a few times here, that is perhaps my favorite social bookmarking service, but there is also Digg, and lately I have come across a blog focused site called Blogg-Buzz. These services can be a great help in getting your website noticed. They are the digital form of word of mouth advertising.

When adding social bookmarking links the tendency is to add all of the social bookmarking sites. While I can understand peoples desire to do that, I usually recommend that people add no more than 10. Why 10? It is a nice round number, plus by choosing 10 you should be able to get the services that has the majority of users. Almost always Digg is on the list as well, and while Digg has the potential to send you a lot of visitors, I recommend people don’t bother with it since Digg is a very specific niche and they tend to look down on blogs.

It only takes a few extra minutes to add some social bookmarking links to a site to provide users with a quick way of being able to find your website again, and the word of mouth advertising never hurts.

What are your favorite social bookmarking sites to use? What services do you add to your blogs?