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(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
What is social bookmarking? It’s no more than a fancy name for a combination of the following:
- a place to store your browser bookmarks (what Internet Explorer calls “favorites”) online, instead of using your browser’s bookmarks feature (which saves them locally, on your hard drive) – this allows you, among other things, to access your bookmarks when away from home, no matter what browser or operating system you’re using. It also allows them to survive even if your hard drive is destroyed and you have no backups.
- bookmark sharing: while you can optionally set some bookmarks as “private”, by default they’re “public”. There’s a page (usually the social bookmark site’s front page) that shows new bookmarks as they’re added, and which a lot of people read. You can also click on any user’s name and see his/her (public) bookmarks.
- usually, there’s also some way to rank bookmarks – by seeing how many people added them to their own list – and/or rate them.
I find all of this quite useful, both to store my bookmarks and to find interesting stuff – for instance, someone who’s bookmarked something I like may also have bookmarked other stuff I’ll also like. I mostly use del.icio.us, but I’ve also found some very interesting links at Digg. If you want it, there’s a longer list of such services here.
But there’s more – you can also use these services to drive traffic to your site.
How? First, the obvious way: by adding both your site, and some individual pages from it, yourself. Don’t overdo it and add every single one of your 1738 posts to it, of course – add the front page, those you consider your best posts, and any series index pages. Remember that every addition appears in the social bookmarks site’s front page for a while.
That, by itself, can get you a few hits. But the best part is yet to come: having other people add your site, or individual pages from it, to the same social bookmarks sites. For a start, that improves your ranking – a page bookmarked by 1 lone guy attracts much less attention than one listed as being on 382 users’ bookmarks. Also, those sites usually have “popular” links highlighted, or in a very visible place in the front page. So having many people bookmarking one of your pages ensures a lot of new hits to it.
Now, how to have other people bookmarking your site or its pages? The most important thing is, of course, quality content. That, by itself, will get you some bookmarks – I, myself, usually bookmark pages I want to read more thoroughly at a later time, or sites I want to return to, later. (by the way, you can take a look at my del.icio.us bookmarks list if you want – you may find something of interest there.)
But, of course, there are other things you can do.
For instance, ever noticed the Bookmark on del.icio.us link below each of my posts? That’s a WordPress plugin, which does it automatically. It never hurts to remind people.
Or you can simply ask. Do you like my site? Are you finding this series useful? Want to thank me? What about adding it (the site, or this series, or any other article you like) to your del.icio.us bookmarks? 
Related posts:
On this topic I would just add that you can add traffic to your blog by allowing other people to syndicate your content on their blog. StepWebz.com provides an RSS syndication button you can add to your blog. People who click on it will have the opportunity to choose from an array of content tools (news box, news ticker, news link, news patch) to display your news headline on their site. Visit http://www.stepwebz.com for more details.