Social Networking vs Social Bookmarking

Website promotion through social networking and social bookmarking sites are a very effective way to bring targeted visitors to your website. It is also known as social media marketing. In addition to bringing website traffic, it also creates backlinks to your site.

Social Networking

Social networking is a good way of finding prospects for your business, either online or offline. Networking involves joining groups which have some common interest and to let your services or businesses known to other members of the group in a friendly manner. Myspace, Facebook etc. are different social networking sites which can be used to network with other like minded people and to promote your online businesses.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites are those websites where you can bookmark any website or webpage of your interest. This is the place where you can share content that you have found useful and informative, with other people. You can also bookmark your own website or any article or other content of the site. You can use some tags or keywords for the bookmark and it should be placed under the correct category. When somebody searches for those keywords (within the bookmarking site), they can find your website. It helps to bring targeted visitors to the site.

There are a number of social bookmarkeing sites. But the major sites are Stumbleupon, Digg, Propeller, Reddit etc. They have thousands of members who visit these sites to browse different other sites of their interest. Another useful site is ‘Yahoo Answers’, where you answer other people’s questions on various topics. You can post the link to your site in your answers and your profile. This is also a good way to network with others.

So, social media marketing through social networking and social bookmarking sites can be used effectively to create quality one way backlinks and to bring targeted visitors to a site. Another advantage is that this method is completely free.