I was at a Dutch affiliate network conference yesterday, where one of the meetings was about social bookmarking. There are tools to help you know, make it easier, faster, without spamming the network.
However, I wonder : do they work at all? So here’s three questions for you all:
- Do you do social bookmarking?
- If so, which services do you use?
- Do they give traffic?
- If so, which services do give you traffic?
I’ll answer the questions myself:
- No, I don’t do social bookmarking any more
- None
- Yes
- Stumbleupon gives me occasional traffic bursts.
How about you all? My suspicion? Well, let’s leave it till after the results.
Based on your responses I would say it’s as I expected, or rather: worse. Social bookmarking was all the rage a few years ago. People were expected to bookmark their favorite pages to delicious, mixx, friendfeed etc. regularly. The only way it worked was if you didn’t just promote your own stuff. This is the way it always is with social networking online: don’t just promote your own stuff. Talk about what interests you, INCLUDING what you make yourself.
However, none of those sites gave me regular traffic even then. Except stumbleupon, but then I discovered that site because people were stumbling my site anyhow.
But I guess the present generation doesn’t promote though social bookmarking services anymore. That’s good, really, because my sense was that it didn’t work anyhow. Excepting, always excepting, stumbleupon of course. But even there it makes no sense to just promote your own stuff. In fact: I’ve gone back to the old standup: just letting my audience stumble my content, instead of promoting it there myself.
Most people here mentioned twitter as a social bookmarking service. I don’t think of it as such, though you can of course share URL’s there. And if you really wanted to, you could star them all to keep track of your bookmarks as well. However, that’s not really what the service is best at. However, if you Google ‘social bookmarking 2011′ as I just did, you will find lists on which twitter is mentioned as a social bookmarking service. I guess I’m you all aren’t the only ones who think of it as a social bookmarking site.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
1. I’m not sure what the term means. I will say very little.
2. I rarely post a links anymore
3. On the occasion I hit on a topic people liked
4. Rarely
Good topic. I do sporadically use both Facebook and Twitter to promote my lenses. I am not consistent with either.
Yes, I do get a few page views from my REAL friends through those posts. They very seldom result in a sale, but do help with the lensrank a bit, I suppose.
I truthfully believe that these sites have become so burdened with “everyone in the world” posting revenue-generating material much more frequently than anything of a personal nature that eventually people (like me) will drop all “friends” and “followers” who are not REALLY friends–people that I care deeply about and want to know what is going on in their lives. “Swapping” friends and followers in a you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours mindset is definitely not a win-win situtation, IMHO.
1. Some.
2. Twitter and Facebook
3. Not much.
4. Facebook – Some traffic from friends who rarely buy anything and almost never leave a comment on the lens. I don’t fault them for not buying and I’m glad they visit, but is it worth my effort? I don’t really know, but I’m happy to supply interesting links for my friends and, who knows, I may be planting seeds for a future Giant Squid.
I’m anxious to hear your suspicions, Katinka.
1. Yes
2. Facebook
3. Little
4. Facebook landing page drives some traffic.
Traffic from twitter stopped before christmas so not using it anymore. By the way do you think sharing lens on stumbleuon will give any good conversion rate for amazon modules ?
Promotion through twitter and facebook don’t count as social bookmarking in my book, but perhaps I’m old fashioned? I was thinking along the lines of delicious and that sort of thing.
Anyhow: the point of such sharing isn’t to get sales, it’s to get the word out to people interested in the topic, who might share it with THEIR friends, preferably on their blog.
That’s one reason to definitely continue using twitter: the people who share it there are WAY more likely to link to your lenses, blogs etc. in future.
So, no, do NOT expect conversions through these channels. DO NOT, and don’t mind the lack. Same with stumbleupon or delicious.
I agree with Guardianstar that it’s no use sharing things that are only meant for sales. I rarely do that. What I do share is stuff my audience on twitter and facebook (not just my close friends) will like.
I get some brief traffic from StumbleUpon, but nothing special. The other sites seem useless.
I used StumbleUpon too and it works for me. It builds traffic to my site.