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Social media and web 2.0 developments are popping up daily, but many website owners and online marketers are forgetting some of the great grass roots offerings of this consumer controlled web incarnation.

Web 2.0 websites, communities, applications and tools are now a key way to build brands, increase traffic and grow businesses and is no longer just the domain of tech types, early adopters and innovators.

The relationship between core web 2.0 developments and business/website marketing is the purpose of this multi part series - aimed as an SMO guide for beginners and a refresher for more experienced online marketers.

Part 1 - Social Bookmarking

1. What is Social Bookmarking:

According to Wikipedia: “Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, but depending on the service's features, may be saved privately, shared only with specific people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of publicness and privateness.”

2. How Does Social Bookmarking Build Traffic and Exposure?

Social bookmarking helps build a site or business’ traffic both directly and through indirect benefits.

Direct Traffic Benefits:

• At the most basic level, if people bookmark a particular web page they are more likely to make a return visit at some point.
• Social bookmarking services “generally” allow users to make their bookmarks public access which provides a valuable reference resource for other internet users. Unlike search engines where a computer determines listings and relevance, social bookmarking uses humans to classify content – and is becoming increasingly popular way to find information.

• Search engines place great importance on the number of relevant inbound links a website has when determining its ranking in their search results. Social bookmarking sites are essentially a collection of classified links to web pages. Where the bookmarks are made public with titles, descriptions and tags, they can provide some useful link value to web pages and help pages get indexed more regularly.
• While the value of a link from a social bookmarking site is not as valuable as one from a “.edu” site - it stillincreases thevalue and relevance of a site in the eyes (spiders) of a search engine. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that spamming Social Bookmarking services will necessarily get you to the top of Google or Yahoo!

• Reddit
• Del.icio.us
• MyYahoo!
• Google
• Shadows
• Simpy
• Spurl
• Ma.gnolia
• Furl
• Blinklist

For a great list of the many bookmarking services available, visit this post on the 3 Spots blog, which not only provides an extensive list, but also the valuable embed code to make it easier for your visitors to bookmark your site on each. http://3spots.blogspot.com/2006/02/30-social-bookmarks-add-to-footer.html

4. How to get started:

It's really a simple 3 step process to kickstarting your social bookmarking strategy:

STEP 1: Bookmark Your Own Site; Get the ball rolling by exploring some social bookmarking sites and actually bookmarking your own web pages. By listing them on a few of the major social bookmarking sites, with relevant titles, descriptions and tags, your already opening your site up to a multitude of potential new visitors.

STEP 2: Provide Tools for Others to Bookmark your Web Pages/Content. The easiest way to increase the number of social bookmark references/links your have, is by using bookmarklets (images and links that provide users with one-click access to bookmark your content). By adding these to every page on your website or blog, people are more likely to make your content a part of their favorites.

STEP 3: Give Visitors a Reason to Favorite Your Website While there are probably several people out there that will bookmark your web pages already based on the content/information/product you offer, it doesn’t hurt to encourage the behavior. Internet users love unique valuable resources and content, whether that’s a tool, white paper, report, stats, product service…so dig deep and give them a reason to favorite you…!

That's about it. Simple enough to execute and easy to understand. In a supplementary update down the track...i'll go through and create a list of the better social bookmarking services available based on traffic, functionality etc...so stay tuned.

Until then - get to it and start your social media optimization off with some social bookmarking.