Social Bookmarking
Introduction
Social Bookmarking is a way for internet users to share links with other users. Because of its popularity, it has become the new big thing in online promotion. However, there is a downside. Visitors who find your site through social bookmarks will probably visit once, not stay for very long, and never come back. It is therefore very important that your site is attractive, easy to navigate, and has interesting content.
The big social bookmarking sites are Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumble Upon, and Reddit.
Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is a site that lets users publicly save their bookmarks. Each site that is bookmarked can be assigned descriptive tags for organization. There is no system of voting, however results can be ordered according to how many people have bookmarked a particular site. The more popular sites appear on the front page, or on the page relating to each tag.
Put a "Save to del.icio.us" button on your site.
Digg
Digg is a site for users to share internet content. After a user submits a link, other users vote on it. Voting a site up is referred to as digging, voting it down is referred to as burying. If a link becomes popular enough, it is promoted to the front page. Webcomics will probably want to be submitted to the Comics and Animation section.
Put a "Digg This" button on your site.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is like channel surfing for the internet. When you sign up for Stumble Upon, you download a toolbar for your browser. This toolbar has a "Stumble" button which takes you to a random site in their network. If you like the page, you can click the "I Like It" button, and StumbleUpon will show you more pages like that in the future - as well as recommend that site to other users.
But just clicking the "I Like It" button for all of the pages on your site doesn't always work very well. This is where the social aspect of social bookmarking comes in. Your pages are more likely to be seen if you are popular, have friends, good karma, and have other people "Like" and review your site. Dosh Dosh has a good comprehensive guide to using StumbleUpon for promotion.
Put a "Stumble This" button on your site.
Reddit let's you submit a link, which can then be upmodded or downmodded by other users. Links with the more points get pushed to the top, while links negative points get removed. Submitting links that other people like will earn you karma, which makes it easier to submit links in the future. Signing up for Reddit is fast and doesn't require an email address, which makes it easy to use multiple accounts to vote up your own links (if you're inclined to use such tactics).
There are also such things as sub-reddits, which are kind of like categories. For submitting comic links, check out the comic sub-reddit. One-time gag comics seem to do better here than story-based comics.
Put a Reddit button on your site
Buttons
Social Bookmarking icons.
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