Have you ever wanted to reference a specific passage in a book but struggled to find it because you forgot to mark it? Without a bookmark, locating exactly what you want can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. The same is true online. Bookmarks help you keep track of webpages you want to revisit.
For business owners and marketing teams, there’s an even better solution: social bookmarking websites. You can save and sort valuable content on external websites while gaining insights into how audiences view these links, providing you with social media inspiration and opportunities to connect with others.
What is social bookmarking?
Social bookmarking is the process of saving, sorting, and sharing bookmarked web pages through dedicated websites. As the name suggests, there is a social component: Users can follow topics or a piece of content, make comments, and get notifications when there are updates or new information.
Unlike the pages bookmarked on your web browser, you can access the links you save on a social bookmarking platform anywhere you have an internet connection. You can also easily share your curated folders with other people.
How social bookmarking works
To use social bookmarking, sign up for an account on a social bookmarking website. From there, you can save webpages—including blogs, articles, videos, images, social media posts, and landing pages—and organize them into folders or threads using hashtags.
You can also easily search your bookmarks to find what you’re looking for, so these sites function as search engines with content you’ve curated. You can save bookmarks privately, share them with specific people, or make them publicly visible.
Most social bookmarking sites include feeds so you can discover new trending bookmarks and share bookmarks, which can earn organic traffic for those links. By tagging your public bookmarks, you make them accessible to users searching for similar web pages or topics on the site. Additionally, you can use social bookmarking sites to interact with other users and collaborate on shared folders.
4 ways to use social bookmarking for your ecommerce business
There are several ways ecommerce merchants can use social bookmarking tools to their benefit:
1. Discover trends
Use social bookmarking tools to perform market research on a particular product, service, industry, or topic. By searching what other users are commonly bookmarking and sharing, you can gain better insight into what’s important to your target audience.
For example, an ecommerce business selling outdoor clothing products could use social bookmarking sites to discover new winter coat trends and inform its product development process.
2. Build backlinks
Social bookmarking sites help you create quality backlinks, directing organic traffic to your site. For example, say you sell camping equipment. You could bookmark a link to a blog on your website or a demo video showing how to set up a tent, encouraging users to visit your site to access that information. If you share your bookmark publicly, other users may share it on their feeds, spreading the reach of your links.
Social bookmarking sites typically have high domain authority, which can help your website rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).
3. Share resources
Social bookmarking is a collaborative tool, letting you share curated content with your team. Instead of tagging people on social media or sending them links that can be difficult to keep track of, you can store them in one central location for your team to access. For example, you could create a private folder full of social media inspiration detailing the elements you hope to emulate, then share that folder with your social media manager.
4. Grow online communities
You can build a community of followers through the content you bookmark. For example, if you run a makeup brand, you can create mood boards for different seasons or occasions (like a wedding), share relevant beauty tips, and respond to commenters, helping you build brand authority and connect with your followers.
Top social bookmarking sites
Here are some of the top social bookmarking sites to explore:
Pinterest is a popular social media platform that lets you post and save images, videos, products, or webpages. Organize your pins into different boards, and choose whether you share them publicly or privately.
By adding relevant keywords to pins and posting regularly, you can gain followers on Pinterest. The site also serves as a marketing channel to promote your products or services. You can even set up a business account to sync the platform to your online store and sell products directly on Pinterest.
Pricing: Pinterest is free.
Digg
Digg is a social media site where users submit and vote on bookmarks by either “digging” or “burying” them. Links with several positive (dig) votes gain increased visibility on the site and reach more people searching for similar topics. When you submit a URL link, you can include a description and any relevant tags to help your content find its audience on the site. Since content on Digg resembles a digital publication, articles are particularly suited for the platform.
Pricing: Digg is free.
Pocket is a social bookmarking website that helps users discover and save content on one user-friendly platform. Click the Pocket icon to save any web page on the site to your account, and you can organize bookmarks into specific collections.
Additional features include highlighting quotes from articles and an extension tool that lets you save web pages directly from your browser through the Pocket plug-in.
Pricing: There is a free version of the platform, but Pocket Premium costs $5 per month and includes advanced features like ad-free space, unlimited highlighting, and more specific search filters for discovering content.
Reddit has become a popular platform for sharing content and engaging with other users. Reddit users have the power to either upvote content to make it more visible on the platform or downvote it to make it less visible. You can use Reddit for your business by curating relevant content, answering customer questions about your business, and posting on relevant Subreddits, which are specific communities for niche topics.
Pricing: You can sign up for Reddit for free, or upgrade to the ad-free version, Reddit Premium, for $6 a month.
Pearltrees
Pearltrees is a social bookmarking website that lets you drag and drop URLs, photos, videos, notes, and files directly into your account. As you organize your posts into different collections and sub-collections, it generates an interest graph that connects related topics and posts in a visual framework. You can collaborate with other users on the site to build collections and add notes to different collections or posts to interact with your audience.
Pricing: The basic version of Pearltrees is free for one gigabyte of bookmarking storage, whereas a Professional account costs $10 a month for one hundred gigabytes of storage.
Social bookmarking FAQ
Is social bookmarking part of SEO?
Social bookmarking can be a part of your off-page SEO strategy. You can share relevant content on social bookmarking sites to drive traffic back to your website.
What is the best social bookmarking tool?
Some of the best social bookmarking tools include Pinterest, Digg, Pocket, Reddit, and Pearltrees.
What is an example of a social bookmarking site?
An example of a social bookmarking site is Pearltrees, which allows users to bookmark URLs and online content into collections organized as visual interest graphs.
