5 easy ways to get bookmarked on delicious and become hot

August 27, 2007

Delicious Screenshot

Social bookmarking has been a blessing for web surfers. Before the advent and popularity of social bookmarking tools and services, people used to save bookmarks locally in their web browsers. Since browsing is a continuous activity and there is no dearth of useful web pages, the bookmarks kept piling up until it became impossible to sort through the bookmarks to find a saved web page. Further, they could not be accessed from other computers.

Online social bookmarking, easy tagging, and sharing of the bookmarks throughout the bookmarking networks has changed all this. The bookmarking sites like delicious let you save web pages on the go for later viewing, so you can move on to the next page.

Every blogger dreams of getting bookmarked by tons of people and making it to the front page of popular bookmarking sites like delicious. So, without further ado, here are five ways to get more of your posts bookmarked, and open the gates to some long term and steady traffic.

Write a post that you’d bookmark

Before writing a post, ask yourself if you were a visitor to your blog, would you bookmark this post? Is the subject of the post worth a lot of attention?

Generally, the kind of content that gets bookmarked often is not the usually rehashed junk that is being produced every second on the web. If you are creative enough, and you have done good research, go ahead and put a creative spin on an old subject. Otherwise, writing original content is the finest way to attract huge numbers of social bookmarkers.

Another type of posts that get bookmarked a lot are huge lists of resources, useful links, and tools related to a particular subject. The bigger the list, the more times it gets saved. People love neatly categorized, well researched, and recommended lists of resources. But at the same time, it is impossible for them to actually go through the whole list in one go, so, they are forced to bookmark it for future reference.

Write clever titles

Clever but not dishonest. A great article with a poorly written title wouldn’t get as much attention as a great article with a great headline would get.

Compare the two:

“Learn more about getting bookmarked”

“5 easy ways to get bookmarked on delicious and become hot”

The latter perfectly describes the content of this post. The former is alright, but it’s boring and doesn’t catch the attention.

Remind them to save

Although you have done a good job researching and writing an awesome post, you need to remind your readers to bookmark it. You can do so by placing links to popular bookmarking services at the bottom of your post or in the sidebar. When your readers scan through your post, greatly impressed by the content, and at the end they are presented with a bookmarking option, there is no way they are not going to save it.

Get your friends to help you

An easy way to convince your readers that your post is worth saving is to show them some social proof. So, get your friends to save your post to get the ball rolling. When a visitor arrives at your page and sees that many people have already bookmarked it, he’ll be convinced that it is worth saving. (See how I have implemented it through FeedBurner)

And here comes another batch of visitors!

Get the word out there

If you don’t let the world know that you have written amazing content, or you have compiled a great list of useful tools, no one is going to bookmark it.

So, stop staring at that post lovingly, and get ready to do some grunt work. Submit your post to every popular bookmarking site that exists. Why not? Everyone needs some reward for their hard work.

Don’t expect to climb to the top of the lists everywhere. You may be hot on delicious but voted only once on Digg. Though, it is likely that once you go viral, you’ll be seen everywhere. But rest assured that you’ll get your content’s worth.

Above all, understand your readers, be helpful, do your homework, and write with passion. Nothing is more effective and viral on the web than what is done and written with true passion.

Any more tricks up your sleeve?

Tags: blog, blogging, content, delicious, digg, links, list, online, reference, Resources, search, tools, top, traffic, visitors, writing

48 comments so far and counting

RajSeptember 2nd, 2007
Great tips!
MohsinSeptember 2nd, 2007
Thanks Raj!
Yves Van den MeersscheSeptember 4th, 2007
excellent post. thanks !
pelfSeptember 9th, 2007
“If you don’t let the world know that you have written amazing content, or you have compiled a great list of useful tools, no one is going to bookmark it.”

Are you implying that we should bookmark our own posts? If everybody bookmarked their own posts, wouldn’t social bookmarking services like del.icio.us turn into something like an aggregator instead?
MohsinSeptember 9th, 2007
Pelf I was hinting at submitting posts to sites like Digg and Reddit.

Though, even sites like del.icio.us have sharing features for a reason. One can bookmark one’s own posts just to share them with others.
IshSeptember 13th, 2007
You’re absolutely right about the clever titles part. I read the title of this post and I just had to read it. That’s the kind of appeal a clever title can have.

Anyhow, I’ve always been a dud when it comes to these social bookmarking websites. Like every other blogger, even I wanted that I should get many hits but everytime I would try, nobody would Digg me and it would be a disaster. I did work towards it and made myself a signature with options to submit the post to the various websites. Since I’m on WP.com, even this is a big pain because you have to literally post the HTML below every post and then edit it so that it becomes logical.

Ultimately I realized my content was all wrong. Then I visted Digg and saw what kind of content is popular. And now I think I have a fair idea of what one needs to write to be popular. And as you’ve said, links and how to’s are the most popular with people.

Your tips are excellent, will try and implement them the next time I make a ’social’ post for ‘hitties’.
MohsinSeptember 14th, 2007
Ish, it’s not your fault. There are so many people trying to get to Digg’s front page that sometimes quality content is lost in the sea of new stories constantly being submitted to Digg. But keep trying and one day you’ll get there.
Madhur KapoorSeptember 21st, 2007
Awesome post buddy .
Steven SnellSeptember 26th, 2007
You have a lot of good points. As far as reminding people to bookmark, I’ve had success with a free tool that delicious provides that shows how many people have bookmarked the page. When visitors see that 100 other people have liked the page enough to bookmark it, it seems to draw even more bookmarks. (by the way, the picture you have in the post is my post on delicious. Thanks!)
MohsinSeptember 26th, 2007
Steven I recommend Feedburner’s Feedflare to show off your del.icio.us bookmark count, Diggs, as well as Stumbles to your visitors. You have to insert the code only once in the template so it updates on its own afterwards.
Steven SnellSeptember 27th, 2007
That’s another good option. I try to target delicious, so I prefer to use just that. I do use the StumbleUpon and delicious feedflare in my feeds though.
jbluOctober 18th, 2007
Thanks for the info. I’m just starting out and this was very useful.
Gadgets and TechNovember 12th, 2007
Really interesting tips. I am really curious to write an article imlementing your tips to see a boost in my traffic.
NeenaNovember 13th, 2007
Bookmarking your own post is the easiest most overlooked step. Thanks for the reminder.
Best ResultsNovember 23rd, 2007
Can i get more visitor using SEO software ?
Thanks for your answer

Wistuo
Marketing BlogDecember 15th, 2007
great advice well done
Auto BookmarkingDecember 17th, 2007
Hi

I am your regular reader You have nice approach.

Would you please review http://www.Tagza.com - it young and funky new Social Bookmarking web site.

Thanks