Reach a larger audience with the most popular social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites allow internet users to share news, articles, videos, blogs, images, GIFs and websites that they have found with a large audience. They are great places to go to find all that is best and most current on the internet. Social bookmarking sites are also great for your own website. They can help raise your brand awareness with your target audience. The more people who get exposure to the content on your site, the more likely it is to go viral.  To really get some page hits you should consider sharing your website on a social bookmarking site. We are running through some of the most popular social bookmarking sites in today’s article.

Free Movies

Pinterest

Pinterest is a hugely popular platform for people to share their arts and crafts ideas. To be successful on here, you need a “show not tell” approach. 80 % of the user base is women, and 42% of all women in the USA have an account. That is astonishing. If that is a market you are looking to break in to, then you will have a large female audience here. It has been said that users of Pinterest often consult the site first before making a buying decision at a store. The average order from visitors who have been referred by the site is almost $60.

Twitter

Even your granny has probably heard of Twitter by now. It’s Donald trumps favorite soap box, and it’s also an excellent social bookmarking site.

There are something like 300 million users on Twitter and half a billion Tweets are sent each day.

This is obviously an incredible opportunity to share your brand, and modern businesses will want to be on top of this.

Over 77% of Twitter users are from outside the USA.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the “professional” social media site, used by individuals looking to “network” and generally climb the greasy career ladder.

There are over 300 million members here, and two more sign up every second. 40 % of these users are reported to check LinkedIn daily.

Sharing your content on LinkedIn is a good way for your brand to get noticed by “people who matter”.

StumbleUpon

I used to be an avid user of StumbleUpon up until around 5 0r 6 years ago. It is one of the original social bookmarking sites. StumbleUpon was a little different in that you “stumbled” across random websites based off your interests. I’ve heard it described as channel surfing for the internet age. A thumbs up would mean that you would see more websites like the one you liked. A thumbs down meant that that interest would score lower. Users left useful reviews on each site. The Stumbleupon toolbar was a big add-on for Firefox. I would often consult the reviews of a website using Stumbleupon to asses a websites reputation. I still remember the thrill of sharing something on the site, and seeing that page become popular with lots of “thumbs up”.

It’s still on the go yet, but as far as I know, not half as popular as it used to be. Part of the reason for the decline of StumbleUpon is unfortunately due to them forcing more and more paid content on users. This lead to a drop in quality of the service, and a migration of users from Stumbleupon to social bookmarking sites like Reddit. Also, to use StumbleUpon, you need a toolbar plugin. This is fine for Firefox which is highly customizable, but is a problem with Chrome, which most people use nowadays.

You may still find it worthwhile to market your product or website on StumbleUpon as they still have 8 million active users after all. Just be aware that it is no longer at the cutting edge of social bookmarking sites.

Reddit

I would say that currently Reddit holds the crown for the most popular social bookmarking site for young men in their late teens, twenties and thirties. On Reddit you can submit web links, images, videos and begin discussions to a variety of subreddits designed to cater to different interests.  Anyone can create their own little corner in Reddit for their niche interest. Other users “upvote” or “downvote” submissions based on their relevancy and whether or not they like the post or link.

Reddit continues to be used successfully by marketers to raise their brand awareness, especially the r/Videos subreddit and the r/AMA subreddit where influential and important people engage in an open question and answer session with Reddit users.

However, it is worth noting that the audience here is sometimes adverse to blatant marketing, and this may do you more harm than good.

Scoop.it

Scoop.it is one of the social bookmarking sites aimed squarely at professionals, corporations, business people and non-profit leaders. In this respect I would put it in the same category as LinkedIn. Using both of these websites will allow you to market towards business orientated, career driven individuals. It has over one million registered users, so currently is one of the smallest social bookmarking sites on this list, and pales in comparison to LinkedIn. However, if you want to use social bookmarking sites as part of your strategy then I wouldn’t ignore Scoop.it. It is growing rapidly in reach and influence among business minded social media users.

NewsVine

NewsVine was launched all the way back in 2006. It was named Top News Site of that year and in 2007 was named as one of Time Magazines top 50 websites. It still remains hugely popular and relevant today, and is still counted as one of the most popular social bookmarking sites. 48% of its users come from India, where the site is ranked quite highly.

Verdict

Good use of social bookmarking sites can be hugely beneficial to the footfall your website can receive. Sharing your article on one of these sites can help it to reach a much wider audience, and can even help it to “go viral”. My advice would be that if you are going to share your website or product through one of these social bookmarking sites, then immerse yourself in the website for a while before sharing. Your submissions will gain much more traction if you understand the culture and your audience. If you a better understanding of the average person who uses the site, you will be able to grab their attention better and also approach them in a way that will ensure respect not annoyance.