“The basic explanation of social bookmarking is that it's like taking some or all of your ‘Favorites’ folder and storing it online. So you can login from any computer, anywhere in the world, and access your important URLs . . . . But that's not all that social bookmarking can do. You can share your list of favorites with other people. So if you know other people who are interested in the same things as you, they can check out your list and discover what new and exciting sites you've found about that subject.”
(Jack Humphrey, Friday Traffic Report)
Also see Wikipedia's discussion of social bookmarking.
Social bookmarking is a web phenomenon that you need to understand and use as soon as you start publishing your content.
Social bookmarking sites have grown and multiplied, so that there are now hundreds of them, including some with very high PR (page rank). Many are general-interest sites, while others are more narrowly focused on a specific niche.
By enabling all of us to bookmark favorite pages online, and to comment on other people’s bookmarks, social bookmarking sites have created a whole new way of finding content on the web.
When you bookmark a web page at any social bookmarking site, you ‘tag’ it (assign one or more keywords) according to its content.
When you want to search for information on a social bookmarking site, you use the tags to find interesting and useful content relevant to that keyword or category. The pages that will rank highest are those that real people have bookmarked, rated, and commented on because they found these pages relevant or interesting.
As a web publisher, the vast traffic-driving and link-earning potential of social bookmarking is obvious. Create great content and get it bookmarked and rated by others, and you have a fantastic source of ongoing high PR links and targeted traffic.
You don’t need to use all the social bookmarking sites, and you don’t need to submit each of your posts manually. (In fact, it's better to submit only your best posts - your Linkbait Post - so you won't have your social media accounts disabled for spamming.)
For faster social bookmarking, you can use a service called OnlyWire to submit to sixteen of the best bookmarking sites.
OnlyWire is a social bookmarking site that also provides a submission service to other bookmarking sites. By bookmarking content at OnlyWire, you can submit it automatically to all of the sites listed on OnlyWire's home page.
(In addition to registering at OnlyWire, you'll also need to set up an account at each of the other bookmarking sites OnlyWire submits to, so it can submit your posts on your behalf.)
Start submitting content to the social bookmarking accounts you’ve set up.
IMPORTANT: In addition to bookmarking your own best content, you'll also need to bookmark other people's content that's related to your that topic. Otherwise, if you only bookmark your own content, the social media sites will perceive you as a spammer who's abusing their service to get links to your site.
Social media sites quickly and permanently disable the accounts of users who spam their services. So you need to participate in each social media site in a genuine way, rating and commenting on other people's submissions, and bookmarking other people's content in addition to your own.
So take time now to bookmark some genuinely great resources you’ve found in your niche for other people to find. Use OnlyWire to shortcut the process. Make sure you install the bookmark tool into your toolbar to make things easy.
Visit each of the bookmarking sites and browse the content in your niche to see how relevant each of them are. Rate and comment on the content you encounter there.
Don’t forget to do this regularly so that your social bookmarking pages become a mecca for visitors in your niche. They’ll go to other sites you bookmark, but they are also more likely to pick up your posts and rate them highly.
It’s all part of the process of becoming an Authority Site publisher.