Below is the text for an article I wrote for Business Fraser Valley News for their Nov, 09 edition, but I never actually got the published copy to show you a pdf. Nonetheless, it still stands to showcase my ability to write!
Here is the full text that was sent to their newsroom:
Become a bookmarking butterfly and leave a path where others can find you
When you bookmark in your browser, you’re reminding yourself where you found something. When you bookmark socially, you’re reminding your market where they can find YOU.
Sites like delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon have emerged in recent Internet history to allow users to leave tracks on the net. The advantage is a community of common-minded seekers who ride on the back of others. In other words, ‘if so-n-so found it useful, then I might too.’
Help your market do the same with your product. By using social bookmarking tools, you will build a great source of incoming links to enhance your site’s ranking on search engines. People may like you, but if search engines don’t find links, you won’t be helped.
The trick to do doing this though, is to not only bookmark your own stuff. Web masters are aware of spammers who are merely trying to abuse services to get more sales. So spread the love. Every time you bookmark to your own content, leave trails to other sites. Using different accounts won’t work, in case you thought of doing that.
As part of your social marketing strategy, however, you can sometimes ask people to bookmark you. But save this for the good stuff, and again, don’t overdo it. Most bookmarking sites don’t like requests for bookmarks, so be sure to keep things random and balanced.
One last thing. Help people bookmark you even when you don’t ask for it by having sharing buttons on your site. One useful tool is a free plug-in called ShareThis. These give readers a list of options where they can re-post content elsewhere on the Web. For example, if they like your blog post, they can add it to their Facebook, where it will get more exposure, and many more you might not have time to visit on your own to draw crowds out of.
To get you started, here are some of the major bookmarking sites you can sign up for today:
http://digg.com/
http://buzz.yahoo.com/
http://delicious.com/
http://www.propeller.com/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
Of course, the list goes on, and the popularity rankings of the services will likely change over time, so be sure to keep an eye out for new ones and do searches for more you can make use of.