Social Book marking- a good way to boost traffic and links.

Social media marketing is a method of promoting your website by strategically making your presence known across various social media networks (such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Myspace, etc). Each category of social media has a different, sometimes intricate method for effective promotion.

Business from Social Marketing is Indirect
Traffic from Social bookmarks generally does not end up in high conversions- say sales or ad clicks, but instead it provides the visibility to your site needed to ultimately convert visitors into buyers. Social media marketing drives brand awareness which later translates into sales. There is a long list of social book marking sites, but about 5 sites account for 90 percent of social book mark traffic.
Social Book marking sites can be classified into following categories:-
A. Social Networking Sites
B. Business Networking Sites
C. Social (Collaborative) Bookmarking Sites
D. Content Voting Sites
E. News Sharing Sites
F. Collaborative Directories
G. Video Sharing Sites, and
H. Photo Sharing
A) Social Networking Sites
The following social networking sites experience a volume of activity unrivaled in the social media marketplace. These sites provide it all; personal blogs, videos, music, classifieds, mail, and much, much more.
1. MySpace: this site offers the widest variety of tools and social networking capabilities.
2. Facebook: great for connecting with old classmates and creating a personal profile.
Each of these sites allows you to create a powerfully diverse and engaging web presence complete with photos, articles, and bookmarks.
B) How to Market on Business Networking Sites
These sites are devoted to networking business people and provide direct access to upper level management / executives for sales people and for those looking to create industry connections.
1. LinkedIn: the premier business networking site where job profiles are shared, jobs posted, questions asked and then answered by industry professionals
2. ZoomInfo: a search engine index of company names and people. Find yourself (if you are there) and claim your space or create your profile.
3. Spoke: a database of contact information for people at all levels of business.
4. Jigsaw: a database of virtual business cards that can be traded and shared amongst members.
Associated Marketing Strategy
Create a personal profile on each of these sites and connect, connect, connect. The concept is so simple I could almost stop there but it is important not to forget that some of these services also allow for interactivity in forums and Q&A sections. I recommend participating as often as possible in these interactive sections in order to gain positive references and to further expand your network.
C) How to Market on Social (Collaborative) Bookmarking Sites
There are a number of websites that specialize in social bookmarking. When you register with the service the service will collect and organize the sites that you choose to bookmark and allow you to share them with other others.
1. Del.icio.us:
2. StumbleUpon:
3. Yahoo! MyWeb:
4. Backflip:
If you are not writing your own content at the moment it is still advisable to find other great content and bookmark it for your profile. It will help you create a reputation for providing excellent bookmarks it is more likely you will get additional, positive attention when you ultimately feature content of your own.
D) How to Market on Content Voting Sites
The following are the top sites used for people to vote ‘on the fly’ for any content they find useful online. The resulting vote then adds the content or increases its visibility within each resource so that others have a chance to read the content. Once something has received a certain number of votes (this is a moving target) the visibility of the content may gain momentum as others have a chance to read and vote on it.
1. Digg:
2. Netscape:
3. Reddit:
To make these sites work for you I recommend participating in each group for a while in order to pick up on what articles do well and don’t do well in your selected industry. In addition, creating a respected profile by bookmarking new and interesting content and posting thoughtful comments on other people’s bookmarks will go a long way to improving your chances of success on these sites. Once you have a respected profile you can ask other respected users to check out your new content to see if they deem it worthy of a thumbs up. Whatever you do, I do not recommend voting on your own content due to the obvious bias and potential damage it could do to your profile’s reputation.