| Once again, it has been proven that no man is an island when it comes to the internet. Thanks to social bookmarks, website owners and online entrepreneurs have found an innovative and highly efficient way to promote their businesses through electronic mass distribution. Social bookmarks have also become the avenue of choice for people who want to increase the popularity of their sites. Social bookmarks may be used to drive traffic to a website in three major ways: Through exposure In the internet, exposure is key to getting nearly everything ? an audience, a market and of course, traffic. Each time a visitor finds a website that he likes, he can use a bookmarking icon to vote for it. The catch here is that he 'can', not he 'has' to. However, this opportunity can spell a huge difference should a good number of visitors view a website. Let's say for example a website receives 1,000 visits a day. Out of these 1,000 people, about 100 give the site a vote by bookmarking the page. The figure may not seem a lot but it has the potential to expand exponentially. A hundred bookmarks means that your website was viewed by 100 people who thought it good enough to bookmark it. This gives the website a fighting chance to appear in a bookmarking site and gain even more exposure. Free promotion Once a website gets bookmarked by plenty of visitors, it can appear in social bookmarking sites. These are websites dedicated to showing only the best stuff ? best web pages, best stories and best websites. To be seen here, a website has to be voted for by plenty of visitors to give it a boost. Social bookmarking sites are not lonely archives where records of favorites are kept. On the contrary, they are active sites, with millions of visitors each day browsing to find the best stories about their field of interest. Anyone looking for an article on affiliate marketing, for example, will find plenty in bookmarking sites, with write-ups ranging from tips to grow an affiliate business to the pros and cons of affiliate marketing. Within a social bookmarking site, it wouldn?t be long for a very useful article to get promoted. When that happens, the article itself becomes a natural beacon to drive immense traffic to a website. Best of all, everything is done free of cost. No need to pay for a service or hire someone to do some special work. Targeted traffic Another advantage of social bookmarks over the more traditional means to drive traffic to a website is that they can be used to find targeted traffic. This is the type of traffic which is more attuned to what a website offers since their interests and needs are exactly what the website is about. This is advantageous in many ways, particularly because it makes a website relevant to its traffic, nearly 100% of the time. An internet marketer who gets this type of traffic sent to his website knows that his efforts at marketing and promotion are not wasted on visitors who will not be interested or asked to participate. Do social bookmarks always work? The most common mistake website owners make when trying to drive traffic to their website is overlooking value. Social bookmarks are not perfect mechanisms. Just like any tool online and off, they only work perfectly if certain factors are considered. The most important of these is quality. In terms of content, structure and functionality, a web page or a website has to offer value to its visitors. Is it informative, useful? Does it offer genuine advice and recommendations? Is it fun and entertaining? Social bookmarks may drive traffic to a website but from there, it's the website owner's responsibility to make sure the traffic comes back. |