Let’s start with a simple definition of social bookmarking, then discuss how this can be used as a component of your insurance agency’s web marketing plans.. Social bookmarking allows Internet users (and insurance agencies) to organize, store, and manage online resources, similar to bookmarking pages in a book for use at a later date. Unlike the bookmarks of yesteryear, and as with everything on the Internet, these bookmarks can be easily shared and distributed. Descriptions can be added to bookmarks, so users can browse the content (from short descriptions) without downloading it. These descriptions can include votes (good or bad), comments or tags (metadata). Think of tags in terms of keywords, relevant short phrases related to your target audience.
Spent
Social bookmarking users can save links to web pages that they want to share. These links are usually public and can be viewed chronologically, by category or tags, or through a search engine. I like social bookmarking for some elements of asynchronous collaboration solutions, which allow users to share topics based on category, project, etc. Collaboration systems allow users to subscribe to a feed of information, much like social bookmarking services that provide web feeds for their bookmarked lists and lists organized by tags. Social bookmarking is arguably a simplistic type of asynchronous collaboration. The feeds or subscription feature allows users to learn about new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users. The collaboration and management of these labels can be called “folksonomy”.
What is folksonomy?
Folksonomy is a classification system created to manage tags to categorize content derived from user consensus. Insurance agencies can think of folksonomy in terms of metadata and tags used on their insurance agency website and tag clouds that could be used on their insurance agency blog. In a nutshell, tagging allows users to collectively classify and find information. For example, blogs often include tags and their associated tag clouds as a way to help visualize tags in a folksonomy. Folksonomy also helps us in other ways. One of the inherent benefits of social bookmarking is the human factor, which allows users to determine the relevance of content rather than deferring to search engine bots that automate the same process. By sharing, tagging, voting, and describing content, users can better determine if the content is truly applicable to their needs, and computer errors or misclassification can be taken out of the formula.
most popular sites
The top social bookmarking sites ranked by eBizMBA include (estimated monthly visitors):
- Twitter: 200,000,000 unique monthly visitors, Alexa Rank 9.
- digg: 25,100,000 Unique Monthly Visitors: Alexa rank 139.
- StumbleUpon: 17,500,000 Unique Monthly Visitors – Alexa Rank 112.
- reddit: 16,000,000 Unique Monthly Visitors – Alexa Rank 135.
- Delicious: 5,500,000 Unique Monthly Visitors – Alexa Rank 342.
Others include tweetmeme, FARK, Slashdot, friendfeed, clipmarks, newsvine, and diigo.
Practical use for insurance agency web marketing
Why should your business care about social bookmarking? Social bookmarking offers various web marketing opportunities for businesses:
- Organize and distribute your relevant content
- Drive traffic to your insurance agency website
- Improve your presence on the Internet
- Improve the SEO of the insurance agency
- Improve the popularity of incoming links (Backlinks)
conclusion
When considering your agency’s most important web marketing initiatives, there may be higher priorities on your to-do list, including creating and maintaining a Web 2.0 website, blogging, ezine, e-marketing, and network marketing. social (LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter). With that said, and as you think about your social media marketing initiative, it’s quick and easy to add social bookmarking as an additional component to your agency’s web marketing plans.