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Blogging tips 101: Social bookmarking and networking by Mar Matthias Darin After spending some time searching the Internet for ways to improve my ranking and traffic, I read countless articles and made the sad realization that there were no real down-to-earth practical tips for someone that has no idea what it takes to actually get a blog up and running. The school of hard knocks can be a painful process to go through. First and foremost, a lot of tips and recomendations seem to go along the lines that the computer is your best friend and you have no real life issues to cope with like a job, family, and kids. I'm going to go through some of these so called tips and debunk a lot of rhetoric surrounding them and also provide practical methods that actually do work. Lets start with the tip that seems to the dominate favorite - social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is not all that the endless hype make it to be and much of it is simply a waste of your time. Countless hordes of people sware by this method, but the hard cold truth is that social bookmarking does NOT produce large results for the untold amount of time you invest. The return on investment (ROI) for social bookmarking is extremely low. Here is a list of one hundred and thirty one social bookmarking/networking sites that I know of: Yahoo! Bookmarks, de.lirio.us, del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia.com, Spurl, Backflip, barksbookmarks, BibSonomy, Blinklist, Blipoo, BlogBookMark, BlogCatalog, BlueDot, blurpalicious, Bmaccess, Bookkit, Bookmark-manager, BookMarkAll, bookmarktracker, Bookmax, Buddymarks, Bukmark, Chipmark, Citeulike, Claimid, Clipclip, Cloudytags, Complore, Connectedy, Connotea, Contentpop, coRank, Crowdfound, Digg, Diigo, Dropjack, Easybm, Enroll, ez4u, FaceBook, Favoor, Folkd, Freelink, Freezilla, Fungow, Furl, Gather, Getboo, Google, Hanzoweb, Hyperlinkomatic, i89.us, Icio, Ikeepbookmarks, Iloggo, Jigg, Kaboodle, Kinja, Lifelogger, Lilsto, Linkagogo, Linkarena, Linksnarf, Listerlister, Markaboo, Marktd, Memfrag, Memotoo, Mister Wong, Mixx, Mobleo, Multiply, Murl, MyBookmarks, Myhq, MyLinkVault, mySiteVote, MySpace, Vmark, MyWebDesktop, Newsvine, Newsweight, Oyax, Philoi, PlugIM, Propeller, QuickieClick, Rambhai, RawSugar, Reddit, Searchles, Segnalo, Simpy, Sitebar, Sitejot, Sk*rt, Slashdot, SocialDanger, Socialogs, Sphinn, Spotback, Squidoo, Startaid, StumbleUpon, Stylehive, Syncone, Tagfacts, Taggly, Tagne, Tagtooga, Tagza, Technorati, Tedigo, Thinkpocket, Thoof, Totalpad, Twitter, Urlex, Uvouch, Voteboat, Votelists, Vuju, WeTogether, Whitelinks, Wink, Wirefan, Xilinus, Xlmark, Yattle, Zlitt, Zurpy. This list is ridiculous. What is even sadder then me knowing about all these places is that I have wasted countless untold hours on most of these sites for nothing more then table scraps in traffic. If I had only spent all that time working on my own projects rather then these, maybe my return on the investment of my time would be higher... Now lets discuss why most of these sites don't work. Most of them have rules preventing you from promoting your sites. If you do, they ban you. From their point of view its understandable. Nobody likes the idea of someone taking traffic away from them. If you promote your site, even in context and not spamming, you are still taking traffic away from them. For them, traffic equals money with all the paid advertising. Second, most on this list require a high amount of time interacting within their discussion groups or paying them for pro status and so on. Thats all fine and well if you have no life outside their existance or (in the case of a business) have no need to sell your products to make a living. I don't know too many people like this... Just about everyone I know has a life that doesn't revolve around one or more of the above sites. So, how can you use these sites practically and pragmatically? The answer is simple. Set a time limit on how much you participate in them. For me, anything or four hours a week is not productive or practical. If a site takes more then that for interaction, then its not worth my time. Why should I spend countless hours promoting them for table scraps in traffic? After all, they don't pay my bills... Remember, I stated in the begining of this article, my goal is to promote my own sites. I don't count interacting in social bookmarking for fun although I have limits there too... 
Top tags: bookmarking, sites, social, traffic, countless, tips, hours, life, list, practical Comments from Mikes 66.235.241.102 Hey for me i still think that blog societies still somewhat help in building the traffic for your site. but really at the end of the day, it's the quality of the content you have makes your blog sticky to readers.
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