B2B Marketing with Social Bookmarking

In trying economic times there are those who’s first instinct is to cut back on marketing and then there are those who believe that marketing is just about the last thing that should be cut back. This author believes in the later. While everyone else is thinking we can’t afford to spend that marketing money, that’s what you do when you have extra cash, I’m thinking I can’t afford not to spend money on marketing… especially when the economy is down. Although, how you spend that marketing money is where critical thinking comes into play. I look at this downturn in the economy as a tremendous opportunity. Just as there are tremendous opportunities to buy real estate; this is the time to get a leg up on the competition. I can run around like a chicken with its head cut off smiling and dialing and knocking on doors for business or I can shoot for a much broader audience and put in the work to make the business lines ring. While there are many ways to do this, what I am targeting for this posting is related to online marketing and involves already having a website or blog for your business that you need customers to see. Specifically I’m talking about social bookmarking as a method of driving people and the search engines to your site.

So what is social bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is the use of websites that allow you to create a user account and submit links that you find interesting and then share them with your friends, or the entire web. When others see and like the links you have submitted they tag them and/or vote for them or they save them to their own bookmarks. The more activity a link gets, the more popular it becomes on the bookmark website.

Popularity of a bookmark shows how a website is valued. It also demonstrates to the search engines what people think about the quality of a website. In there lies a powerful tool. Yes a potential client may find your site through a bookmark, but if bookmarking drives up your organic search results in a search engine, your business is more visible to the world. When a customer needs your products or services and does a search online, the goal is for your site to be found over the competition. Assuming you have a quality website, hold onto your socks because that’s when the phone will start to ring.

Social bookmarking is something to get pretty excited about…that is if you like having your phone ring for new orders. The next big question is how do you get it done? There are literally dozens of websites on the web to choose from for bookmarking your site. Below are 133 bookmark websites where you can create an account and start listing your favorite sites. Or you can try to hit as many sites as possible, bookmarking your own link…talk about tedious. This rather feels like knocking on doors again and telemarketing. However there is another option. While taking the time to do some of your own social bookmarking, if for no other reason than understanding what it is all about, is good, you can also hire a company to do it for you. One such company of reputable name is Majon International. As of this writing they have an introductory offering to post two links to 125 bookmarking sites for $79.00. While this is one of many, a little searching online will give you other options that may better suit you needs.

This approach to marketing is widely used in the entertainment and computer industries, but really holds value for any company. So weather you are selling a book such as "The Pandora Plague", moving industrial machines such as "American Industrial Werks" or running a blog for up and coming entrepreneurs such as "The Small Biz Pro" be smart with your marketing dollars and consider social bookmarking as one of many approaches to making the phone ring.