Business Speaker on Social Bookmarking
Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a motivational keynote speaker whose topics include social bookmarking platforms like DIGG, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious. He’s a leading authority on self-employment and the author of Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed (2011, Wiley). The 45th chapter of this award-winning book (2012 Small Business Book Awards) is entitled Social Bookmarking (in Part 4 of the book: Populate Internet Properties) and is included below for your review. The book has a total of 80 short chapters, each ending with an Implementation Checklist. Also, Patrick’s perspective on the role social bookmarking played in the social media revolution (as a pioneering use of crowdsourcing and peer-to-peer engagement) is summarized below.
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Keynote Speech about Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking platforms like StumbleUpon and Reddit played a massive role in the evolution of social media. Prior to their introduction, ‘social media’ was restricted to bulletin boards and online forums. Because of their importance in understanding today’s social internet, Patrick has a chapter in his book devoted to the topic. Businesses and self-employed professionals need to understand how these bookmarking platforms work because it will help them understand the prevailing trends on today’s internet. And beyond that, they offer an opportunity to get massive traffic to your website or blog along the way. Let us know how much of this topic you’d like Patrick to cover in his keynote presentation and he’ll ensure the content is will suited to your event and your audience.
Chapter 45: Social Bookmarking
What is social bookmarking?
You might recognize website names such as Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and StumbleUpon—or maybe not! Either way, these platforms are playing an important role in the social media explosion revolutionizing today’s Internet. Here’s how they work. We’re all familiar with “favorites.” When you visit a website you like, you can bookmark it to your favorites, allowing you to quickly find the site again in the future. But what happens when you’re using someone else’s computer? You don’t have access to your favorites anymore because they’re on your computer, not the computer you’re using.
Social bookmarking platforms are websites where you can create an account for yourself and then bookmark your favorites to that account rather than creating a bookmark on your computer. That means you’d have access to your favorites from any computer in the world. That’s pretty neat, but it’s a fairly basic piece of functionality. But wait! There’s more.
The cool thing is that the social bookmarking platforms aggregate all the bookmarking activity of their users. What a wealth of information: some of these platforms have more than 20 million users! That means you could go to Digg and search for tags such as “sports” or “news” and find the most bookmarked websites in the world about those topics. These results are found not through some complicated search engine algorithm, but according to your peer group. You could also search for “fly fishing in Alaska” or “sonatas by Mozart” or “mating habits of mosquitoes.” In each case, you’ll find the information your peer group is endorsing. What’s important here is that your peer group is guiding your search, not a search engine. That’s significant. It allows the peer group to educate itself. The peer group can evaluate content and reward the content it likes. It allows you to write a blog post and then bookmark it on the social bookmarking platforms, allowing your peer group to evaluate it for themselves. If they like it, their validation could catapult your post to a global audience within a few hours!
Every single day, blog posts get to the front page of Digg. Every day, someone’s content is endorsed by the peer group, driving it up the rankings until it’s at the very top. And every day, the posts that get to the top receive tens of thousands (or more) visitors from around the world. Is it easy to get to the top of Digg? No, it isn’t. But is it possible? Yes. Social bookmarking delivers real-time democracy to users. You can literally watch as good content rises and bad content fades. These platforms are changing the way people think. Back in the good old days, people looked at the source first and the content second. “Who are you?” came first. “What did you say?” came second.
Today, those questions have been reversed. Today, people look at the content first and the source second. It’s a big change. That means good-quality content wins, even if it comes from a no-name blogger. If it’s good-quality content, it’s good-quality content. That’s it. You don’t need a fancy title or impressive credentials. All you need is good-quality content. And that represents an opportunity for all of us. The other social media platforms have the same basic functionality as the social bookmarking sites. You can “like” something on Facebook. You can “follow” someone on Twitter. You can “embed” someone’s video from YouTube. In every case, members of the peer group are able to endorse each other’s content.
This same cultural shift allowed an unknown community organizer to become President of the United States in eight short years. Think about how you can capitalize on this new dynamic. Pick your specialty. Stake your claim. Own your little piece of our information economy and demonstrate your expertise. If you provide real value with good-quality content, and if your content is validated by your peer group, the real-time democracy of today’s social Internet will take care of the rest. When creating your blog, be sure to include all the social bookmarking buttons right on your website. Doing so reminds your readers to bookmark the page if they like it, and it’s easier too. Each time you publish a new post, encourage your readers to bookmark it on the major platforms. Once your blog post is listed on those platforms, you pass the baton to your peer group and give the power to them. If your post provides real value, you never know where it might end up.
Social Bookmarking: Implementation Checklist
Visit Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon.
Create an account for yourself on each.
Search for your keywords on each platform.
Notice which posts come up at the top.
Watch what other users bookmark.
Connect with members you agree with.
Ensure your blog posts get bookmarked.
Compare notes and ideas with a colleague.
End of chapter – click here to buy the book on Amazon
