Work From Home

Social Networking and Social Bookmarking

Getting involved in either social networking or bookmarking is all the rage at the moment (along with other web 2.0 platforms) and more and more online business owners, affiliate marketers and those just wanting to meet and share with others all over the world are getting involved.

And it seems that not only are more people joining, digging, stumbling etc but with each passing day a new network or bookmarking service pops up online. Some are niche/topic specific while others cater to everyone and every subject. The key at least in my opinion, especially when it comes to the social networking side of things is to not spread yourself too thin -by all means join a few but don’t become a part of so many that you can’t appreciate and get the benefits out of them.

What is Social Networking?

For me, in a nutshell, social networking is where you’re joining sites and communties of like minded people where you can share, discuss, debate etc your field of expertise: whether that’s adding your blog to a community, promoting an affiliate site or just chatting with others to answer questions and offer advice etc. As I mentioned above there’s hundreds of these sites around and while many work along the same guidelines, some offer little differences; be it they offer some sort of monetary reward or different ways to promote your site or blog etc

Some of the top social sites (again in my opinion and I’m sure others will vary) are:

MyBlogLog – there’s a link to this in my sidebar (you can, if you’re interested, join my community from there)

BlogCatalog

Apsense – a business social network

BUMPzee

Facebook

Twitter

Friends Win

MySpace

myLot

I know there’s a whole lot more, but they’re probably some of the more well known ones and are all easy to join and use for those just starting out.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social Bookmarking in a nutshell is a way for people to share their favourite sites, articles, posts etc with others throughout the online world – whether it’s with friends in their community or through random clicks etc. Again there’s literally thousands of these sites around and while you don’t need to be as involved with these as you do with the social networks they can be a great way to get involved with others.

StumbleUpon - my favourite – I’ve stumbled across some really cool websites just by clicking a button

Digg

Technorati - also a link to this in my sidebar – Technorati is a bit of a mix of things but I highly recommend you sign your blog(s) up there

Bluedot

There are also sites like OnlyWire and Social Poster – where rather than having to submit one article etc to several different bookmarking sites they will do around 20 of the more popular ones for you in one go (can save a lot of time)

Those are just some of the social networking and bookmarking sites available as I said there are hundreds more but it’s up to each individual to decide what works best for them and how much time and effort they are prepared to put in to maintaining them etc. As with all things, don’t go overboard and spam or do other things that are only going to end up getting you banned or giving you or your site a bad name etc. Just make sure you have some fun – with the networking sites they are a great way to meet and interact with others.