| Bottom line up front: It's a tool, like any other, | | | | enough for your IM needs? Only you can answer |
| that can be abused or used wisely. Find your own | | | | that for yourself. Are multiple personas a genuine, |
| balance here. | | | | ethical way of your IM philosophy? |
| Social bookmarking explained | | | | Automated Socialbookmarking Solutions... |
| Two Different Styles of Social bookmarking: | | | | Automated Socialbookmarking Account Creation |
| Some IM'ers have a more straight edge approach | | | | Check out #15. 1,155 bookmarks helped to bring |
| to it. They'll outsource their social bookmarking | | | | one of my clients USD$3,391 over 6 weeks. We |
| efforts to have it done "naturally". They'll have | | | | ran a few articles in conjunction with this |
| established, old, "mature", social bookmarking | | | | campaign, but everything else was automated. Or |
| personas that will never get labeled as spam. The | | | | outsourced. See the number of links to be posted |
| links these personas point to are often | | | | listed as 54? We paid one outsourcer to write and |
| camouflaged... for example, they'll include a | | | | spin descriptions and titles of several feeder sites |
| money-page link among benign links to wikipedia, | | | | for an hour. Assigned those links to automated |
| some musical artist, etc. This can be called "The | | | | socialbookmarking personas (listed as accounts), |
| Gardening Approach". It's slow, it produces results, | | | | then let it run for 5 weeks. I'm a firm believer |
| and it appears naturally edible (read:indexed and | | | | in...you promote something until you don't want to |
| spidered) to Google. This is a great approach to | | | | earn money by promoting it... So, #15 was just a |
| use for non-seasonal items, products, etc. It's | | | | "test run" for one client to really see the potential |
| steady. And slow. And appears natural. | | | | of social bookmarking. Now, it doesn't end here: |
| Other IM'ers take a more gray hat approach. | | | | There are multiple ways to automate the creation |
| There are many, many automated programs and | | | | of your social bookmarking personas. You still |
| services that create personas for you and | | | | need to automate these personas submitting to |
| automatically push...or drip...bookmarks to the sites | | | | their accounts. Bookmarkingdemon has serious |
| you choose. The problem is, this creates a *huge* | | | | potential- it follows a blueprint I've used that's |
| potential for abuse. Why slowly make my way | | | | definitely assisted me: |
| through this site, plugging away one bookmark at | | | | Automated Socialbookmarking for internet |
| a time at one site at a time when I can do it | | | | marketing campaigns |
| automatically? Anything that automates a process | | | | Create Your SB personas->Assign Personas to |
| for me...I'm all for. I can show my outsourcers | | | | URL's you're promoting and start automatic or |
| how to do it, which tool to use, and that frees | | | | drip bookmarking->Use your favorite Ping |
| them up for other things I need them to do. | | | | Server to ping the same URL's->Use your |
| Social Bookmarking personas explained | | | | favorite Ping Server to ping the URLS of your |
| Let's step back and define what personas are, | | | | persona's profile->Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Don't |
| because they- not the bookmarks themselves- | | | | forget to add the camouflaged links to your |
| are the real heart of social bookmarking. | | | | bookmarking queues... links to sites you have no |
| A persona is one person with several | | | | personal involvement with. |
| bookmarking accounts, creating multiple | | | | See the potential? More inlinks to your intra-net's |
| bookmarks on multiple sites on a semi-regular | | | | and mini-net's of feeder pages, web 2.0 |
| basis. They've filled out the info on their profile | | | | properties, landing pages, article directories, video |
| pages, and they also use the same bookmarking | | | | sharing sites.... |
| sites that they bookmark to. Sounds plain, right- | | | | is another clear innovator in this segment of the |
| but this is typically the behavior of a 'normal' | | | | game. Check them out to see where they've |
| person using this type of web 2.0 property. | | | | taken this part of the game. |
| Google eats this up. Know why? Yeah, that's why. | | | | Find your own balance and keep in mind that |
| Many of the 'best' (read:highest PR on Google) SB | | | | personas will always be the heart of your social |
| sites require cookies. Kind of hard when you're | | | | bookmarking tactics. |
| using a proxy, eh? Google has teams of human | | | | Of course, creating those personas is some |
| intelligence experts running crazy insane algorithms | | | | detailed, nitty-gritty work. |
| (think:mad mad savant SQL genuises) on data it's | | | | What's the future of automated |
| collecting. | | | | socialbookmarking persona creation and |
| Needless to say, a lot of the 'automated' | | | | bookmarking? Captchas that convert text to |
| personas get booted as spammers. | | | | speech, and having this process captured by |
| Social Bookmarking Persona Metrics | | | | speech recognition software that will kick it out in |
| So, would a 'normal' person make 2 or 3 | | | | text format to allow some macro to copy and |
| bookmarks a day....or, 100-200? Is it better to | | | | paste that text back to the Captcha. |
| have a slow drip of bookmarks, over an | | | | Fringe IM'ers are already having a modicum of |
| extended period of time, or, is there a sudden | | | | success with what they've been able to create... |
| flux of 100 bookmarks a day for 3 or 4 days? | | | | and you better believe there are a lot of |
| These are important questions to consider when | | | | outsourced teams all over the world trying to |
| evaluating your own marketing style as applied to | | | | solve this particular little challenge. |
| SB. | | | | J. |
| Will one or two social bookmarking personas be | | | | |