Think Before You Engage: 100 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Social Media Marketing Campaign

65. What Is Social Bookmarking?

Like folding down the corners of a book, bookmarking allows you to save websites or pages to your web browser so that you can view them later. Social bookmarking takes this one step further by saving your bookmarked sites in a public fashion, so that other users can both contribute to and gain insight from the collective effort that gets put into building resources relating to specific topics.

Social bookmarking originated with a website called Delicious. The service that this site provided brought new light to the usefulness of “crowd-sourced” information. By seeing what other people with related interests find useful, a user can build their virtual library while gaining a better understanding of what their target audience is most interested in reading about.

Social media campaigns that incorporate social bookmarking focus on developing the “thought leadership” aspect of a brand. This is positive for brands that require consumer loyalty.

StumbleUpon is the channel-surfing tool of the Internet, with millions of users. It enables people to quickly and easily visit and discover new web pages that they would more than likely never come across.

To use StumbleUpon, you install a toolbar add-on to your web browser, sign up, pick topics that interest you, and press the Stumble button. Topics can range from photography, games, web development, humor, family, ...