The world of social media is immense and varied. There is no single style of social media platform; instead there are many different types which offer the user and the marketer many different options.

In this article I’m going to explore 3 of the more popular social bookmarking platforms – Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon. There are many variations of these out there including Reddit, Mixx and Diigo; but these are the originals and you should always start from the beginning.

From a social media marketing standpoint, these platforms are known to be more passive in that they don’t require as much time as others such as Twitter or Facebook.

Delicious (formerly known as De.licio.us) is one of the original social bookmarking platforms and is still the most popular on the web. It allows users to store, share and discover internet bookmarks with their friends and the public.

When first signing into Delicious you’re prompted to set up your user profile, including your bio and website (another backlink to drive traffic). Then you get to save your links and categorize them by self-determined themes into ‘stacks’, adding comments and inviting your friends and colleagues to contribute their own links to your stacks as well. Your stacks can be private or in the public Delicious domain to share with others. Once in the public domain, others can discover your stacks, read your comments, share, save and visit your links. It’s a great way to create online brand awareness for your company and to drive traffic to your site. You can also discover other people’s stacks and make comments too, adding to the sense of community and increasing your reputation and visibility.

Digg is a powerful social news website that allows people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. When a ‘digger’ finds a page they like, they submit it to Digg (called digging) and others can vote on it (thumbs up or thumbs down). The page’s ranking on the site depends on how many good or bad votes it receives from the site’s users. The content is categorized into major themes such as Entertainment, Sports and Technology.

Digg is a great platform if you have a blog or an informational type of site. If you’re promoting an e-commerce site or a storefront, it probably shouldn’t be too much of a concern for you. Although by submitting your site, you may garner more traffic and potentially more customers which is what you’re after in the first place.

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine that suggests sites for users to stumble onto. The sites are chosen based on your pre-selected interests as well as the feedback of the people you follow and your previous likes. When you sign up for the site, StumbleUpon installs a toolbar on your browser that allows you to ‘stumble’ through its directory of sites. They also add thumbs up and thumbs down buttons so that you can rate the pages, videos, and photos that you stumble upon. Your ratings will help to push the site higher or lower in the overall index and impact its likelihood of being chosen for visitors. It’s a great way to discover parts of the internet that you didn’t previously know about. It also saves the sites that you’ve ‘liked’ so that you can re-visit them in the future.

Whenever I create a new website or webpage, I add it to the StumbleUpon index by visiting it giving it the thumbs up with the button on my toolbar. It’s a great way of driving traffic to your site, which in turn may also create future customers for your business.

In Conclusion

From a social media marketing standpoint, these types of platforms are a godsend to busy business owners because they’re low maintenance; there are no daily status updates to post, no inbox to check and no articles to write. But depending on your clientele and what you hope to gain from Social Media Marketing, these sites might not be for you. Remember to always investigate who your target market is and their online habits before signing up for any account. Your time as a business owner is valuable and stretched to the limits, so you don’t want to waste it on marketing ideas that won’t offer a great return for your business.