Social Networking Helps You Make Friends and Influence Spiders

 Social bookmarking is a system of sharing internet bookmarks with other Internet users. There are many websites that allow you to share your favorite web pages and network with other users. Here are a few of the most popular:

Technorati – This site allows users to share their blogs, photos, videos and more and boasts almost a million and a half visitors each month.

del.icio.us – This site is a very popular and was one of the first social bookmarking sites to really take off.

Digg – This site receives 8.7 million visitors each month. Visitors can look up any topic and receive instant information and statistics.

StumbleUpon – This is a relatively new site and it combines myspace with social bookmarking. Users can make up 5 of their own pages on any topic they want.

Reddit -This site allows users to view what’s new, what’s hot at the moment and what the weekly stats are.

MyBlogLog – This site combines social bookmarking, blogging and social networking.

ma.gnolia – This site isn’t quite as big as some of the others but it is very easy to use and has a lot of information to make the process of social bookmarking understandable. This is a great site to get started with.

These sites are all varied and, while they share in social bookmarking, they are all geared towards different audiences. To get the most out of these sites you may want to combine the use of several of them. For instance, you can list your blogs on Technorati and ping the site when you update your blogs; then join a site such as StumbleUpon and set up five web pages about various topics found on your own website.

For instance, if your website featured information on women entrepreneurs, one of your StumbleUpon sites could feature information on time management for women entrepreneurs and another page could feature information on setting up a home office for women entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, keep your bookmarks in del.icio.us to share with other users and visit a site such as Tailrank to keep track of what other people are blogging about. This can inspire new blog posts for your own blog, which would then mean you’d have more pings for Technorati and the cycle would just start over.

All of these elements would work together to create more buzz for your website and introduce you to people with similar interests. This could lead to more web traffic and even some future joint venture partners, which, in turn would lead to even more traffic.

For all you internet newbies out there (like me,) visit Heather Masson, she’s the go-to-gal on Internet Marketing, Web 2.0 and social networking. Heather gives you the latest, greatest tips and advice and cuts through all the hype. Heather also makes all the “geek speak” easy to understand.