Social bookmarking is the easiest way to organize articles you want to read, websites you want to reference later, and videos you want to remember forever. It’s allows you to view the media you want, when you want. We could go on and on about what a wonder of organization social bookmarking is, but we’ve already done that (here).
We talked about why you should care about social bookmarking, now it’s time for the how. Getting setup with social bookmarking is a breeze, and you’ll immediately be amazed at how easy it makes reading, saving, and sharing information. Here’s a quick guide:
1. Sign-up
Our social bookmarking platform of choice is delicious (others include Yahoo! Buzz, StumbleUpon, & redditt). Signing up is easy, simply visit the site, and click on “Join Now!”. If you have a Yahoo! account, you’ll be ahead of the game, if not, to use delicious, you’ll need to set one up. Delicious will walk you through setup. You’ll create a profile. When creating your profile, think about how you want to be portrayed. Your bookmarks will be public (unless your specify otherwise), so your username and profile info should fit your business (or personal) purpose.
2. Add a toolbar or bookmarklet
Bookmarking becomes easy when you just have to press a button and the bookmark is set. If you install the delicious toolbar (available for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and a variety of other browsers) bookmarking will be as simply as point and click, having the toolbar allows you to press the bookmark button on any web page and save that page. Bookmark anything with the press of one button. View your bookmarks with the press of another button. Couldn’t be easier!
3. Start bookmarking
Get after it. Find pages you frequent often and bookmark them. Read news with abandon, bookmark what you can’t read now for later, bookmark what you want to read again, bookmark what gets you riled up, bookmark pages that are valuable resources for your business. Don’t worry about bookmarking too much, enjoy the freedom and save whatever your heart desires!
4. Start sharing
Delicious has a built in share feature. Every time you bookmark a web page delicious gives you the option to send the bookmark to someone else – just add their email address. No need to print articles for others, no need to copy and paste, no need to save to your computer. One button to save and share.
Want a little more insight and info on getting setup with social bookmarking? Check out this quick video explanation from commoncraft:
Social bookmarking is a powerful resource, it can make you a master of organization. Getting started is easy, and once you’ve figured it out, you won’t be able to picture life without social bookmarks!
Filed under: Bookmarking, The Basics, aggregator, Bookmarking, Getting started, how to, saving time, tools
