It's not difficult to find a list of social bookmarking sites on the internet, but with hundreds of millions of users every day on these sites, you don't just need any social bookmarking list.  You need a social bookmarking sites list that can actually get you the inbound link traffic you're hoping for.  Unlike other guides, which are pushing a particular list of social bookmarking sites or want you to purchase a program with a social bookmarking sites list already programmed in, this guide will teach you how to build your own, custom list.
 

Why Should We Have a List of Social Bookmarking Sites?

Today, it's really not enough to just post on a single social bookmarking site.  If you're just talking to one audience, you're missing out on millions of people, any of whom could become a client or the source of a referral or inbound link.

However, not all social bookmarking sites are equally useful for law firms.  For example, the current #5 most popular site in this category is on almost every social bookmarking list: Pinterest.  Pull up pinterest.com in your web browser, though, and you'll see what it is: a place for people (mostly women) to share interesting photos about fashion, style, food, travel, parenting, and so on.  Unless you have a very niche law practice (fashion law?), you shouldn't have Pinterest on your social bookmarking list.

That's why any list of social bookmarking sites you get that isn't specifically tailored for attorneys—and, more specifically, attorneys in your specialty practice area—won't necessarily be very useful to you.
 

Which Websites Should Be Part of Our Social Bookmarking List?

Any social bookmarking website that you include in your list of social bookmarking sites should have at least some areas that are highly relevant to your practice area.  You should also make sure that every site on your social bookmarking list is being used by Americans—there are some sites that are used much more by people in other countries.

In some legal specialties, you'll actually have a lot more relevant websites than in some others.  For example, if you're in tech or IP law, Slashdot and other similar techie-oriented websites should be on your list of social bookmarking sites.  Someone specializing in divorce law for fathers, on the other hand, may have better luck posting links in the “men's rights” sections of Reddit, which often covers these stories.  You may have to do a fairly large amount of research to get your social bookmarking list just right.

You should also make, as part of your list, sub-lists that include subcategories from each website you've chosen.  These subcategories should be carefully curated for maximum relevance, so that you don't have to look around for the right place to post your new link every time you want to get more inbound links from your list of social bookmarking sites.
 

Should We Automate Posts To Our Social Bookmarking Sites List?

The automation question is a big one for people using social bookmarking sites in 2012.  Automated link building can, in some cases, be an adequate short term link building solution, but in the long term it can actually make your website less easy to find.

Let's say you start using a list of social bookmarking sites that comes from a computer program you've purchased to automate your links. Usually, this social bookmarking sites list will include a wide variety of websites, from the most popular to some more obscure ones.  What you may notice about this type of social bookmarking list is that it's so wide-ranging that most of the websites don't even have a tenuous connection to the area of law you're practicing.

Even if you edit the list of social bookmarking sites so that the program is only automating submissions to your curated social bookmarking list, you can still run into trouble.  Automating submissions to your social bookmarking sites list could lead to your submissions being seen as spam when websites realize you've posted the same content everywhere.  Even if websites don't notice that you've been using a big list of social bookmarking sites and spamming them, Google will.  Google can sandbox, or penalize, your website for automating submissions to a social bookmarking sites list.
 

How Should We Use Our Social Bookmarking Sites List?

Once you have your social bookmarking list, you should start to learn about the websites on the list before posting anything.  Each website is its own community with its own rules—which can be written or unwritten.  Since it can sometimes be difficult to recover your reputation on these websites, try using a personal login first before starting to submit links to your website that could potentially reflect on your entire firm.

Every social bookmarking list will have some websites that work better, and some that don't work as well.  Feel free to update it so that any website that seems to delete all of your posts is no longer part of your list of social bookmarking sites.
 

Keeping Your Social Bookmarking Sites List Up to Date

It's important to always make sure that any list of social bookmarking sites that your firm maintains is kept up to date.  Periodically, you should check subscriber numbers for every site on your social bookmarking list.  If you're seeing subscriber numbers taper off and you notice that the amount of traffic per link is going down, you may want to replace that entry on your social bookmarking sites list with a website that is still in a growth phase.
You should also keep up with some blogs about search engine marketing and social bookmarking.  If you're doing this, you'll be among the first to hear about new sites, and can add them to your social bookmarking sites list before most other law firms have even heard the name of the website.  Pay special attention to any websites that are explicitly law-related, because these need to be toward the top of your social bookmarking list.

It's become a much trickier world in just the last year for lawyers who want to build link popularity.  When 2012 started, it was still very possible to do link popularity building through automated services, which could get thousands of inbound links for your site in a matter of hours or days.  Now, Google has penalized over ten percent of websites for using these link popularity building techniques.  Today, if you want to build link popularity, you need a new strategy.  Here are seven strategies for building link popularity that are proven to get positive results without the risk of being sandboxed.

Building Link Popularity Tip #1: Networking Isn't Just For Computers

There's no reason that you shouldn't use your in person connections to help in your link popularity building efforts.  Your friends, neighbors, and relatives may be some of the best resources in helping you build link popularity when you have a brand new firm website.  

It tends to look suspicious to Google and other search engines when small, new, unknown websites suddenly start building link popularity at an incredibly fast rate.  If you work on link popularity building on this small, personal scale first, you'll learn a lot about building effective links and you won't tip Google off to the fact that you're using any artificial techniques.

Keep in mind that Google will penalize you if you build link popularity with too many reciprocal links, in which someone links to you and you link back.  However, as long as you're making sure at least some of your link popularity building is coming from one way links, you should be fine at this scale.  Usually, Google only punishes people who are found to be building link popularity through automated reciprocal linking schemes that generate many links every day.

Building Link Popularity Tip #2: Use Your Social Networks

Today, there are the friends you have in person and then there are the friends you have on Facebook and LinkedIn.  If you're already part of social networking websites, you need to use them as part of your strategy for link popularity building.  Because social networking websites tend to have a high Google PageRank, they are among the best ways to build link popularity.

Social networks can make building link popularity easier in several ways.  For one thing, you can use your social networks to do link popularity building of the same type that you'd do with in-person friends and relatives.  For another, you can actually create your own links back to your website using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.  Try not to build link popularity too quickly using these sites, because if Google notices that all your links come from the same sites it is likely to penalize you.

Building Link Popularity Tip #3: Branch Into New Websites

If your current link popularity building efforts aren't working as well as you had expected or hoped, it may be because you're using websites that aren't as popular as they once were.  You should continuously strive to branch into different sites as part of your effort to build link popularity.

Try checking out a list of the most popular websites in order to see which ones you should establish an account with next.  If you're not building link popularity on at least some high PageRank websites, Google tends to view this as a sign of artificial link building and may decide that your website is breaking the rules, leading to penalties.  

Building Link Popularity Tip #4: Check Out the Blogs

The blogosphere is a great place to find new websites to post on and to build link popularity for your site.  Don't just use your own blog for building link popularity.  Your link popularity building will go much more smoothly if you start building a list of blogs that you enjoy so that you can comment on them frequently.

Don't include a link back to your website on every comment you make.  Doing this is a surefire way to be identified as a spammer.  Instead, only build link popularity by posting links in comments when the link is actually relevant and can help the person find more needed information.

Building Link Popularity Tip #5: Answer Legal Questions

A common method of link popularity building for lawyers is to use websites like Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, Reddit's AskReddit forums, or some other question and answer website to link their website through.  If you post an answer to a question and a link to your website would genuinely help, this is a great and beneficial way to build link popularity for your site.

Make sure if you're doing this type of link popularity building that you're not giving actual legal advice for specific cases.  You should keep your answers framed as a matter of law, rather than trying to advise someone about a decision they're making.

Building Link Popularity Tip #6: Make a New App

One of the best ways to get people to pay attention to your website and build link popularity is to make an app.  Several app builders now exist that can help you make a new app and put it into app stores as quickly as possible.  By making a useful app, you can attract reviews that will help you in link popularity building.

Building Link Popularity Tip #7: Design Links for Virality

Ideally, you want the link popularity building efforts you're engaging in to combine with a viral spread of your content all over the web by other people.  In order to make sure that your links have viral appeal, you may want to consult with a marketing firm that has experience with this type of marketing.  Overall, viral sensations tend to be unusual and relatively short—no one has time to read or watch and then circulate content that just takes too long to view.  You should also consider using humor in your videos and text content, which can be a key way to spread your message virally.

One aspect of law firm marketing that your firm may not have given much thought to is information security.  However, according to recent studies, hacking and other breaches of information security are actually costing companies over $1 billion every year.  You can't afford to be the next victim of information security leaks.  In this guide, we'll look at how you can implement an online marketing plan without risking an embarrassing or costly hacking incident.

#1: Have Longer, More Secure Passwords

This seems very easy, but when vast password leaks happen, it invariably turns out that the most common passwords are incredibly insecure—things like “12345,” “password,” and “Password.”  If you're not yet using very secure passwords, consider that even adding a few additional characters to the end of your password can make it substantially more difficult to break.

Many services today will actually limit your password choices, trying to ensure that you choose a password with enough special characters and numbers that it will be difficult for a hacker to guess.  However, you should also make sure that your longer password is something you can remember easily.  One of the best ways to make a password that is both secure and easy to remember is to abbreviate a sentence that you'll remember for a long time.  It can be a saying, a favorite movie quote, anything—just use the first initials of each word, perhaps substituting an occasional number or special character where you feel they'll be memorable (like 1 for I, and so on).  For example, “Life isn't fair, it's just fairer than death, that's all,” becomes “l1f1jftdta.”

#2: Use Secure Software

How do you know if the software you're using is secure?  It's not always easy to tell.  In general, the more commonly used a piece of software is, the more likely it is to be secure—but the more likely it is that hackers are trying to find their way around its security systems.  The two ways that you can choose to deal with this issue are to use programs that are less common (a solution commonly called “security through obscurity”) or to only use programs from companies that have good track records of keeping data safe.

#3: Avoid “Social Engineering” Hacking

Even if you have fantastic passwords and great software, they might not be enough to save you from a breach if a social engineer comes to your workplace.  These are hackers who specialize in charming others and in some way misrepresenting themselves in order to gain access to your data.  The best way to avoid social engineering hackers is simply to be aware of their existence.  Make sure that any staff who have been given your social media passwords are aware of the existence of these hackers, and that they understand no passwords are to be given to anyone without authorization of specific people in your law firm.

A common guise for a social engineering hacker is as a tech support person from a company whose software you use.  The hacker comes in, says they need to do some software updates or fix a computer problem, and simply asks for the password you took so much time coming up with.

#4: Keep Hardware and Software Updated

Even the most secure software can have occasional vulnerabilities that are exposed by either hackers or people working internally at the company to fix bugs.  When breaches and vulnerabilities are discovered, companies develop software patches and driver fixes that can make them run better while being less vulnerable to hackers.

If you're not routinely updating your hardware and software, including both software applications and your operating system, you could be setting yourself up for a serious information security breach.  The higher the profile of your law firm, the more likely it is that a hacker could try to use a backdoor into your computer systems to try to obtain your data.

#5: Read Up on Information Security News

In order to know which software packages are most likely to remain secure and what the biggest topics in keeping your information safe are, you'll need to start looking into information security news.  It may not seem like the most exciting topic, but having this understanding will mean that you're able to plug security holes faster and get through major security weaknesses involving widely used programs without having your data compromised.

For example, let's say that you find out that a new critical security flaw has been found in Java.  You may choose to disable Java runtime environments on your computers until the breach has been fixed and Java can be updated on your machines.  While this kind of thing may seem like it takes time and hurts efficiency, the amount of productivity and money lost to a single information security breach is massive—keep in mind that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

#6: Own Up to Mistakes and Leaks Right Away

Uh oh.  The worst thing happened, in spite of all your efforts: you've been hacked.  Your website's a graffiti-covered mess and you're not sure how much of your clients' data was obtained by the hackers.  When something like this happens, there's a tendency in some companies to want to sweep it under the rug.  However, things like this tend to come out—and when they do, you'll want to have been transparent the entire time.  If you're seen as lying or trying to cover up the truth, you're going to risk losing a great deal of face and sacrificing a reputation for honesty and forthrightness.

#7: Use Different Passwords For Different Services

Too many people, once they have a password that “works” for most services, use that password over and over.  The problem with this way of thinking is that when you operate with just one password, it only takes people knowing one of your passwords to learn all the others.

Make sure that each of the social networks you're using, as well as your website, have different passwords.  This will help ensure that even if someone manages to get hold of a password for your social media accounts, they won't have passwords for your automated emailing program.

With 400 million tweets being sent every day in 2012, Twitter and its “hashtag” system are becoming more important to law firm marketers all the time.  Among the tools in your Twitter marketing arsenal should be at least one good Twitter hashtag directory.  Learning to use a hashtag directory can be a little tricky at first, especially if you haven't used many hashtags yet, but with a little guidance you'll get the hang of it quickly.  This guide starts with the very basics of how a Twitter hashtag directory works, then looks at how law firm marketing professionals can make use of several online hashtag directory resources.

How a Twitter Hashtag Directory Works

On Twitter, anyone with an account can create whatever hashtag they want.  This amounts to millions of different hashtags being used in any given day, and can make it very hard to identify what hashtags you want to use.  Using a Twitter hashtag directory can help you to narrow down your choices for hashtags so that you're only using tags that will be effective and relatively popular.

Most of the time, a hashtag directory won't be compiled by one person.  Considering the number of new hashtags developed every day, it would be impossible for one person to create all the new entries in a Twitter hashtag directory.  Instead, a hashtag directory will usually depend on submissions from users.

Types of Twitter Hashtag Directory

Because there are different things that you might want to know about your hashtag, different hashtag directory systems have been developed on different websites.  One of the most basic of these websites is Hashtags.org, which is a Twitter hashtag directory providing users with basic information on the popularity of any hashtags of their choice.

By using Hashtags.org, you can check up on a graph of a hashtag's long and short term popularity.  But what if popularity isn't what you're looking for?  You may know that you've seen a particular hashtag a lot lately—let's say you've seen five different people you follow use #yolo—but you don't know what it means.  Before deciding to use it on your own Twitter feed, you should definitely check up with another Twitter hashtag directory, TagDef.  

Tagdef is a hashtag directory that keeps a listing of as many hashtags as have been submitted by users, and the definitions of those hashtags.  By using this Twitter hashtag directory, you look up the hashtag #yolo and find out that it means “you only live once”—not necessarily the sentiment you want your law firm to be expressing in an official tweet.  Using a hashtag directory for definitions can prevent unneeded embarrassment.

A third kind of Twitter hashtag directory involves geolocational cross referencing of Twitter hashtags.  If you want to see what a hashtag directory shows as being the most popular tags in your area, head over to TrendsMap.  This Twitter hashtag directory can display popular tags on a map, so that you can zoom in as much as you want and find out what's trending locally.

Finding the Right Twitter Hashtag Directory

If you're not happy with the results you're getting from a hashtag directory, keep in mind that there are dozens of competing websites out there.  As trends on Twitter change, it's very possible that some Twitter hashtag directory tools will fall out of favor or become less useful.  When you stop getting the kinds of results from a hashtag directory that you need, check some other directories out, and monitor blogs about Twitter marketing to find out what new directories have recently come on the scene.  Often, the newest tools offer the most sophisticated and up to date functionality.

Using a Hashtag Directory Correctly

If you're using a Twitter hashtag directory, make sure that you're using the right one for the right purpose.  You'll have much better luck getting geographic information from a hashtag directory that specializes in this information, for example.

It's also important not to use a Twitter hashtag directory of popular hashtags as a list of tags for your own Twitter feed to use.  Often, these extremely popular hashtags are so popular that your post will quickly “disappear” from being visible to people watching the hashtag for new posts.  If you're going to use a popular hashtag, try to do so at a time when you'll actually be seen by large numbers of people—you can often use a Twitter hashtag directory to find out when those times will be.

Beyond the Hashtag Directory: Making Your Own Tags

After you've watched Twitter hashtag directory listings for a while, you might want to try your hand at making a unique hashtag that no one else has used.  If you're doing this, you should check a hashtag directory or two first just to make sure that your tag hasn't been used before.  You may have to try several tag variants before finding one that will be exclusively yours.

If you're using a tag that is exclusively yours, you can then use some tracking tools to see where it spreads to and how its popularity changes.  Hashtags.org is a great tracking tool to see whether your hashtag ever catches on beyond your immediate circle of followers and friends.

Submitting Your Hashtags to a Twitter Hashtag Directory

Of course, once you make your own hashtags, you should also try to submit them to any hashtag directory that you think might be useful.  Some hashtag directories actually allow you to categorize hashtags so that you can put them into a useful category (for instance, law and legal issues).  If you're not submitting your hashtags to a Twitter hashtag directory, it will be harder for other people to find out the definition of your hashtag and how it has been used.

Some hashtag directories do keep track of hashtags automatically.  You won't need to submit a hashtag to these.  However, places like TagDef only list hashtags that have been submitted by users, so you'll need to write out a tag definition and post it there if you want the definition to be easily accessible by others.

One of the newest ways to interact with the rest of the web is with social bookmarking.  But what is social bookmarking, and how is it affecting the way people use the internet and find new websites?  Can your law firm actually make use of social bookmarking, or is it a fad that will fade away quickly?  What is social bookmarking going to look like in the future, and how can you plan for it?  This guide will answer all of your questions about social bookmarking so that you can start planning out which websites to post your social bookmarks on.

What is Social Bookmarking: History and Definitions

When web browsers started appearing in the mid-1990s, one of the first features they added was bookmarking.  Bookmarks allowed people to come back to a favorite URL again and again without needing to write down or memorize the web address of a particular website.  These bookmarks were stored in a file on your computer that was kept with the browser application you were using.  That bookmarking functionality stayed basically the same for about a decade.

In the mid-2000s, a new type of bookmarking appeared: social bookmarking.  Now, instead of just storing bookmarks on your own computer, you can actually store them on websites.  What's more, instead of keeping your bookmarks to yourself, these websites allow you to share them with other users.  Social bookmarking sites also often let users determine whether a submission is good or bad, and promote it or demote it accordingly.

What is Social Bookmarking Used For?

If you're going to start to use social bookmarks as part of your marketing strategy, you should know what is social bookmarking being used for by marketers.  One of the best parts about social bookmarking is that it can generate high quality, high PageRank inbound links that will make your search engine optimization efforts more successful.  Google and other search engines base your search rankings in part on the quality of your inbound links, so it's very important to have links coming from websites that are popular and authoritative—which many social bookmarking sites are.

Another answer to the question of “what is social bookmarking used for?” is that you can actually draw in new clients and business with social bookmarks.  If you're using the right websites and making contextual links to quality content, your linking could actually help you to score a new case.

Keep in mind that if you're not creating quality original content, it may not be very beneficial for you to use social bookmarking websites.  What is social bookmarking if not a way to show good content to others?  If your content could use improvement, work on that before starting to post your links to it.

General Social Bookmarking Websites

Some types of social bookmark websites are made to accept just about any type of link there is, and just about any legal practice can post links that would be relevant to their viewers.  For example, right now, there's no trendier site for social bookmarks than Reddit.com.  What is social bookmarking with Reddit?  After making an account on the website (a process that takes only a minute), you can start posting links to your content immediately to a wide variety of “subreddits,” each of which is related to a different topic.  You might want to use a subreddit like “law” for your post, or you might post it in a more general subreddit like “news” or “politics.”

Other general social bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious.  These websites are all different in their approach and interface, but serve the same purpose.  You can feel free to post the same content to several different social bookmark sites rather than just using a piece of content on a single website.

Specialized Social Bookmarking Websites

What is social bookmarking that is specialized, and what is it useful for?  Let's say that you work in the field of intellectual property litigation.  Instead of posting something to a general social bookmarking website like Reddit or StumbleUpon, you might want to try your hand at getting a story onto one of the most popular technology oriented social bookmarking websites: Slashdot.

Now, keep in mind, if you're able to get a story posted to one of these websites and it makes it to the front page, your website may get hammered—an effect originally known as the “Slashdot effect.”  Be sure that your web hosting provider is capable of providing the hosting you need before  you start making posts to social bookmarking sites.

Social Bookmarking Etiquette

What is social bookmarking etiquette?  In brief, every website that you use for social bookmarking will have its own way of doing things—and those ways can be very, very different.  Don't jump right in and post content onto a site that you've barely read or have never participated in before.  Get a personal account first, post a few comments, get comfortable with the website and the people on it.  Only then will you be properly equipped and knowledgeable about the etiquette that guides members of that website.  This will give you a much better chance of being listened to and having your link accepted as part of the community.

Why Social Bookmarking Is Here To Stay

One of the things many people don't seem to understand is what is social bookmarking's appeal?  Well, part of that appeal—and part of why social bookmarking sites have staying power—is that they become communities all of their own, with their own personalities, quirks, and moral codes.  This gives people a very strong sense of identity and belonging with the website.

This is why it's a good idea to choose a few social bookmarking sites and really get acquainted with how they do things.  It's better to post only to a few websites but to post with quality, relevant posts than it is to spam every social bookmark site that you can find with the exact same content, whether it's relevant or not.

Social bookmarks are such a new tool for most marketers that there haven't even been studies done on how many law firms use them.  Getting in on the ground floor of this new marketing technique is incredibly important for both your search engine optimization and just to improve brand awareness.  If you don't know a social bookmark from a social network, this is the guide to get you started.  We'll explore the world of social bookmarks, including how law firms can take advantage of this new tool to expand their inbound link presence and overall reach.

What is a Social Bookmark?

If you've ever clicked the star icon to bookmark a website, you know how convenient traditional bookmarking can be.  Social bookmarks put your bookmarks out into the public, on the web where anybody can see them.  Unlike traditional bookmarks, which are held in the configuration files of your browser software on your computer, social bookmarks are located on websites designed to be communities of bookmarkers.

Many, but not all, of these social bookmark communities allow users to not only submit bookmarks, but also to vote on submitted content.  If content is judged by a large number of people to be good, it will become more visible for more users.  If people think it's spam, it can be removed by a moderator or will just become basically invisible to users.

Most places with social bookmarks also allow for commenting.  Submitting your social bookmark to a website can be a great way to get feedback for a particular piece of content that you've worked on before you link it from your Twitter or LinkedIn accounts.

How Do Social Bookmarks Affect My Blog/Site Traffic?

By having a social bookmark that links to your website's URL or that goes to your blog, you can get more readers to your pages.  Depending on which site or sites you post social bookmarks to, you could see a very small increase to your traffic or—if it ends up on the front page of one of the bigger social bookmark aggregators—a tremendous increase.

If you suspect that your content has the possibility of “going viral” after you include it among your social bookmark submissions, check with your web hosting provider before putting links on social bookmarking sites.  If you don't, there is a chance that a huge increase in traffic will be too much for the servers to handle, leading your website to go down in what amounts to a non-malicious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.  People who try to click on your website while it's down will just receive errors and won't be able to view your content until fewer people are trying to access it simultaneously.

How Do Social Bookmarks Affect My SEO?

The biggest reason that marketing professionals want in on the social bookmarking game is that social bookmarks have the potential to vastly improve your search engine ranking potential.  How?  Every time you create a new social bookmark, you're also making a brand new inbound link to your website.  What's more, since posting social bookmarks often requires only a very minimal sign-up process, it can be one of the fastest and easiest ways to make new links from high PageRank websites.

Keep in mind that you'll always need to have diverse links in order not to trip Google's over optimization detection algorithms.  If you're bringing in all your links through social bookmarks, you may actually end up being penalized.  If you use a social bookmark strategy as just one element of a larger SEO campaign, though, you'll have much better luck maintaining a rankings rise.

Where Can I Submit My First Social Bookmark?

One of the easiest places to start making social bookmarks is Reddit.  Part of the reason this is so easy is that the sign-up process can literally take as little as fifteen seconds—create a name, give your email address, and you can make a social bookmark right away.

When you create an account, though, don't try posting social bookmarks immediately unless you're already very familiar with the process.  Get a feel for the different communities within the overall website (they're called subreddits, and odds are there's one for your specialty practice area).  See how people are interacting, what they respond well to, and what seems to irritate them.  By doing this, you're getting valuable intelligence about what kind of social bookmarks are most likely to interest your target audience.

How Can Social Bookmarks Go Wrong?

When marketers first learn how to use social bookmark applications, they often start by posting some sort of advertising material.  If you haven't already learned this from social network websites like Facebook and Twitter, you need to learn it now: people don't want to see an advertisement unless it's very, very unusual and interesting.  Unless you have an ad that you know for a fact makes people talk, it's probably not good material for a social bookmark.  Some websites will actually delete your links if they think you are creating social bookmarks to benefit your own business.

It's also a bad idea to lie about who you are or who you represent if someone asks you about your connection to your social bookmark.  People who use these websites are very internet savvy, and if you're caught in the lie, it's unlikely you'll be able to create successful social bookmarks on that website for a long time to come.

How Can I Get the Most From My Social Bookmarks?

Making a good social bookmark is a lot like making a good blog post.  You want to have interesting content and a title that makes people want to read “below the fold”—or, in the case of social bookmarks, below the title.

You should also get a feel for the differences in each place where you put social bookmarks.  Check out the comments and community, rather than just using these tools to place your own social bookmarks.  If you're actively participating as a member of the community who's doing more than just advertising yourself, every social bookmark you make will have higher value and be read by more people.

Ten years ago, there were only about half a dozen active social bookmarking websites.  Today, there are thousands, and you may be considering getting social bookmarking services to help you understand the strategies you'll need to use them correctly.  Before you hire any social bookmarking service, though, you need to know about social bookmark etiquette and how your service should behave online.  If your social bookmark service is doing a lot of the “don'ts” and isn't doing most of these “do's,” you need to look for other social bookmarking services as soon as possible.

DO Use More Than One Social Bookmarking Website

Any good social bookmarking service will include submissions on several different websites.  This is one of the best reasons to get a social bookmark service, because multiple submissions can be time-consuming and very boring—exactly the kind of work that your firm might be very comfortable with outsourcing.

Social bookmarking services may post to just a few, or up to several hundred, different websites.  The value added that you get from these additional websites, though, may be not as much as you expect.  After the most popular fifty or so social bookmarking sites, the remaining sites have little traffic or activity.  You may be better off hiring social bookmarking services that give you better links on fewer websites.

DON'T Use Social Bookmarking Websites You're Unfamiliar With

It's important for your social bookmark service to provide you with a list of the websites they plan to submit your links on.  It's very possible that a social bookmarking service would want to submit a link to a website that you might be uncomfortable having a presence on.  If this is the case, you always have a right to tell the social bookmark service to remove that website from the list of websites they're posting to.

Additionally, social bookmarking services should be able to demonstrate for you that they have a knowledge of how these websites differ.  If a social bookmarking service is using identical headlines on all websites or is otherwise treating them as a homogeneous group, you need to find a better social bookmark service.  The difference between websites can be huge, and social bookmarking services that don't recognize and compensate for differing web cultures will be unsuccessful in driving traffic to your site.

DO Set Up a Personal Social Bookmarking Website Account First

Before you even choose a social bookmark service to work with, consider setting up your own account on a few social bookmarking sites.  This will help you do a better job evaluating social bookmarking services, because you'll understand more of what social bookmarks are all about.

DON'T Post Too Often on Any Social Bookmarking Website

If you notice that a social bookmark service is posting very frequently and that your inbound link number is increasing rapidly, you might be ready to praise them.  However, the truth is, you're likely to be penalized by Google if your social bookmarking service posts too many links too quickly.  Google is getting very good at detecting when social bookmarking services are automating posts rather than making new headlines for every new post.

DO Post Relevant, Interesting Content to Social Bookmarking Websites

No matter how amazing your social bookmarking service is, it doesn't matter a bit if you're not making good content.  Bad content won't draw in new people, and even if your search engine rankings go up, your conversion rates will remain dismal.  Content is king, even for social bookmarking services, and if you're posting interesting entries to a blog regularly you'll have a head start on all the firms that are just posting to their company website or attorney biographies.

The more unusual your content, the more likely it is that a social bookmark service can make it go viral.  This is the ultimate goal for the best social bookmarking services, because virality will mean you get a huge number of additional views and inbound links.  A good social bookmarking service can help you develop a viral strategy based on what has worked for them in the past.

DON'T Post Ads—Well, Not Most Ads

If you have your social bookmarking service post links that direct to URLs containing direct advertisements, whether in video or text format, you won't see an increase in site traffic.  In fact, your social bookmark service probably won't be able to help you keep the link, because many websites will delete it right away.  Most social bookmarking websites are ad supported, and if you're trying to advertise blatantly for free, the sites have a good financial motivation to remove your posts.

The only time you should ever have social bookmarking services submit an ad is if you've made a very creative, funny, or informative advertisement.  A very funny lawyer ad could have the potential to go viral, even if it's submitted through a social bookmarking service.

DO Tailor Your Submissions to Each Social Bookmarking Website

Your social bookmark service should know enough about each of the websites you're using that there will be subtle differences in the headlines associated with each page.  This not only helps your social bookmarking service to get more positive attention from the users of each site (because it's demonstrating an understanding of their values), but also to evade Google's detection algorithms.

DON'T Keep Using Social Bookmarking Services That Automate

If you find out that the social bookmark service you're using is automating content submissions, find another service.  There are plenty of social bookmarking services that use manual submissions, and this type of social bookmarking service is much more likely to get good results.  

Automation through a social bookmark service shows that you don't seem to care very much about the communities you're posting to—it shows that you'd rather spam them than participate in a conversation with them.  Would you want to do business with a law firm like that?  You need a social bookmarking service that doesn't make potential clients feel like they're being ignored.