We have discussed everything pertaining to social bookmarking, its features and the tools and applications that can be used in conjunction with it. We now turn our attention to the marketing technologies that can enhance an implementation of social bookmarking.

The past two years, has shown an upward spiral of social bookmarking websites and thanks to Google’s recent Jagger update, it has been proven that social bookmarking websites rank on the first page of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Because of the increasing widespread popularity of this service, a wide variety of users utlize the service translating into hundreds of links and categories relating to every number of topics imaginable on the Web.

As mentioned earlier, the search engine technology of social bookmarking websites supercedes the traditional methods in that users are more likely to appreciate a list of websites humans have already searched through, rather than go through the impersonal results a search engine displays.

For affiliates, this naturally means a boost in traffic and the knowledge that social bookmarks can bring in a large influx, especially towards merchant sites. Combined with RSS feeds, there is no doubt that this is a very profitable tool for affiliate merchants and marketers.

LookSmart, which recently acquired Furl has combined social bookmarks with a search engine, article directory, product listings and a list of recommended sites for virtually any topic. For instance, if users types in ‘web development’ they can read about the importance of translating corporate or individual objectives to the web, locate a list of locally operating web development firms and get recommendations (based on the experience of other users) for which firm to select.

These and other marketing strategies (not used in conjunction with social bookmarks) will pave the way corporate marketing strategies are empowered by the web, relaxing the grip search engines have on driving traffic and passing the reins to other sources thereby increasing competition, since there are now a variety of forms.

Social bookmarks, email marketing, RSS feeds, search engine optimisation all hold equally important roles in the constantly changing field of internet marketing.

We hope this series of articles has been helpful to you in understanding the technologies presented within and making a decision regarding the next step.