Keeping Track of Research with Social Bookmarking
In a previous issue of eMarketing Bits & Bytes, I showed
you how to use
Google Alerts to automate internet research. If you tried
it out and set up some Alerts, you’ve probably noticed
that each Alert can include several links. This makes it hard
to keep track of the links you want to keep. You can see how
pretty soon your research is going to get out of control.
At this point, finding information may seem like the easy
part while organizing it and retrieving it may seem like a
daunting task. All those links won’t help you very much
if you can’t find what you’re looking for when
you need it. In this issue of eMarketing Bits & Bytes,
I’m going to show you how to organize your research
so you can actually do something with it!
For those of you using Internet Explorer (IE) to browse the
internet, you probably know to click on “Favorites”
to book mark a link. You’ve probably also learned the
hard way that your bookmarks “live” on your computer.
You can’t access them from any other computer and you
can’t share or easily organize them.
Enter Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is one of latest internet buzz words.
At its essence, social bookmarking is a fancy way to say “a
list of links I can access anywhere and share with my friends.”
With social bookmarking, you can add links to your list or
bookmarks from any computer with internet access and you can
easily organize them. The most popular social bookmarking
website is http://del.icio.us.
(Make note! Do not put “www” in front of del.icio.us.
You won’t get there if you do!)
One of the problems with bookmarking links in Internet Explorer
is that you have to decide which folder (or folders) a link
belongs in before you bookmark it. I’ve found that life
on the internet rarely affords you the wisdom to know exactly
where things belong and categories that made sense one day
can be confusing the next. Research via the internet requires
a dynamic classification system that gives you the ability
to change as you gather and assimilate new information.
With social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, links are
organized with tags. Tags are one word descriptors you choose
on the fly to describe what the link means to you. Each link
can have as many tags at you want and you can edit or changed
tags later. The primary benefit of tags is that they enable
you to put a link in multiple dynamic categories.
Streamlining the Bookmarking Process
I’ve used del.icio.us for over two years and have been
pretty happy with it. The only problem I’ve found is
that it’s kind of cumbersome to add a link to your del.icio.us
account. You have to open a separate browser window, navigate
to del.icio.us, then go through the steps of creating the
bookmark. I’ve lost track of information I later realized
I wanted because I didn’t want to take the time to go
through the bookmarking process. I’m constantly telling
clients to make their websites easier for their prospects
and clients to use and this was yet another example of how
we are more likely to do something if it’s easy.
Del.icio.us now has a button you can install on your browser
that will streamline the bookmarking process. For those of
you using IE, you can add a del.icio.us button
to your browser window. Your IE toolbar will look something
like this:
The button in the red box will take you to the del.icio.us website
and the down arrow next to it will display all your bookmarked
sites. The button in the blue circle will enable you to quickly
add the site you are currently viewing to your del.icio.us bookmark
list. (The red box and blue circle won’t be there when
you add the buttons. I’ve added them for emphasis.)
For those of you not using IE, if you haven’t already,
you can install the Google
toolbar or Yahoo
toolbar and add the del.icio.us button to either toolbar.
If you use this option, also check out the del.icio.us
bookmarklets which will help you streamline the bookmarking
process.
Let Others Do the Research for You!
The feature of del.icio.us that makes it social is the ability
to share your bookmarks with friends, colleagues and clients.
You can either invite people to join your network or they
can add themselves to your network. By default your network
is public but you can make it private.
Links for you enables you to receive bookmarks from other
del.icio.us users. The link to it, at the top of any page
on del.icio.us, is bold when you’ve received a new bookmark,
so you know when to check it. If you start using del.icio.us,
let me know your account name! I will send you links I think
might be of interest to you.
Subscriptions allow you to get notification of links assigned
tags you want to keep track of. After you add a tag to your
subscriptions, del.icio.us watches for everyone's bookmarks
saved with the same tag and sends them to your subscriptions
page.
Hopefully I’ve piqued your interest in trying del.icio.us.
If you’re new to using the internet to your advantage,
it can be a little confusing sometimes but del.icio.us has
pretty good help files that will show you how to get the most
out of it. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate
to call or email me.
Happy researching!
Related Links:
Want to learn more about social bookmarking? Check out this
recent Wired Magazine article:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,72070-0.html?tw=rss.index
Learn more about del.icio.us and how it works at http://del.icio.us/help/
Install the del.icio.us button: http://del.icio.us/help/ie/extension
del.icio.us bookmarklets: http://del.icio.us/help/buttons
Google toolbar: http://toolbar.google.com/T4/index_xp.html
Yahoo toolbar: http://toolbar.yahoo.com/?.cpdl=iy
|
