Are You Bookmarking? Here's a Tool to Save You Time

Are you social bookmarking yet? The act of bookmarking a website like you used to do for your own computer on Internet Explorer or something, but now you do it on websites that let you access your bookmarks from any computer, share them with the world, and meet new friends who like the websites that you find, and vice versa?

It's exhausting! And why do we do it? The answer to why people socially bookmark is a whole other post, as this post is dedicated to telling you about SocialMarker.com, the free (as of 2/2008) website that lets you throw up the same bookmark with the same title, review, tags, and maybe a picture, in a streamlined process. I didn't believe it was possible. I only imagined it. Then I gave it a spin, and shaved time off of throwing up a bookmark to three different websites.

Here's how SocialMarker works:
1. You must already have accounts at bookmarking sites, like stumbleupon.com, digg.com, del.icio.us, newsvine.com, Facebook, your Google reader, etc. You must be logged into them already. Usually they keep you logged in on your computer.

2. From its home page, follow the directions and drag the little link that they tell you to into your browser bar (the gray area up at the top of your browser bar, like where web addresses goes, which are also called URLs). This was so easy, I actually messed it up twice.

Here's a picture of where it should end up:


3. When you are on a web page that you like, could be your own or someone elses, you look up to the top of your browser bar and click on the little tool. It will be called SocialMarker.com. This will start the process of taking you through each bookmarking site. First you
will go to socialmarker.com by clicking on that little link up there that I've indicated with the red arrow.

4. Then you will select the bookmarking websites you want to submit your link to - while on socialmarker.com. Remember, you must already have accounts at these websites and be logged in, otherwise, nothing will happen. These websites needs ads to survive, so you may have to navigate around them.

5. In the top right corner, you can put in your Title, Link, Text and Tags. Usually, Title and Link will be filled in for you. You can change the Title if you want, but leave the link. The Text is your "review", and the Tags are keywords that describe the article, which helps it get found in the search tools on each of those websites.

6. Click Submit in the top right corner. There is a "Donate" button there too. Donate if you like!

Now, this tool takes you through each of your bookmarking websites, vs you going to each site, putting in the link, the text, title, tags, etc. all over again 3 or 6 or 9 times. So if you are going to say the same exact thing each time, then it can go pretty fast. If you want to tweak the Text (or "review") for the specific audience at the bookmarking websites, you could do that too. That's my preferred way, that way you're not just regurgitating information, but if you're in a
hurry...

Also, this method will not let you "photostumble", which is another way to bookmark images. To photostumble on stumbleupon.com, you must right click on the image, and submit it only to stumbleupon.com