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Add This is a widget you can add to your site that encourages visitors to bookmark your content.
For the past few years, organizations have been savvy about including social media networking sites in the marketing mix. As our experience with social media expands, we discover that some of the more subtle elements within the social media world may harness the most marketing power. While networking communities continue to be the most popular social resource, the quiet practice of social bookmarking can make great contributions to your online marketing program. Social bookmarking can often outperform online advertising and in many cases, social networking sites in driving traffic to your site and can do so with minimal effort.
The basics of bookmarking
As with many terms in technology, our traditional encyclopedias and dictionaries have not yet caught up to the phrase ‘social bookmarking’ and an agreed upon definition. The definition continues to evolve. For the purposes of this article, we will refer to Wikipedia’s definition of social bookmarking. Wikipedia describes social bookmarking as a quick way to share, organize, search, and manage links to web resources by collecting abstracts, tags and information that reference sites, blogs, videos, images, interviews, podcasts, editorials (on and offline), tools, references and applications.1
A secret worth sharing
With such a broad definition of bookmarking, it can be easier to understand the value by explaining some of the practical features of bookmarks that can be used by marketers to drive traffic and build reputations.
Whether public, private or by group invitation, the power of bookmarking is derived from sharing relevant web-based information and adding value to others’ bookmarked contributions. By selecting targeted content on your web site or blog and determining audience categories, you can use bookmarking to your advantage. Carefully selecting high-value content for bookmarks can help your business grow niche audience traffic from previously untapped sources.
Marketers should also consider establishing topic-related ‘homes’ for audience or service categories. Free subscription bookmarking services can be used as hubs for your information or community contributions. For example, if your business has built a strong reputation for innovative services, tag valuable content (web pages, tools, press releases, videos) and systematically bookmark the content by audience or topic in your subscription bookmarking services.
Keep in mind that bookmarking services fall into one of two categories – ‘dofollow’ and ‘nofollow’ services. As their names describe, ‘dofollow’ services encourage fellow bookmarkers to follow and backlink to sites, apps, images and videos, etc. ‘Nofollow’ services do not subscribe to feeds or backlink to your site, but often have the largest communities and distribution channels. One can reciprocate links; the other can have a broad reach. Both should be considered in your bookmarking strategy.
In addition to public vs. private grouping, free subscription services, backlinking, and ‘dofollow/nofollow’ options, an often overlooked feature of bookmarking that can add value to your online marketing program is bookmarking RSS feeds. These allow you to receive the latest submissions on a topic or tag. By becoming a subscriber as well as submitting quality web content to services, you can get a pulse on the topics that are hot, timely and relevant to the health care communities you wish to reach.
Two of the latest features among leading bookmarking services that have taken hold among active audiences are ratings and comments. Bookmarks that are used the most on a subscription site are often ranked high and may have accompanying comments to support its value. The same ranking and comment actions apply to those bookmarks considered of little use to the bookmark audiences. This is an important reminder to be very selective about the content you chose to highlight.
The final feature of bookmarks worth noting is their portability. You can import and export bookmarks, email bookmarks and connect bookmarks to social networks or any web content.
By using these features to their full capacity, you will start to see positive results in traffic and organic search engine ranking.
Bookmarks drive traffic and strengthen site ranking
Consider social bookmarking a new vein of SEO and SEM. Bookmarking is free and effective way to get backlinks that drive traffic to selected areas of your web sites and blogs. The greater the number of backlinks you establish, the greater your traffic and the higher your site will rank on organic search engines. Backlinks to your pages also give your site stability in Google® placements over time. Collect backlinks by bookmarking your content in social bookmarking sites using the ‘dofollow’ tag. In general, the higher the rank of your submitted content on the ‘dofollow’ bookmarking site, the better.
Getting started
Thus far we have covered a brief introduction to social bookmarking, various features of bookmarking and their value in driving traffic and search ranking. Are you ready to get started? There are three easy things you can do to begin harnessing the power of this social tool for the good of your business.
Make the most of social bookmarking
Once you have stepped into bookmarking, there are a few tips that can help you make those bookmarks maximize their social potential.
When done properly, social bookmarking can be an efficient and cost-effective marketing and PR tool that generates fresh traffic to your site and promotes the best of your business services.
1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking; last modified on 10 June 2010 at 20:53
The Physician-Tech Confluence
We are fortunate to be living during a time when medical innovations save more lives than any other time in history. Clinical technologies have changed medicine in such a way that the practice of healing has been transformed from a human-to-human touch to a human-to-EMR-to-clinical technology-to-human procedure.
With this evolution of medicine comes a change in message – physicians heal in confluence with clinical technology. So how should marketers talk to prospective consumers about complex new procedures and technologies that can influence treatment decisions?
Through the Voice of Patients
Consumers do not need to know the details or the mechanics of a procedure. Health care consumers respond to the voice of patients who have been through a procedure or treatment successfully. Marketers, please avoid the temptation to mention high-dollar investments in technology. Let patients talk about their experiences in their own words. A sincere, short and occasionally emotional, synopsis is powerful. Any traditional advertising message longer than 20 seconds is too long. Consider promoting technology with technology. The following are three options to explore:
Video: Telling the Story
Video stories and testimonials featuring patients are powerful. They can be used on your web sites, DVDs, and YouTube® as valuable patient education tools. Encourage patients (post procedure) to discuss their initial concerns, the process, reliefs and outcomes. Technological benefits are revealed in their stories – shorter recovery time, non-invasive options, tighter surgical borders, etc. Videos should be short. With the exception of a video of the procedure itself, video stories should not exceed 5 minutes. Use interactive graphics to illustrate when needed.
Blogs and Microblogs: Having the Conversation
Allow patients to blog about their experiences while under the care of new technologies. They can tweet about their daily experiences, create a diary that consumers follow and encourage comments on postings. While it is difficult to rally ‘fan’ or ‘like’ support on Facebook for a clinical technology, there is a tremendous opportunity to contribute to condition-oriented communities and invite consumers to learn more about medical technologies.
FAQs: Answering the Questions
Finally, let’s not forget the power of the FAQs. Evergreen and ever-growing, these venues allow questions to be answered publicly and accurately by medical professionals. They work well as anchors of information when using blogs and videos to draw attention to clinical technologies.
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