I recently signed up for a $1 trial to Jack Humphrey’s Social Power Linking course and I want to share a clever little program that he clued me in on. It’s called ClipMarks and it takes bookmarking to a whole new level.

I could try and explain what ClipMarks is and how it works, but I really think that a good video (or 2 or 3 - or maybe even 4) can explain it much better (and quicker). 

Videos about Clickmarks

To start with, let’s see how ClickMarks works:

Clipmarks - Clip it, Save it, Share it, Blog it (00:49)

Now let’s delve a bit deeper into the Clip to Blog feature:

Read the rest of this entry »

Business can be blinding. Being constantly focused on content, traffic and profits can obscure the ultimate source of our success - the customer. In other words, people are the real key to success (in both the business and more meaningful sense of the word). That’s why social marketing is such an important force online (both for the internet as a whole and for your business in particular).

David C. Skul of Relativity Inc articulates this point well in this short video called the 5 Reasons Why Social Marketing is a Must:

5 Reasons Why Social Marketing is a Must (06:39)

David’s first point is a gem (and one that most people don’t even consider).  If people are talking about your products or services you want to know what they are saying.  That information is invaluable.   By sitting in on these conversations not only can you figure out what you are doing wrong, but also what you are doing right.   You can then use this information to create better products, services and website’s for the people you most want to please online.

Of course, you are not limited to merely listening in on your customers online conversations.  You can (and should) actively engage them (as David pointed out in his third point).  By personally addressing your customers questions and concerns you let them know that you are actually interested in them and what they want or need.  And nothing builds up trust and loyalty more than letting someone know that you actually care about them.

Another excellent point that David made is the importance of the quality of traffic (points 2 and 4).  Often times we are so focused on the quality of our traffic that we forget what we are really after - customers, loyal visitors, etc. 

Social Media sites have the ability to send people your way who are already interested in hearing what you have to offer.  Take, for example, Del.icio.us.  If I see that over 1000 other people have book marked a site I assume that there is something valuable at that site.  I enter the site pre-sold, ready to discover something of interest.

Finally, it’s nice that David placed the search engine benefits of social marketing sites last in his list.  Not that it’s the least important, but simply because it is possible to become search engine obsessed and forget all the other elements of creating a successful online business. 

By now, most of us have heard that StumbleUpon can be a great source of traffic. This is true both in terms of the quantity of traffic as well as the quality of traffic that StumbleUpon sends.

You may have also read some good guides on how to get started with StumbleUpon, how to write for it, as well as tips on how to get the most out of StumbleUpon. And let’s not forget Darren’s great article on how to advertise with StumbleUpon.

In short, there is no shortage of quality articles written about how to best use StumbleUpon (and at the end of this article I’ll list a few more).

But as you may have gathered by now, Search Marketing Courses specializes in Video Tutorials - and fortunately, we have a video or two which will teach you a great deal about this amazing little tool bar (as you will presently see).

An Introduction to Stumbleupon

First things first, let’s get properly introduced to the StumbleUpon Toolbar.  And who better to make the introductions than Garrett Camp, the founder and "chief architect" of StumbleUpon.  As Garrett tells John Scoble in this interview, StumbleUpon is easy (and fun) to use: :

An Interview with Garrett Camp (03:48)

Now that we’ve properly met, let’s get better acquainted. We’ll let another Garrett (this one from Tech-bites) help us to get to know the StumbleUpon Toolbar a bit better:

A Deeper Look at StumbleUpon (07:10)

Stumbleupon Tips & Tricks

Below are a couple of useful tips for getting the most out of this powerful little toolbar (for more tips check out the links in this article)

Our first tip comes from Chris at SearchAnyway.com who offers us a helpful suggestion for what types of articles we should market with StumbleUpon:

StumbleUpon has ReRun Potential (01:09)

Our next video shows us how to operate the most important StumbleUpon features from our keyboard.

Short Cut Keys for Stumbleupon (02:12)

Stumbleupon Video

In addition to stumbling upon "random" content on the web, Stumbleupon also let’s you stumble upon online videos as Stumbleupon founder Garrett Camp told Beet.tv in this short little video:

Further Stumbleupon resources:

Well, that’s it for our StumbleUpon video tutorials. There is still, however, much to learn about StumbleUpon (particularly how to use this tool to market your website or blog). Below are a select group of articles that along with the links mentioned above can help to teach you the ins-and-outs of Stumbleupon. This is not an exhaustive list, but rather is made up of what I believe to be the best online resources available on how to use Stumbleupon.

• A Quick Traffic Driving Tip with Stumbleupon
• Stumbleupon Optimization Leveraging Photo Stumbles for More Web Traffic
• Increasing Your Stumbleupon Audience
• Stumbleupon Add-ons
• Stumbleupon Scripts from Greasemonkey
• A Comprehensive Guide to Stumbleupon How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website and Monetize It
• A Definitive Stumbleupon Guide Driving Traffic to Websites
• Claim Your Stumbleupon Blog through Technorati (not sure about this one, but it’s a clever idea)

What do you get when you combine a social butterfly with a bookworm?

Del.ico.us.

Okay, I won’t quit my day job - but seriously folks, social bookmarking in general and delicious in particular is something that you want to know about.

Why?

Let’s let Lee LeFever of Common Craft answer that question:

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

And while we are at it, we should also let Garrett from Tech-Bite get his two cents worth in:

Tech-bite’s Intro to Del.icio.us

Note: When I signed up for Delicious I was asked if I wanted to install the Delicious Firefox Extension, which does not include the sidebar or toolbar mentioned in Garrett’s video. I later on installed the Delicious Bookmarks Firefox Add-on which does include the forementioned sidebar and toolbar. In other words, don’t worry if your default settings of del.icio.us don’t look like they do in the Tech-bite video.

Okay, now that you’ve got the basics down, let’s start to look at some of the more powerful networking features of Del.icio.us. We’ll let Liz B. Davis guide us on this tour with two very nice videos on how to best use Del.icio.us.

Her first video is also of the intro to Del.icio.us variety, but at the end she shows us how to use del.icio.us to discover what other people find valuable on the web. This is one of the powerful social elements of tools like Del.icio.us which enable us to learn from other peoples research. Let’s see how it works:

Getting Started with Delicious

Liz’s next video takes things a step further by showing us how we can build up our own social network of Delicious friends. This, in my mind, is a video that everyone should watch as it can be an extremely powerful marketing and search feature if used properly:

Networking with Delicious

By now you should have a good idea of what Delicious is and how to use it. But Delicious is not the only game in town - there are literally hundreds of Social Bookmarking sites that have popped up over the last few years - each with their own unique way of doing things. Hopefully we’ll be able to cover some of those other sites in future video tutorials.

Until then, why not get started and take a bite out of Del.icio.us?