Maybe you’ve heard posts about multiple social bookmarking before and in the end you spotted that they’re just listing icons and you still needed to click on each of them and typing the same URL, description, tags over and over again. This time, it’s different. I promise!
Let’s just get on with it. These are the social bookmarking tools I’m going to show you:
* Social Marker
* Social Matic
* Social Poster
Starting with my favourite, Social Marker. Social Marker works either by a bookmarklet or a widget. They even provide a WordPress plugin for your blog. Let’s say, you’re on the Social Marker’s page itself and you want to bookmark the page.
You can click the bookmarklet and it’ll bring you to Social Marker’s main page. It’ll load itself with the title and the URL of the page you’d bookmark. You can see that the Title and Link fields are pre-filled according to the page you wanted to bookmark previously. The next thing you need to do is fill the Text with the page’s description, and certain tags you’d like to associate with the page.
Then, still on the same page, you’re given options to choose which social bookmarking sites you want to use. If you click on All, it’ll submit your page to all listed social bookmarking sites you can see. Dofollow means only submitting to those excluding rel=nofollow on their link attributes.
When you’re done, click Submit just on the upper right corner and the magic starts here. The next page will automatically load each of the social bookmarking’s page you selected previously, continuously. For example, you chose Furl, BlinkList and MisterWong. The first page you’ll see is Furl’s submission page (if you’re not logged in to Furl, you’ll see a login page). But in the background, Social Marker continues to load BlinkList’s and MisterWong’s submission page (you can see it on your browser’s status bar).
You can see that almost all the fields are automatically filled by Social Marker. However, on this page, Furl’s Keywords field isn’t filled up yet. You can easily do it by clicking on the Tags field on the bottom right of the page. This field contains anything you’ve typed earlier before you start submitting your pages. Just click on it and it’ll block the entire text box. You only need to copy and paste it into Furl’s Keywords section. Click Save and Next to go to the next one (in this case, BlinkList).
Remember when I said that Social Marker continuously loads the pages? Depending on your internet connection, the BlinkList submission page should have been loaded by now. And also on the previous page (in this case, Furl’s), you don’t have to wait until the saving process is through. You can click on Save and Next in a straight line since Social Marker will finish the saving process in the background.
As you can see above, all the fields are perfect. So you can just Blink and click Next, continue to MisterWong. You can also click Back to see if previous submission went through successfully or not. When you’ve finished the last submission (MisterWong in this case), you can close the window and go for another page to bookmark. Semi-automated and no typing at all.
The second one we’re talking about is Social Matic. Social Matic is an automated social bookmarking with way less clicks than Social Marker. Only Social Matic doesn’t list as many social bookmarking sites as Social Marker. Currently Social Matic serves 13, while Social Marker does 46 in total.
To use Social Matic, you need to be registered first, and then provide your username and password of your social bookmarking accounts you and Social Matic have in common. You’ll know why, later.
Let’s get started! Social Matic uses a bookmarklet to trigger submission. Similar to Social Marker, you need to fill up the Description and Tags here, since both URL and Title section are already taken care of. Then, you need to pick up a category fits best to your bookmarked page and proceed to selecting the social bookmarking sites you’d like to use.
Do note that although you can select all 13, submission is limited only to 5 services picked randomly from your selection for every submission. And you cannot submit the same URL for the second row. After confirming Captcha, click Submit and you’re done! See now why they need your login information? You don’t need to log in for each service. They’ve automated it for you.
Your most recent submission is on the top five. What’s unique is, Social Matic submits your submissions every 30 minutes interval. It is done to avoid search engine’s suspicion to many links created at the same time since they appear like natural submissions.
The next thing is Social Poster. Social Poster has a similar interface as Social Marker, yet it claims to cater up to 77 social bookmarking services. To use Social Poster, you can use a bookmarklet, buttons or a WordPress plugin.
Now let’s see what happens when you bookmark a page using Social Poster. First, you’ll see that the main page will already be loaded with the page’s Title URL and Tag. Similar to the other two before, you will need to fill the Text box for a description. However, you may want to check on the Tag field since it is automated, maybe you want to have something altered.
Below those fields, you are given two options. You can choose to generate links for submission or to submit the page in a framed style like Social Marker does. What differs them?
Let’s say you picked Generate Links for submit. After you select your preferred social bookmarking services (say it’s Propeller) and click Start Posting. You’ll be shown the same page as before, but there’s a difference in the URL of the word Post which appears on the right side of the social bookmarking service you chose. Hover it and you’ll see on your browser’s status bar, it’s been loaded with the URL, title, description and the tags of the page you submitted. Click on the link (Post) and you’ll be taken to the Propeller’s submission page (provided that you’ve logged in before). Confirm the submission and you’re done!
How about the other one? The one works like Social Marker can be chosen through Start fast submit in a frame. Then click on Start Posting. It’s almost alike with Social Marker’s. You’ll be taken to each of the submission page and you can go forward and backward to go to another bookmark site. You can also copy-paste URL, title, tags and descriptions from the provided textbox a the bottom.
There’s a major difference with Social Marker’s, though. Remember I told you that Social Marker loads the entire social bookmarking listed in the background? Well, Social Poster doesn’t seem to do that. It’ll start loading the page only when you click on the Next and Prev link. So it’s not a very time-saving, IMHO.
Now let’s conclude those multiple social bookmarking services.
Social Marker
Pros:
* Allows selection of do-follow services (for SEO purposes)
* Loads pages continuously in the background
* Submit to up to 46 social bookmarking sites
* No typing at all
Cons:
* 10-20% of all time, the process got crashed and the window closes by itself. You’ll have to start a new one from where your last submission was.
Social Matic
Pros:
* The most automated of all three
* Requires the least user involvement
* Random timing submission to make submissions look natural
Cons:
* The least number of social bookmarking sites supported
* Only allows 5 submissions per URL
Social Poster
Pros:
* The most supportive to social bookmarking sites, 77 of them!
* Allows selection of do-follow services (for SEO purposes)
* No typing at all
Cons:
* Uses the same frame thing as Social Marker but doesn’t seem to load the sites continuously.
Therefore, it takes longer to bookmark using Social Poster instead of Social Marker.