How Social Bookmarking Builds Clout

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 Leave a comment

An article in SiteProNews about social bookmarking says this:

That’s the power of social bookmarking. It’s put a technology behind word of mouth sharing of web sites that anyone can use.

How true that is.

The author, Tinu AbayomiPaul, mentions three benefits to social bookmarking:

• More links
• More traffic
• More credilibity

I agree with all of those. And she uses a great analogy to back up her credibility point. You can read her article. I won’t belabor it. But I would like to add another benefit – clout. If you do any social bookmarking, you can increase your clout.

OK, so what is clout and how can it benefit you to have more of it? Good question.

Clout is the good pleasure of knowing that people are listening to your recommendations. It’s different than credibility because credibility is a trust issue. It isn’t necessarily about your recommendations. It’s about your reputation. Credibility is important if you want people to do business with you – and I’m assuming you do – because they have to trust you in order to find you credible. Trust and credibility go hand in hand. Trust and clout do not.

You can have clout and people still not trust you. Because they don’t have to trust you to listen to you. They listen because you’re interesting or provide a level of insight that they can’t get anywhere else. They may never agree with you, but they know that they’ll get some level of logic or reasoning behind your recommendations. They might never do business with you, but they might do business with some of the people you recommend because of your clout.

Using the movie analogy, clout works like this: You go see a movie and tell everyone you know how great it is. The people who trust you and like you will go see it just because you recommend it. But the people who don’t consider you a credible source may not. However, if a lot of the people you influence to see the movie come back and say they liked it too then those people who held off will likely go and see it as well. Just because the people influenced by you reported back that you were right. That’s clout.

In social bookmarking, if you build enough clout then eventually the people who don’t trust your recommendations will come trust them. You’ll move from the clout category to the credible category. But some people have to start at clout because that’s just the way they are. So chalk that up another benefit to social bookmarking.

Leave a comment                      Category: Social & Viral Marketing                      

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