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Practical 101s: Social Bookmarking With Delicious

08.10.20

As people move more and more of their lives online, it gets harder and harder to stay organized.

Where was that great article you read the other day? What was that great blog you read? What was the name of that cool tool you found?

Of course, you could save everything in your browser’s favourites but, let’s face it, that would get unmanageable very quickly.

That’s where Delicious comes in.

Delicious?

Delicious describes itself as, “a social bookmarking service that allows you to tag, save, manage and share Web pages all in one place.”

Social bookmarking?

If you need a quick primer on social bookmarking, here’s a great (and quick) video that describes social bookmarking in… well… plain english.

Why delicious?

Delicious lets you:

Save an unlimited number of sites
Categorize the sites you save, using as many categories for each site as you want (so I might save this site under ‘public_relations,” “communications,” “marketing,” “social_media,” “blog” and so on)
Integrate Delicious buttons into your web browser to make using Delicious easy
Subscribe to other users’ bookmarks (don’t worry, you can save bookmarks privately if you want to) to add to your reading list
Create your own customized search engine containing pages you find useful

Getting started

Getting started on Delicious is very, very easy. There are three steps to signing-up and saving your bookmarks:

Sign up for a Delicious account
(Optional) Install the browser extension
Save away!

Step 1: Sign up for a Delicious account

To get started on Delicious, head over to https://secure.delicious.com/register. There are two parts to the registration:

Complete your details
Import your existing bookmarks

Personally, I always skip the second step (which you can do via a link at the top-right of the screen).

Step 2: (Optional) Install the browser extension

You don’t have to do this, but it really is the easiest and most convenient way to use Delicious.

Head over to the Delicious Tools page. You have three options, depending on your browser:

The first two are far more powerful than the third, so if you’re a Firefox or IE user I recommend those. Make your choice and follow the on-screen instructions.

Step 3: Save away!

Not exactly difficult so far, was it? It doesn’t get any harder, either.

To begin saving bookmarks, find a page you want to save then:

If you installed the Firefox or IE add-ons or the bookmarklet buttons, click the “Tag” or “Bookmark on Delicious” button in your browser toolbar
- Enter your notes for the page in the pop-up box
  - Tip: If you highlight text on the page before clicking “Tag” it will automatically put this text in the ‘Notes’ box for you
- Enter as many tags as you like
  - Consistency is good with this so you can file similar sites together (I have 175 tags for over 1,100 bookmarks)
  - Tip: Tag sites with as many aspects of the content as possible. Remember, a year down the road you may not remember you ever went to that site. Filing it in as many common-sense places as possible increases the likelihood you’ll be able to find that content again when you need it
- If you want to keep this bookmark private, check the “do not share” box
- Click ‘Save’
If you chose not to install the add-ons or buttons, copy the address of the page and go to http://delicious.com/save
- Paste the address in the box, click “Next” and complete the “Notes” and “Tags” fields
  - Tip: Save your bookmark using a new browser window or tab. You will likely want to refer back to the page you’re saving when you complete the “Notes” field
- Click ‘Save’

Conclusion

Delicious really is an easy site to use, and it can be extremely useful. As I mentioned earlier, I currently have just over 1,100 bookmarks saved, and I refer back to them almost every day.

For some more advanced tips and techniques for Delicious, check out an earlier post of mine on six ways to make life easier with Delicious.

This post is part of an ongoing series of ‘practical 101′ posts on public relations and social media topics. For other, similar advice, check out the ‘practical 101′ series. If you’d like to suggest a topic for the series, let me know in the comments!

Posted in: 101, how to, social bookmarking, social media

Tags: bookmarks, delicious, practical 101, search, social bookmarking

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Deliciously Revealing Bookmarks

08.04.16

Del.icio.us is an awesome tool, plain and simple. It lets you easily access your bookmarks from any computer, take advantage of other peoples’ reading and even track topics over time. I’ve written before about six great ways to make your life easier with del.icio.us.

Today, though, I’m warning you to be careful what you bookmark. Your bookmarks can reveal a lot about you.

You should already know that pretty much everything you do online leaves a footprint that can reflect on you for years to come. Your bookmarks are no different.

The sites you save can reveal a pattern.

I can tell you, for example, that one of my contacts recently saved a lot of links to sites about photo collages. Another got very interested in social media measurement recently. Another is into fantasy baseball.

That’s pretty harmless stuff. I’m sure they don’t mind that I know that, just as I don’t mind that they know (from my del.icio.us bookmarks) that I checked out GroupTweet yesterday and a post on American Airlines’ crisis blog the day before.

Be careful with your links

What about more private stuff?

How about the person that got very interested in a particular company all of a sudden?

Did it signal an upcoming career change? Personally I wouldn’t want my boss seeing that. Perhaps they’re for an upcoming pitch for new business? Nice way to inform competitors that the company may be looking.

Here’s a tip: Del.icio.us has a “do not share” option. If you’re saving links that you’d rather other people not see, use it. Your link will then just be saved for you, away from prying eyes.

This doesn’t change the fact that del.icio.us is an extremely useful tool. It is still at its most powerful when you share links with others.

However, this serves as a reminder to be careful with everything you do online. That includes bookmarks.

Posted in: 201, social bookmarking

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6 Ways To Make Life Easier With Del.icio.us

08.04.07

Since I started using it regularly about six months ago, del.icio.us has rapidly become one of my most-used tools.

If you haven’t started using the service seriously, I suggest you do so. Here’s a quick primer (skip to below if you’re already a pro):

Obviously, if you like, you can just use del.icio.us to save articles and sites for future reference. You won’t be using even half of its potential though.

Here are six more ways you can use del.icio.us to make life easier for you and the people around you.

Let other people do your surfing for you

This is my favourite use for del.icio.us, and it’s based on the ‘social’ side of the tool.

Del.icio.us lets you add people to your del.icio.us ‘network.’ Find out the usernames of people you respect (look on their other sites, or just ask them) and add them to your network. Then, use your RSS reader to subscribe to the links from your network.

Why?

Because if you only add people you know and trust, you can use them to do your reading for you.

No more trawling through hundreds of useless posts in the hope of finding one or two nuggets. No more mind-numbing sessions hitting ‘next’ on your RSS reader for what feels like forever. You only see the posts that your contacts have deemed worthy of saving.

I keep my network to a small number (about 20), but those 20 people provide between a third and a half of the posts I read every day, and a much higher proportion of the articles I bookmark myself.

Queue up blog topics

Some people are blogging machines who manage to churn out posts in advance of when they need them so they always have a bunch lined up.

Me? Not so much, and as much as I think most people would love to be sitting on a store of posts, I’d be surprised if they are.

You can make your life easier by bookmarking things you might want to write about. Just tag it with “toBlog” or something similar, then when you’re stuck for something to write about, flip to your list of “toBlog” articles.

Search engine

Del.icio.us can serve as an excellent backup if search engines fail you. Not only will a quick del.icio.us search throw up your own saves, it will show the top ones saved by other people too.

Power tip: You can search for tag combinations direct from your address bar – type http://del.icio.us/tag/[tag1]+[tag2] to pull up all the posts that are tagged with both.

Track coverage of you/your organization/your clients

This is fairly obvious for communications pros you can use del.icio.us to keep a record of media coverage related to your company or clients – bookmark articles with ‘coverage.’

Power tip: For bonus points, create a ‘coverage’ bundle, and group articles on different topics within it.

Non-communications folks can use this idea too. Want to keep track of articles where you’re mentioned? Want to remember who’s written about your site? Del.icio.us is a great way to keep it all organized in one place

Track topics

Del.icio.us lets you ‘subscribe’ to tags so you see everything that’s saved with that tag. Go to your del.icio.us settings and click ‘subscriptions,’ then enter the keywords you’re interested in.

Let’s say you’re interested in marathon running, and you want to keep up with the top posts on that subject. In this case, you might subscribe to ‘marathon’ or ‘running.’ You can view your subscriptions by clicking the ‘subscriptions’ link at the top of the page, or by going to http://del.icio.us/subscriptions/[username]

If you use an RSS reader, it’s even easier. Search for whatever you’re interested in, then scroll to the bottom of the page, click the ‘RSS’ button and let the subscriptions come to you.

Power tip: For slightly more advanced tracking features, try these:

Combined tags: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/[tag1]+[tag2]
Popular tags: http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/[tag]
Users: http://del.icio.us/rss/[username]

Provide a resource for others

Del.icio.us is a powerful enough tool if you use it on your own, but it becomes even more useful when you remember that it is a social bookmarking tool and help others to benefit from your reading too.

Del.icio.us allows access to the articles you save using the address http://del.icio.us/[username]/[tag].

For example, I save useful case studies here: http://del.icio.us/davefleet/case_studies

If you read a lot on a work-related topic, why not provide a link to those articles to your co-workers?

Power Tip: Another powerful, although slightly more blunt, tool is the option to publish a daily blog post of articles you’ve bookmarked. Go to your del.icio.us settings, scroll to the bottom and select ‘daily blog posting’ for information on how to set this up.

If you decide to set up a daily blog post, be sure to enter a good description for every article you save from now on (you already did this though, right?). The description will be the only context readers are given about the links you save.