A great way to organize websites for feature reference is through the social bookmarking tools.

Me, I’m terrible organizing stuff into their folders on my laptop for easy reference. Once upon a time I’d take each email and put in a folder. Now I have gmail organize my incoming mail into folders. All my Ryze messages go to my Ryze folder, Care2 into the Care2 folder, etc. These folders I clear on a regular basis. Important mail I don’t throw away, I just use the search function to find what I need.

I admit, I’m easily distracted (think ADD on menopause, can’t even keep track of my car keys) and when online, one page leads to another, to another. And I’d often find gems for future use and hit the bookmark tab on my browser. You can imagine what a long disorganized list that became. And when I needed a bookmarked site in a hurry, I could find it easily, often clicking on a dozen pages before finding what I wanted. Too much time wasted, and just like everyone else I was only blessed with 24 hours in a day.

I was truly clueless on this social bookmarking thing, overwhelmed to be exact. So I logged into Marketing Ice and watched their videos that had to do with social bookmarking. One video introduced a bookmarking service called Diigo. I’d never heard of it before. And when I’d find these bookmarking sites before, I was like OK, it is a good thing, but I need a guide to show me how to use this thing, and shove it further on the back burner. Now I had a clear video showing me what to do with this one service.

• I opened an account.
• I downloaded a button onto my firefox browser.
• I signed up for several other social bookmarking sites.
• Then when I find a website or blog I like, including mine, I hit the button to bookmark it.
• A window pops up where I can add key words, notes about the website (private or public), check boxes and it’ll also be added to other bookmarking sites.
• And now there are several new incoming links to that website.

When I log into Diigo all my information is there, I can search by keywords. Ex. if I was looking for a new web host, I could pull up all websites I’d marked as webhosts, read any comments I’d made about that particular website, how I thought it would be of benefit down the road. Quick and easy. And your can share your bookmarks with others.

I still have much to learn about these tools, and the blogging community, but if we each share our experiences, and learn just one new thing at a time, we’ll get pretty darn good.

Give it a try!

Heidi Caswell