and you'll see 12 others. They can be clustered into two groups: social networking and social bookmarking. Here's how to use them to help you.

Social networking:

Sites such as Digg, Facebook, Reddit and Stumble Upon require membership before you can share articles with other members.

Digg does not allow self-promotion. Reddit will allow a limited amount of this, although if you overuse the option you will lose "karma" on the site. You must complement this with links to others' articles on Helium and other sites. Stumble Upon is more forgiving of self-promotion. A homepage link on any of these sites can generate over 10,000 hits a day.

Digg is the leader of the pack for social networking sites, with Reddit an emerging second. They favor articles about technological and political issues. The opportunities are hit-or-miss there, with no predictability as to how an individual post will fare, and with no residual benefits for further hits. Stumble Upon does have opportunity for residual flow.

Facebook is a vast social networking site. While links on your private page may generate some interest, don't expect a lot. Join Helium's Facebook group to add mileage to your links.

Social bookmarking:

Social bookmarking sites work differently. When you like a website or web page and you want a quick way to return to it, you can bookmark it on your own computer. However, saving those links on an "inward reaching" social bookmarking site enables you to access them from any computer. Examples are Google Bookmarks, Yahoo MyWeb, Windows Live and Ask. They are convenient, but provide no marketing value to yours or others' articles.

But Mag.nolia, Furl, My Link Vault, Taggly, CoRank and Blue Dot are indexed and "outward looking:" Instead of just identifying your favorite links, these make your links available to the whole Internet community.

These various social bookmarking sites are not all equal. Del.icio.us is considered tier 1, Ma.gnolia and Furl tier 2, and the rest My Link Vault, Taggly, Corank and Blue Dot - tier 3. A tier 1 bookmark will get more traffic since it is a bigger site, but it may have less visibility within that larger site. Finding the right vantage point takes some trial and error.

When you bookmark a web page on these sites, you add identifying tags. Tagging the article appropriately is crucial. You can start with tags that show the Helium subchannel markers, eg. Gardening>Vegetables & Herbs. Then you must add precise content-based tags. Use a keyword phrase rather than an individual keyword; for example, chemically free vegetables>growing tomatoes>organic tomatoes.

These tags tell the site what the content of your article is about. Some articles require only a couple of tags, but you can add five or six as long as they are content specific. Google will penalize bookmarks that are not precise to content. Usually two or three keyword clusters is sufficient.

Now you're ready to take your next step as an Internet writer by taking advantage of all the ways to market your pieces online.

For more information on where to target your links, take a look at How to improve your earnings and traffic to Helium with links.

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Learn more about this author, Barbara Whitlock.
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