All business owners want to run an operation that is efficient and cost effective, no where is this truer than in the world of fleet management where the management of vehicles can make or break the profitability of the business. Fleet management tracking tools can help business owners and managers keep track of their mobile assets and the activities of their employees at any point throughout the working day. By having access to this information the task of increasing efficiency is made that much easier.

GPS fleet management tools are a simple and effective way to track company vehicles. As such, this technology and the fleet management solutions it provides is one of the fastest growing technological markets on the planet today. No matter what the size of your company it maybe worth investigating GPS technologies as a way to increase your business’ efficiency. However, choosing the right fleet management package can be difficult, seemingly the options are endless and if you are new to this variety of technology you may be understandably baffled. Fundamental in your choice is determining what your company needs and how a GPS tracking system will increase the efficiency of your operations.

First in your list of decisions to make should be the rapidity of the updates you will need. Predominantly this will fall into two categories, ‘real time’ or ‘passive’. Both will provide you with the information you need to make your business more efficient including details of vehicle speed, direction, stops, routes and location.

Real time fleet management tools allow the user to view all of the information above, as it happens. This is rapidly becoming the most popular form GPS tracking for the rate at which it gives the manager information. In addition, many systems give the user live updates by email or text even if they are away from the system of any incidences of speeding or going off-route.

The main benefit of this type of fleet tracking system is that by providing real time data it allows the user to monitor operations making it easier to find ways to increase efficiency. For example, by monitoring vehicle idling, a process that uses fuel when the vehicle is stationary, it is possible to reduce the occurrence hence making fuel bill cheaper; some companies have found that fuel usage has gone down by around twenty percent purely by monitoring the idling times of vehicles.

Passive tracking differs from real time as it does not give the manager live feeds on what company vehicles are doing. Instead of live data, a GPS recorder fitted to all vehicles in the fleet; it records all the relevant data and is the downloaded to a main terminal at the end of each working day. This download can either be carried out manually or wirelessly as the vehicle enters the yard. While they do not provide information in real time, they do allow company managers to increase efficiency using data built up over time.

These are the two main types of fleet management system that will allow you to increase the efficiency of your business. Depending on how you run your business operations each will have its own benefits and downsides. While it may be tempting to go for the all singing, all dancing model; be sure to look around and shop wisely to find a great deal.

Technology and business expert Thomas Pretty looks into the two major types of GPS fleet management tools on the market today and how they can increase the efficiency of company operations. To find out more please visit http://www.simplytrak.co.uk/

When you start a business you will undoubtedly be filled with both hopes and fears; hopes that that your business will scale the heights of profitability and fears that it will all end in misery and financial ruin. To prevent the fears taking a front seat it is advisable to take out a business insurance policy to protect and secure your operation. With the risks so high, it is essential for any small business to have adequate insurance should it all go wrong. Part of your selection of insurance policy should include a realistic look at exactly what has the potential to go wrong; while you may not want to dwell on the negatives it is vital if you want to find a suitable policy.

This risk assessment can be difficult to carry out if you are the business owner, normally you are blinkered by positive thinking and the reality of the challenges you face can be allusive. If this is the case, utilising an insurance agent to carry out the risk assessment is advisable; it is rare you have to pay for these services and hence getting an in-depth analysis can be strongly advisable. When employing these agents be sure to understand the insurance disciplines they have worked in to ascertain their level of competency with your type of business. After you have completed this it is time to look at policies, here are some of the most important inclusions to consider.

Business owner cover is normally the most far reaching form insurance. It is normally used to cover all of the eventualities that can damage the profitability and operations of a business. Such instances are fires and accidents that could jeopardise your business opportunities. Although not specifically related to liability insurance, this type of cover will include some form of coverage, although it will not be comprehensive.

Secondly you should consider property insurance to protect your business premises and equipment. Usually listed as an additional extra when it comes to policies it is advisable for those who have a largely physical operation with a great deal of machinery and stock on site. In such an operation a fire or break in could be devastating so having the additional cover can be essential.

Increasingly important is liability insurance. Today’s society of lawsuits and counter lawsuits requires all businesses to have some form of protection from accidental injury. This type of cover normally protects a business from damage to personnel or property when the company is directly responsible. This coverage is extremely important as it can cover an accidental fall to someone burning themselves on a coffee; as compensation claims become ever larger you must question if your business will be able to survive without this type of cover. In the same vein it is important if you produce products to have some form of product liability cover, if a faulty product does happen to harm someone it can be worth its weight in gold in protecting you from extortionate compensation payouts.

If your business focuses on services instead of products, errors and omissions insurance is an advisable addition. Fundamentally it protects your business should a staff member make a mistake or neglect their duty causing harm to a client. Sadly you cannot control your staff members’ actions at all times but with this type of cover you can at least protect your company from their mishaps.

Hopefully these five forms of insurance cover will help you make the right choice when protecting your business. Remember to shop around as prices and services can differ greatly; as with many things it is worth comparing many policies until you find the best deal. For the sake of your business it is vital that you find a policy that provides adequate protection at a reasonable price.

Financial expert Thomas Pretty looks into the different forms of business insurance policies and how they can protect your company. To find out more please visit http://www.lloydstsbbusiness.com/insuring/ebi.asp

Having a strong database of people who want to buy from you is amazing. If you see a quiet month coming up you just send an offer out to your database and your booking diary and sales sheet will instantly be filled…

A strong database eliminates your downtime and it can maximize the time you do spend with clients. Whether you use your database to get more appointments, to sell more or even just to educate your clients, if you have a database that wants to hear from you, you are in control.

The biggest point about databases is that both quality and quantity are important but in different ways…

If you have 100 people on your database and you typically get a 1% response rate. Now in case you don’t know, your response rate is simply the percentage of people on your database that will ‘respond’ when you send something to them. So if you send information about a new product, what percentage of them will buy it. If you send them an offer on one of your services or treatments, what percentage of them will book in.

So if you’ve got a 1% response rate and 100 people on your database, it means 1 person will ‘respond’. For example, if you send out an offer to your 100 person database for a $50 treatment, 1 person is going to book in and you’ll make $50. But (and this is where it gets exciting) if you have 1000 people on your database and you do the same offer and you still get a 1% response rate, then you’ll end up with 10 people booking in and you’ll make $500.

So in terms of quantity, more is always better than less. But quality is even more important.

Because lets go back to the 100-person database and the $50 offer you send out to them. If all of those 100 people are incredibly interested in what you do and you get more like a 40% response rate, then even with the small database of 100 people, when you send out your $50 offer, you’ll get 40 people book in and you’ll make $2000.

So quality is ALWAYS more important than quantity because the less people you have to contact to get those 40 bookings, the better. If you only have to contact 100 people to make $2000 on a promotion rather than several thousand people, then you’ll save time, energy and money while still getting the same number of bookings. Which means you get more in your bank account while you get to take more time for yourself!

But what you might have figured out already is that when you combine both quality AND quantity, amazing things happen.

Lets take our large database of 1000 people and use the same $50 offer and the same 40% response rate. That means that when you send out the offer, you’ll get 400 people book in. And if you can accommodate all of them, you’ll make $20,000. And that’s amazing!!!

Now you might be thinking you don’t have enough time or inclination to take bookings for 400 people. And that’s fine. This is where it comes back to you needing to decide what you want out of your business in terms of how much time and energy you put in to it and for what income reward.

The point is that when you truly understand the power of your database and you start to build a strong, highly responsive one like I did in that first clinic, then YOU are in control. You decide how what offer to send them and then you decide whether you want to send the offer to all of your database or just part of it.

Building that strong, responsive database is you taking control of your business again. And you deciding what results you want from it.

Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits. To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freereport.

Who said that? We did. Someone else said it first, but that’s not important. What is important is your recognition that change is an integral part of life and if you don’t incorporate it into your business, sooner or later you will be left behind.

Now for those conservative minded readers who still wear bow ties and Brooks Brothers suits, we will gladly acknowledge that exceptions abound. Unfortunately, however, most of us do not have the luxury of waiting to see if the public will stick with our products. He who waits and makes a mistake gets left behind. Don’t believe me? Ask IBM, Sears, or the entire U.S. automobile industry. Change left them all in the dust.

To compound matters, change is rapidly becoming a trend force. By this expression, I mean that change is becoming an expected mode of operation for your customers. Want some examples? Ok, let’s take the fast food industry. Does the name itself tell you anything? Think about the successful ones, Burger King, Wendy’s. What do they have going that their copy-cat failure competition can’t latch on to? Change. Almost every week the big three have something new going on. You will see new products, new offers, new games. McDonald’s is totally changing the interior of every store in Europe to change its face overseas and create a more upscale environment. In addition, kid’s meal offerings change constantly along with local endorsements and sponsorships.

You have only to listen to the quote of Ray Kroc, the McDonald’s founder, in order to know their position. We can invent it faster than others can copy it.

Change is certainly not limited to fast foods either. I think one of the best examples of change can be seen at Apple. Now that Steve Jobs is back he is cranking out one winning product after another. He embraces change and makes it a part of the corporate culture.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN TO YOU?

It means that you should adopt change as part of your business. Not as an accident which happens, but actually part of your ongoing operation. Use change to let your customers know that you are a viable company constantly aware of the latest trends. How do you do it? Let’s look at some ideas.

1. New product or service. Borrowing from the fast-food industry, always be on the look out for anything new which can be added to your product line or service offering. Now note, and this is important, don’t worry whether or not this product will make money by itself. Sometimes you will do things simply to draw attention to your entire line of products and your business in general.

2. Be on the look out for a different way to serve your customer. Home delivery is an example. More and more companies are turning to this strategy and shopping online is so successful because the products come to you. No traffic and less stress. Can you think of another way?

3. Center promotions on holidays, local news events and fads. These events don’t have to relate to your product except that you tie it in that way. The more you can use these events, the more your company and product seem current.

Change is a powerful business force. It can wipe you out or it can make you an overnight success. This coming year, put the word change on every day of your calendar. Constantly be on the look out for the next promotion. If you do this, you will energize yourself, your employees, and most importantly, your customers.

Business Rule: Incorporate change as a part of your business philosophy, but don’t change what works.

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Computer crashes are a fact of life. Even if we try to avoid them by keeping our machines in top shape, chances are that they’ll still happen every few years. Crashes have the worst timing, too – they always happen right before a big deadline, and don’t leave you a lot of choices.

If you’ve ever experienced a crash of this kind, you’re probably aware that backing up your data is important. However, you don’t just want to back it up on disk. While tape drives, CDs, DVDs and other forms of local backup are an important part of data safety, they’re not reliable in all cases. Locally backed up data can be lost, too. Instead, use reliable remote data backup software to make sure that your information is always safe. Since your data is housed in another location that you access from any computer, you’ll know you can get to it whenever you need to.

You won’t have to spend a lot of time and money on the chance that you’ll get your files back. Instead, even if there’s a crash, you’ll be able to get access to everything you need with just a few mouse clicks. Remotely access your data using your account number and password, and you can download all files you’ve already backed up. If your regular computer is down, you’ll still be able to get to these files from any computer with access to the Internet.

Remember that while local, physical backups such as tape drives and disc backups are a good idea, they’re not a foolproof safety net. Many small businesses lose their computers and backups to flooding, fire, theft or other disasters that could be prevented with remote data backup methods. You’ll never know when you need to access a file – remote data backups can help you do so. You’ll even be able to get to your files while you’re traveling. That makes doing business on the road a lot easier. No matter where you are when you need to get to a file, remote data backups provide a safe way to do it.

If you’re dedicated to providing good service and keeping your clients, choose to back up your data remotely with a service you trust. You’ll save money, keep business, and earn more referrals as clients tell other people that you’re reliable. Backing up your data remotely just makes good sense – check out all the possibilities open to you.

Bill Ginsbern is an IT consultant based in Chicago, IL. He does work for small to medium sized businesses and advises over 12 big time internet entrepreneurs. You can find more free advice and information about remote data backups on his blog – http://databackupservice.wordpress.com/

You have everything to think about and not enough time to think when it comes to starting a small consulting business. However, first thing is first, you know what you’ll be doing. While you may think that this sounds silly for me to say. However, you will find that even the greatest ideas that started small businesses still need some granular focus on who you be selling to. There are two benefits to this. One is you able to find a niche you’re going to serve. The second benefit is you will be able to focus on selling your services much easier. The last thing you want to happen is be all over the place and lose focus on making money.

In order to find your niche need to sit down and grab a pen and paper and start listing all of your skills. The way to do that is to list all the employers you’ve had the last 10 to 15. Remember to list all of your positions. Next list all the skills use to fill the jobs requirements. Also list the people you’ve dealt with, reported to, and delegated work to and list their titles. This will help you in the sales process when selling consulting services.

Next you want to take that list and start researching the consulting jobs that are calling for those skills. You will find that some of your skills are irrelevant at this particular point in time. On the other hand, you may find some hot niches that you can market to. One of the easiest ways to do this is to go to online job sites such as monster.com or dice.com, and do specific search on consulting jobs only. If the researching sites, you’ll know if there is a paying market for your skills. Take note of the projects available, and you can use that for later use when developing leads your business.

Using the tips described above will help you focus on defining the market you want to sell to when you start your consulting business. The payoff in your efforts can be maximal when you are starting a small consulting business. You’ll now be able to easily develop your branding and list of services you’re business offers. You will also be able to target the decision makers when you develop your leads. You’ll be on your way to focus on selling your consulting services.

Good luck in your new venture.

For more information on starting a small consulting business, go to http://www.beinbusiness.net/startingasmallconsultingbusiness.asp to learn more.

Is now the right time to invest in a spa? In recent months, it seems as if, wherever one turns, hotel owners and hotel operators are adding spas to their package of products and services. From the most luxurious hotels such as Mandarin Oriental and Four Seasons all the way to Butlins and Centre Parks, everyone is getting in on the act.

Hotel branding companies such as Starwood have added spa brands to their portfolio and we’ve got hotel brands like Six Senses which have a spa as a core element of the offer.

In the 1980s, every hotel seemed to feel the need to add waterbeds, faxes and a mini-bar into the bedrooms and in the 1990s every hotelier felt obligated to add a fitness room, outsource food and beverage, implement branded breakfasts and later internet connectivity and game joysticks. In this decade, we’ve seen a headlong rush to add flat screen TVs and free WiFi – and now spas. As the historic examples illustrate, sometimes such fashionable elements of product or service become embedded in the core expectation of guests and remain permanent features in brand standards. But some trendy items prove an expensive side show in the long term. Are spas here to stay as a core element of hotels or are they a passing fad?

Some recent assignments have allowed us to research the matter and to form some tentative conclusions. Adding a spa typically represents a very considerable capital expense and usually considerably more per square meter than the investment in an equivalent space devoted to bedrooms. The treatments that are sought are subject to quite rapid change as fashions come and go making the requirement to frequently change and refashion the treatment rooms. This is a business that needs a large capital injection up front and the ability and willingness to inject further capital fairly frequently.

At the same time, the service that is being offered is very labour intensive. There is typically a one-on-one relationship between the customer and the treatment provider and with service being offered seven days a week for ten hours a day or more; the staffing cost implications are considerable. The spa business can be characterised as one that has both a high capital and high operating cost.

So the first question that needs to be asked is whether adding a spa to the hotel will better enable the hotelier and the brand to add to the lifetime value of existing guests and segments and/or significantly attract new segments either from competitor hotels or competitor locations? We believe that this can only be answered by robust research.

Our experience is that there is a lot of ‘noise’ but actually not a great deal of valid research findings available in the public domain. There is no shortcut and a serious investor needs to commit time and energy to researching the specific market under analysis. While in many situations the spa will serve the in-house population, there will be examples where the spa can be a tool to serve the local business and/or residential population better. For both the internal and external populations, adopting a well-known brand for the spa may be an important element in attracting and reassuring the market.

There is no template but it seems that the core income stream will be from treatments. Setting the price of a one-hour treatment at the level that the market will bear and using the same yield management techniques (fencing rates, volume discounts, packaging, advance purchase discounting, etc.) as are employed elsewhere in the hotel to sell hotel rooms (and on the golf course to sell golf rounds) should ensure that revenue is maximised for each of the one-hour slots available for sale in each treatment room each day.

Membership income may not be the largest income stream but it will be important to have a large enough membership to offset the peaks and troughs of hotel occupancy, yet a small enough membership so that hotel guests can be offered and they can take up packages that include spa elements. Membership income is usually made up of two elements – an initial signing on fee and an annual fee. Local demographics and other factors will determine the rate of churn in membership and the signing-on fee can be a significant element of long-term value.

Our findings suggest that when the investor injects the right amount of capital recognising the revenue that can be earned and the profit generated, a spa in a hotel can indeed contribute to long-term value. The savvy investor will avoid developing spas that are too large, too expensive, in the wrong hotel business or the wrong town, with the wrong number of treatment rooms or offering the wrong treatments, unbranded or not operated professionally, with inadequate regard to health and safety legislation.

John Mce writes on behalf of the Hotel Solutions Partnership http://www.hotelsolutionspartnership.com offering a professional hotel consultant service. Improve your hotel strategy or hotel business plan with the hotel solution partnership services.

You’ve brainstormed for uncountable hours. You’ve killed a dozen trees working through designs and specs. And you’re in the process of registering patent. Now you need to sell this new invention of yours, but how?

The Patent
First of all, don’t go for a full-fledged patent of your invention just yet, because, though you think it’s the greatest invention known to this generation, there may not be a market for it. Have you ever watched ABC’s American Inventor? Did you notice how many people thought the world of their inventions and spent gobs of money “perfecting” them, but were completely wrong about the consumer’s actual need for that product.

Instead of getting a patent right off, and spending quite a bit of money to do it, take the safe route and get a provisional application patent (which is approximately $100). This protects your invention from being swiped by someone else with a “patent pending” status for a period of one year. Before that 12 month period is expended, however, you must file for a full patent of your product.

Know Your Market
Before ever taking your idea to a business for possible purchase and distribution, you need to be fully aware of the target market for your product. Who would be interested in using your product and why? Would they be interested enough to buy your product, and, if so, how much would they be willing to pay?

An effective way to find this out is to produce a survey, whether it be simply asking those passing on the street if they would like a product like yours on the market, or producing a survey on a website. Though it’s easy to ask friends and family members, it’s better to get the opinion of strangers. Potential investors won’t trust those close to you as well as they would trust someone you don’t know to provide an honest opinion of your idea.

Pitching Your Idea
Once you know the target market and have data for your product, prepare a one-page sales sheet of your product, complete with pictures or sketches, to provide to potential investing companies. Do this leg work yourself, if possible. Beware of companies that promise to sell your idea to firms for a fee provided by you are often pulling a scam and just in it for your money, and you come out broke with no sales leads in the end.

It is best to target companies that are in the mid-sized range and experiencing some growth. Big corporations, unless actually in the business of purchasing new inventions, typically are not interested in such investments. And small startup companies typically don’t have the funds to purchase your idea.

Additionally, don’t go straight to the CEO of the company. Executives at the top don’t have time to spend on looking into the potential of the product your offer. Your letter or sale sheet will probably end up straight in the trash. Instead, reach out to the company’s marketing or sales team. They’re the ones who are actually on the look out for new products. And, be aware that some companies actually hire firms to look for products that fit the company’s needs, so pitching your idea to these firms is also a good course of action.

Once you’ve sent out your sales-sheets, wait a couple of weeks and, if you haven’t heard anything, call the companies you sent them to and ask for a meeting with a product manager to pitch your invention in person. Bring any and all specs, drawing and write ups you have for the idea. Be organized for your meeting and have a sales pitch somewhat prepared. Be ready for any and all questions about your product, including the hard and negatively geared ones. The more prepared you are, the better chance you have.

What to Expect
Actually, the more accurate phrase would be “what not to expect”. Don’t expect to get big bucks right from the start. The company that has agreed to manufacture you invention is taking a risk, and requiring them to pay you large licensing fees or a big chunk of the royalties just isn’t logical. That company is willing to help you develop your invention into a full scale product and to go from a provisional patent to a full registered patent in your name. Be appreciative of that fact and know that, if your product is the epiphany you believe it to be, the dough will roll in eventually.

As I’ve said before, everything worth while takes time to achieve success.

Internet entrepreneur Michelle Cramer wants to help you become more successful in your small business ventures. Read more marketing articles and design business cards online at GreatFX Business Cards, http://www.greatfxbusinesscards.com

Conducting your business in a market niche may seem the perfect environment. A niche is the name given to a segment of the market which faces a high demand and a low supply. Because there are a lot of potential customers and few competitors, it is often a good place to do business. This article is meant to shed some light on the subject of niche advertising. If this article does not provide you enough information on the topic, you can always search on the internet for an interactive video.

What is a niche? Finding a niche is about discovering a hot segment of a certain subject, then capitalizing on it. It means finding that particular area in your market where you can stand out amongst others. There are thousands of artists, graphic logo designers and cartoonists on the Internet. But how many of those creators deal almost exclusively in just cartoon logo design?

What makes a niche? By definition, a niche is a particular area that is in need of a product or service that isn’t being fulfilled by the mainstream market. For example: If you live in a town where there are thousands of area residents but no store for twenty miles, a general store will do exceptionally well. If you try to fit a general store into the middle of a city, you’ll find business really doesn’t thrive because people have too many options. The same is true with the Internet. This is what finding a niche is all about.

Bringing customer and business together is important to any market. No matter what you plan to offer as a product or service, you will run into obstacles if you cannot tap into a strong customer base. When you sell products or services online that customers do not need or easily purchase from other online companies, your business or service idea is bound to fail. Logically, you are only going to buy a product or service if the price is right.

The more competition you have, the lower your prices must go. Finding a niche makes your company stand out and eliminates the possibility of drastically reducing fees or prices to the point you are not gaining revenue. Competition, saturated markets and supply and demand remain important components in finding your niche.

If you find a niche that has little to no competition, you are far more likely to become a success. But keep in mind that the lack of competition could also mean that there isn’t a market for it, and with no market, there’s no money to be made.

Once you have an idea for your business you will need to find out if there is a market for it on the Internet. If you already know that there is a shortage of information on a product or service that you have searched for, you know that other people are also searching for that information. You can supply that information or product to them! If you can improve on an idea or make something better you may also find a niche market. You must find an area that will set your business apart from your competition to be successful!

The key to finding a great untapped niche is research. You have to know where to look and what tools to use for the search. Start by brainstorming ideas. Try to think of things you are passionate about but don’t really see online too often. Once you have a list of possible niche markets, it’s time to do your homework. Remember – a niche is very specific. Dogs is not specific. Basset Hounds is more focused. Products or services that appeal to working professionals who own basset hounds (such as doggie day care) is better still.

Start with those you know the best,your own needs. Look inside your expertise to find what YOU wish YOU had. If you are the “go to person” for a skill or a service, a missing piece is a niche worth looking into.

Finding your niche is easier than you think. Make a list of your favorite hobbies or activities. No matter what the hobby, put it on the list sewing, computer games, reading, cooking, baking, etc. State those hobbies that you feel you are exceptionally good at. Use this list to come up with business ideas.

It is important that you find a niche market online that can act as your customers or clients in the future. If you plan on making money for your Adsense site (of course you do!) then you have to make sure that you find people who share your interest on the niche you have chosen. 11

Industry or business type: Many businesses prefer to hire specialists (consultants, attorneys, designers, etc.) who focus on their industry. Focusing in on an industry makes it easy to market (for example, taking a booth at an optometrist trade show) and increases credibility with prospective clients.

No brand, no corporation, no startup can achieve 100 percent of a market in the face of competition. Once you accept this reality, finding a niche is greatly simplified. You don’t have to face those demons that keep telling you, “Let’s not give up any part of the market”. The truth is that all businesses are a niche business. The only difference is that the leader’s niche is bigger than the niches owned by others, but it is still a niche. Nurturing the specific needs of the niche users has become the prevalent theme for most successful startups.

Another way to select a niche is to focus in on a specific aspect of the work you do. Were there fewer businesses that needed business plans than overall management consulting?

Web content is a particularly hot field right now for freelance writers, so simply being able to write effective, SEO-rich content can give you an edge. It is important to stay abreast of the internet world and how websites market their materials in order to compete. It certainly isn’t glamorous, and you probably won’t send links to your whole family when you write the introductory page for a wedding ribbon retailer, but if you can write the kind of material that will get hits on Google, you will become a pretty hot commodity.

Todd Ash Is An Entrepreneur and A Master Of Network Marketing.To Find Out More About Succeeding Online Visit http://www.ToddAsh.com or send an email to:
toddash@getresponse.com

Social bookmarking is the habit or practice of saving bookmarks to a web site and “tagging” .Social bookmarking sites are a popular way to store, classify, share and search links.

But do not let the use of NoFollow fool you, the search engines are looking beyond the incoming links from social bookmarking sites to gauge their value to their search indexes. The external metadata compiled via user generated descriptions, tags, titles and categorization is incredibly valued by the search engines, as in the same philosophy as anchored backlinks, descriptive content about a web site defined by the users of that site who are not associated with the marketing or coding of that site, can be extremely powerful in gauging the importance and relevance of the content and tags which are used on that site.

Bookmarks show how a site is perceived, and when these sites allow voting, they also show the engines or whatever classification system which monitors voting, how people feel about the quality of the site. Furthermore, social bookmarking can introduce a site to the search engines, as in some cases, people may find and bookmark a site or a site’s internal pages before a search engine can find those pages via another form of inbound link.

Social bookmarking is a web 2.0 phenomenon that allows users to create and share “bookmarks”. It is the equivalent of adding a website to your list of favorites, but you can use this set of bookmarks on any computer by logging into your account. The reason why it is called “social bookmarking” is because the users that create the bookmarks can also look at related pages created by other people.

Social bookmarking sites are search engine friendly and within seven days of submission, links start to appear in all major search engines. If you are serious about your sites Link Building, Ranking and Traffic Social Bookmarking is a must.

IBM’s Dogear provides an excellent example of an enterprise social bookmarking tool in action. The developers from IBM Research, David Millen, Jonathan Feinberg, and Bernard Kerr, optimized Dogear for intranet use, resulting in tagging capability combined with authentication of the tagger. You can tag intranet as well as internet material, and your corporate-directory presence can have your tags (as can your blogs).

You can see others within your firm with the same bookmarks as well as the bookmarks of individuals. IBM added collaborative filtering to infer stuff that people might want from their tagging activity and let them know about it. IBM has also integrated its enterprise social bookmarking system with its corporate search engines, giving the user access to the benefits of both.

So, the question,? Should you pay any attention to social bookmarking?? And the answer is, make your site worthy of bookmarking. Bookmarks appear to web crawlers as links to your page, and that makes them very valuable SEO tools. For some search engines, the more bookmarks that lead back to your site, the more ?votes?

So, visit some of the social bookmarking sites on the Internet. Learn how they work. And set up your own account. Then, create your own list of links that includes your web sites, as well as other web sites that users might find relevant or useful.

On the web-site side, be sure to include the code snippets provided by social bookmarking organizations that allow users to tag your site easily. Then, maintain it all. Don’t just forget your account completely. If you do, eventually it will disappear and all the advantage of having one will go as well. Instead, continue using social bookmarking. Over time, the rewards will be increased traffic to your web site.

Social bookmarking sites are looking for extraordinary content, not just run of the mill stuff. It doesn’t matter how great of a writer you are, every single thing that ends up on your blog or your web page is not “vote-worthy”. Social bookmarking has become so competitive that people are asking for votes for every single thing that they put up on the Internet, which entirely defeats the purpose of the entire social bookmarking industry.

With regard to creating a high-quality search engine, a social bookmarking system has several advantages over traditional automated resource location and classification software, such as search engine spiders. All tag-based classification of Internet resources (such as web sites) is done by human beings, who understand the content of the resource, as opposed to software, which algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning of a resource. Also, people tend to find and bookmark web pages that have not yet been noticed or indexed by web spiders.

Social bookmarking leverages the popular social software phenomenon of tagging. Users can apply tags, or keywords, to the bookmarks they save. In social bookmarking, tagging creates a grass-roots taxonomy for the shared bookmarks. Users can search by tags to find bookmarks relevant to their interests. Taxonomies created through bookmarking are called “folksonomies.”

Social Bookmarking websites are basically sites that categorize and store ‘bookmark links’ (links which take one to a specific website). Millions of visitors flood these Social Bookmarking sites to search for information.

The implications of social bookmarking are many, and some are not so obvious. Marketers can use social bookmarking sites to collect all kinds of demographic information from a users personal bookmarks, then personalize that user’s advertising experience (one can only imagine the companies advertising to those who have bookmarked the vanishing point site referenced above).

The result would be a much more effective advertising campaign by the vendor than the current scattershot methods, and those social bookmarking sites could in turn charge much more for their advertising space. An interesting proposition if you’re a company looking to target a niche audience.

But could social bookmarking work within the walls of an enterprise? Could a company offer social bookmarking as a reference tool on its intranet, allowing developers, sales executives, janitors, and engineers alike to create their own (or department) repositories for information relevant to their jobs? This could mean the end of the reference manual, as well as the three-hour meeting in which two of those hours are spent reviewing a projects progress. Make the project notes and reference manuals available as bookmarks on the intranet, and that meeting time and brainpower could be put to better use.

Todd Ash Is An Entrepreneur and A Master Of Network Marketing.To Find Out More About Succeeding Online Visit http://www.ToddAsh.com or send an email to:
toddash@getresponse.com