In our blog posts, we link to dozens of websites helpful to us and hopefully to you and your organizations. But how do you keep track of all these links? The answer: social bookmarkingExit Disclaimer. Social bookmarking is a way to store, organize, and search your favorite webpages on the Internet.

Through a social bookmarking site, you can save links to (or “bookmark”) web pages that you want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, but you can choose to save them privately and share them only with specific people, groups, and networks.

There are many social bookmarking sites, but some of the most popular ones include deliciousExit Disclaimer and diigoExit Disclaimer. Other sites such as diggExit Disclaimer and redditExit Disclaimer include a social bookmarking component, but are more “social news”Exit Disclaimer sites, meaning that they allow you to vote on or rate other people's bookmarks, and can collect and group articles based on growing Web interest.

Social bookmarking sites use “tags” which are keywords to help organize your bookmarks. Tags also help people search bookmarks and find information. For example, if you were to tag this page, you might use the tags “HIV”, “AIDS”, “Social Bookmarks”, “New Media”, and “HIV.gov”. Over one quarter of internet users tag content online Exit Disclaimer . Jason Falls of Doe AndersonExit Disclaimer, a leading brand-building agency, suggests when tagging pagesExit Disclaimer, you must keep it simple, keep it the same, periodically review and remember not to tag everything.So, how can individuals and organizations use social bookmarking to respond to HIV?

• Organize HIV resources and share them with your colleagues, clients, and friends.
• Engage with people that have similar interests (potential collaborators) who are bookmarking and tagging HIV-related websites.
• Subscribe to receive updates when an HIV website or article is tagged.
• Measure engagement and find supporters by looking to see who is tagging your content.
• Provide opportunities for people to bookmark or tag your website and articles (the “share this” button on this page is an example of how to do this).

We spoke with Matt Friedman from Brandywine CounselingExit Disclaimer about how they use social bookmarking sites. Matt told us they use the “share this”Exit Disclaimer button to encourage sharing of their content. Matt says he is always looking for new applications to enhance the reach of their site and social bookmarking and adding a button to your site is an easy way to do so.

Learn more about social bookmarking by watching Common Craft's Video, Social Bookmarking in Plain EnglishExit Disclaimer , and reviewing AVERT's Guide to Social BookmarkingExit Disclaimer .

Now you're ready to bookmark. Had any success with social bookmarking? Leave a comment and let us know!