For the past few years the rise of social bookmarking as a versatile tool for SEO and marketing has had a huge impact in IM. Bookmarking is heavily in use by online marketers for obtaining backlinks and more traffic. But you really should never neglect or overlook what can be done for the more long-term methods at high PR bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites generally give you a place to keep bookmarks, for those who are definitely new to IM. You can assign tags (keywords) to your bookmarks, and that actually has SEO benefits but a lot depends on the particular site.
Several years ago the more popular bookmark sites changed all their links to nofollow which had a huge effect on bookmark rankings. Naturally, I make supposition about any impact Google had with those modifying their links to nofollow. However it is interesting, and we all realize how Google is or can be.
But you can gain exposure when you take a more conscientious approach to making use of social bookmarking sites. Mass backlinking profiles at bookmark sites are renowned for being just about useless and even spammy. However, I am knowledgeable of people who do take a few more minutes developing their profiles. More normal, non-spammy, profiles won’t be deleted by the human reviewers – and that is why it’s smart to do it like that. There is SEO value with a great RSS feed; not to mention RSS directory submissions you are able to do. However, you do not want to annoy any feed subscribers by including too many links throughout the content. It is not needed to spend time building relationships and becoming known, but it doesn’t have to be totally time consuming.
The bottom line about social bookmarking is how you use it is entirely up to you. The truth is a lot of IM marketers do not want to spend time with long-term strategic approaches. Maybe you can try it at just one strong bookmarking site and see how you like the results.