When used properly Delicious is the #1 way I have found to quickly capture key information for future reference and effectively disseminate non-critical information among teams.
After reading this post you will understand the following:
1) Why social bookmarking matters more than ever
2) Why EVERY business should be using Delicious
3) How to actually setup Delicious so that you will use it (24/7!)
Why Social Bookmarking Matters More Than Ever.
If you don’t know what social bookmarking is, watch this video primer.
Information is growing exponentially. There are well over 15 billion web pages on the Internet. It is estimated that 40 exabytes of unique information will be created this year alone — that’s more information than was created in the last 5,000 years combined! Individuals can no longer keep up with such exponential information growth despite information being more valuable than ever. That’s where social media comes in to save the day. By leveraging technology like Delicious, savvy Internet users can leverage social and technology filters to rapidly identify the MOST CRUCIAL information. Delicious is an awesome example of this in practice. While saving and sharing personal bookmarks is great (how is explained below) there are two additional critical steps to optimal efficiency. First is to leverage the power of a network. How? Simply browse the bookmarks of your network and save the most relevant ones. Let them do the grunt work of discovery! The second critical step is to utilize ‘subscriptions,’ that is, you can subscribe to keywords or tags. Thus whenever anyone on Delicious tags a new web service, or blog post with a tag you care about, you will automatically be notified. With virtually no additional effort you can have a team of free researchers working for you, delivering the key information you need in real-time and allowing you to decide what is worth reading and/or keeping for future reference.
Using this technique, not only will you discover more relevant content than you ever could on your own, but you will save tons of time and benefit from the descriptions and context accompanying each bookmark.
Why EVERY business should be using Delicious.
All businesses (especially startups) need to be on their game to succeed in our current marketplace. Information is truly a competitive advantage, especially when resources are limited. This is especially true for webstartups because the field of technology is so dynamic (new techniques and strategies are constantly popping up) making it imperative thatstartups understand their operating environment. If you are at an information disadvantage, you cannot execute properly or make informed decisions.
This means that someone must pay attention to almost everything, including:
-Overall industry trends
-Competitors
-References to your brand and product(s)
-Technology hacks, advances and pitfalls
-Experienced persons sharing their failures, successes and insights
While it may seem way too much to pay attention to, it’s 100% necessary. So what can you do about it?
How to actually setup Delicious so that you will use it.
Delicious.com as a standalone website sucks. It’s worthless. Thank God for Firefox and the notion of plugins. Plugins are incredibly valuable because 100% of the time you spend online, you spend accessing the web from a browser. Plugins reside in the actual browser allowing fast access and valuable functionality. For example, rather than having to remember to log-into specific websites, plugins allow you to semi-passively use their services. Delicious plugins are no different — but the trick is you need to download two of them:
First, download and install Delicious Bookmarks, the official Firefox add-on for Delicious.
Second, download and install Delicious Buttons which will put ‘tagging’ and del.icio.us search access into the toolbar.
Now you’re ready to rock! As long as you surf the web with Firefox, you will be able to save a website, chunk or text, or image in less than a few seconds. One small trick I use is to make sure to highlight sections of text and then click, “Save New Bookmark” from the Delicious Toolbar Menu. This insures that each bookmark will be saved with some accompanying text helping to remember key points and the reason why you saved it.
Example of highlighting a chunk of text and then selecting “save a new bookmark” from the toolbar…
Once you select “save a new bookmark” the text goes into the Notes section and you can add Tags…
My next post will describe how to maximize Delicious, including: adding subscriptions, building a network and tagging strategies
