If you run any kind of blog then you should be using the power of social bookmarking. Basically, social bookmarking is a way for people to bookmark and share a web page with others. There are many social bookmarking services which allow users to add web pages to their bookmark list. Some of these include Furl, Del.Ico.Us, and Spurl to name a few.

As a blog owner the benefits of having someone add a page from your site to their social bookmark list is that your web page be search-able in the entire bookmark directory (which is available to all members of the service). In addition, people will also be inclined to share it with others! A fantastic way to build your blog’s audience and increase exposure.

The easiest way for someone to add a page from YOUR website to their social bookmark service is to provide them with a special link. This special link will be connected to the service they use and when clicked on it easily adds YOUR page to their bookmarks. With over 40 different services available to manage social bookmarks it’s a bit inconvenient to add links for all of them. That’s where Social Bookmark Plugins come in handy.

If you’ve been in the blogosphere for any amount of time you’ve probably seen these images at the end of articles and posts.

These are links to social bookmarking services. If you want to add these little icon images to the bottom of your blog posts there is a great plugin for WordPress called Sociable that will do the job.

However, I never liked those little icons, I found them distracting, annoying, and didn’t want to add them to my blog. Well, now I don’t have to! Recently I found a fantastic plugin that allows you to do a dropdown menu for all the social bookmark sites. The plugin is for WordPress and is called Chicklet Creator 2. I really like the dropdown much better, it’s easier to read and doesn’t confuse your visitor like 25 little icons on your page would.

I also found a Social Bookmark Creator which creates the HTML code for either a list or drop-down menu. As opposed to the WordPress plugin, this creator allows you to create the menu for Blogger, WordPress, or Moveable Type and is done with HTML instead of a plugin.

If you aren’t signed up for a social bookmarking site yet I recommend you try out Furl. Then start playing around, and hey, while you’re at it why not bookmark a few of your favorite articles from this site!