Promoting Your Blog with Social BookmarkingOnce you have your business or personal blog set up, there is a vast collection of online tools and services you can use to promote your blog and increase the popularity of your Web site and content.nnOne such tool is RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. It’s a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with a Web site in an automated manner that’s easier than manually logging in to check for updates. An easy way to get working with RSS is Feedburner (feedburner.com), which enables bloggers to easily create RSS feeds that will syndicate content to readers through feed aggregators. Users can check subscribed feeds regularly for new content and automatically download updates. An easy way to get people to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed is adding the iconic RSS button to your blog’s layout.nnAnother button that, when added to your layout, can help your blog’s popularity is Technorati’s Favorites Feature (technorati.com), which enables readers to list and track up to 50 of their favorite blogs, and lists new posts from the blogs on the list, as they are updated.nnDigg (digg.com) is a popular social ranking site that enables readers to submit content and raise the popularity of a blog  post, news article or video post by voting or “digging” the posts they like best. As a blogger, you can make your Web site easily “diggable” by adding a Digg link to your layout.nnSocial bookmarking site del.icio.us (del.icio.us) also enables readers to bookmark blogs or specific posts and share them as favorites with friends and the del.icio.us community. The primary use of del.icio.us is the storing of bookmarks online, which enables users to access and manage their bookmarks from any computer.nnHaving your blog listed among somebody’s del.icio.us favourites is advantageous because it makes it possible for other users in that community to come across it. Once again, you can simplify the process for readers by adding a del.icio.us link on the main page of your blog or on every page there is content.nnAnother Web site that works similarly in terms to making your blog easy to find is StumbleUpon (stumbleupon.com). This Web site is similar to del.icio.us in the sense that people can add your Web site to the StumbleUpon database. There they can rate it as thumbs up or thumbs down.nnOnce the Web site or blog post is in the database, other Stumblers will be able to, well, stumble upon it and add their rating. StumbleUpon uses ratings to form collaborative opinions on Web site quality. Users only see pages that friends and like-minded stumblers have recommended. This helps users discover great content they probably wouldn’t have found using a search engine.