If your website is filled with numerous links to several online forums and directories, on the pretext that these links will popularize it, you need to rethink your strategy. There are times when the readers will go away because the links look horrid.

At first glance the idea of encouraging your blog readers to digg, stumble, bookmark and recommend your post seems sound. And if it works for a few services, more has to be better. Right?

If we think about it from your readers perspective: Do the social bookmarking links add any value for your reader?

Having a well set up tool bar is often a better and faster method then searching for hard to find icons on a social media site. That being said, do you think your icons are necessary if your readers already have a toolbar installed?

Many readers won't recognize some or all of the social networking sites. If they do decide to click on the icon and sign up for the services, there is little chance that they will then think to return to your page and vote for your blog.

Besides self-highlighting, do you think that many more people will actually spend time to highlight your post on different social media sites?

To find out if it is worth it to have all of these icons on your blog, it will be necessary to conduct a test. Using Google Analytics you can track outbound clicks to see if the icons are used.

That said, you should occasionally encourage your readers to digg your post on a single service that you are targeting for that particular post.

What do you think? Are social bookmarking icons just a nuisance or are they a useful tool? Click over to my blog and add your two cents.