Have you ever struggled to remember a site you’ve visited in the past? This is why bookmarks are so helpful. A bookmark in the traditional sense helps you find your place in a book. On the internet, a bookmark helps you save links you find valuable.
However, since the internet is an endless stream of data people often find themselves in a bit of a bookmarking pickle. If you’re struggling with stacks of bookmarks and don’t know what to do with them then this article is for you.
As you’re painfully aware, one of the primary benefits of organizing your bookmarks is providing some form of order to your list of links. However, there are other unique benefits for organizing bookmarks.
These benefits include:
Organizing your bookmarks is a simple way to turn a 5-minute search into a 2-second task. This process will become more important as you acquire more bookmarks or spend more time on the internet.
Now that you have a brief understanding of how bookmarks are advantageous we will discuss the different types of bookmark managers. These types include:
Browser-based bookmarks use a browser’s internal bookmarking feature. For example, Chrome’s bookmark manager allows you to manage bookmarks in folders. Firefox and Safari also have similar bookmarking capabilities.
SaaS (Software as a Service) bookmark managers are the evolution of browser-based management. These bookmark managers often use extensions that allow users to use the platform inside any browser.
SaaS bookmark managers like Mailist include more features than browser-based bookmark managers. For example, Chrome’s manager allows you to save your links in folders. However, they do not send you reminders to view unread links.
Now that you understand the different types of bookmark managers let's show you how to organize your bookmarks.
To organize your bookmarks in Chrome the process is quite simple. Follow these steps below.
If you’re a casual internet surfer using Chrome’s bookmark manager may be helpful. However, after a while bookmarks sitting in folders become almost impossible to manage long term. Like any file cabinet these resources become obsolete, they are not searchable programmatically, and often outgrow initial categorization. Mailist solves these challenges at the onset. More importantly, you can still use your favorite browsers like Chrome and Firefox with even better organization capabilities.
To start organizing your bookmarks on Chrome with Mailist follow the steps below.
Here’s a great tip. When using Mailist you can organize content by “tags”. The tagging system is more flexible than a folder system as you can select multiple tags for one page. For example, if a page is relevant to social media content and blog content that page will appear in the results of every tag. In contrast, a folder system will require duplicate links.
We understand that Chrome is not everyone’s defacto browser. Firefox is also a popular browser with similar bookmarking capabilities as Chrome. Let’s walk through how to organize your bookmarks in Firefox.
To start organizing your bookmarks on Firefox with Mailist follow the steps below.
As mentioned above there are different types of bookmark managers. You’re probably wondering why you should use Mailist vs. other bookmark managers. Interestingly, Mailist takes the bookmark management solution a step further by implementing features that make bookmarks even more effective in your day to day process. These features include:
Let’s discuss why these features make bookmark management more effective.
The concept of saving all your important links and resources in a browser is akin to saving your favorite recipes in a notebook. While it may be an option that works for the time being, in the long run, it puts your collection at risk. Browser bookmark management is antiquated and relies heavily on the health of your browser or devices.
We’ve seen many frustrated users in support forums asking for help to restore their bookmarks due to a failed sync, conflicting device updates, or a problem with an account. Just take a look at this thread below.
In short, your browser was not built to manage bookmarks, it was built to browse the internet. In contrast, Mailist was built to manage your bookmarks. It’s also not reliant on any specific browser or device. This means you can access your links on any device at any time.
Bookmarks are a lot like life, they are in constant need of reorganization. Mailist has some interesting features like bulk tagging and broken or inactive link detection. These features are excellent for maintaining the integrity of your bookmarking system.
One of the biggest bookmark challenges we noticed is that we have a habit of bookmarking content and never actually reading it. The habit of saving content you never review is a waste of energy and resources. Instead of letting your bookmarks “go to waste”, Mailist will send you a list of unread links weekly. You can also decide when you want to receive the newsletter and what type of bookmarks you should receive based on your unique system.
Mailist doesn’t stop at just email reminders. Instead, your weekly emails can be repurposed as curated resources you can share online. Each newsletter you receive is viewable in a browser and can be shared online. Overall, Maillist’s functional and scalable features make it an excellent option for organizing your bookmarks in the long run.
Apart from functional aspects like using Chrome, Firefox, and Mailist we have some additional tips that if followed, will improve your bookmark organization. These tips include:
Let’s address these tips in further detail below.
Naming conventions are essentially agreed upon naming schemes. When organizing your bookmarks half the battle is ensuring you’ll be able to identify a resource when you need it.
When bookmarking a source you can’t rely on the metadata or prefilled data provided by the page as it may not be descriptive enough for your specific system.
For example, I may decide to bookmark an Instagram post for design inspiration. Here’s an example of a link below.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CALaO7lFAbh/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
The title of this link is automatically pulled from the link data which is:
Ampfluence on Instagram: “There are so many ways to discover content on Instagram but what we want to know is how you do it personally. Do you prefer to…”
As you can see above this title will make finding the resource in the future almost impossible. Instead, it’s a better idea to provide a title that’s relevant to your specific data management goals.
In this case, since design inspiration is the high-level goal I’d probably give the link a title similar to that listed below.
Design Inspiration - Instagram - Ampfluence
The title follows the scheme “Goal - Platform - Source”. There’s no right or wrong scheme here as every goal is different. However, it’s important to use a consistent pattern throughout your title naming practices. This will help you manage your bookmarks at scale.
When choosing tags it's important to think about tags in terms of a functional hierarchy since tags will be used to group your resources. A functional hierarchy ensures your links are grouped logically. The easiest way to explain this is by using a food pyramid. Each part of a food pyramid has an overarching category similar to a tag, like, fruits and vegetables. Being mindful of your hierarchy when creating and assigning tags will lead to a more logical bookmarking system.
Avoid creating tags that use detailed words or phrases. For example, a product skew is not a good tag because you’ll never remember it and it also clutters your bookmark manager with tags you don’t need.
This tip falls in line with naming conventions but it’s a very important consideration that should be elaborated on. As your bookmarks increase over time you may end up with hundreds of bookmarks. When this happens, it’s important to consider words or phrases you’ll be using to search for items.
To ensure your bookmarks are searchable take a few minutes to jot down all the reasons you plan on bookmarking content. Then come up with a common naming convention that makes these items searchable.
For example, if the goal for bookmarking was to create a collection of recipes I can then decide to preface every title with the type of recipes like dinner or dessert. This will help me easily search for specific types of recipes with ease.
If you follow these three tips above you’ll be bookmarking your content using proven data management strategies. The result will yield a very organized set of bookmarks.
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