If you use the Google toolbar and PlugIM then you’ve got to check this out. A fellow PlugIM member, Mark Blair of www.smoblog.com, developed a PlugIM button for the Google toolbar and it’s packed with functionality.

You may be familiar with the PlugIM bookmarklet which creates a button (in Firefox) or a favorites shortcut (in Internet Explorer) that allows you to submit the current page in your browser to PlugIM with a click. One thing that always bugged me about the bookmarklet was that there was no way to make it a button in Internet Explorer, it had to be a shortcut. Mark’s Google toolbar button gets around this dilemma because it’s installed directly into the Google toolbar itself rather than the browser. So now IE users can have a submit to PlugIM button which is so much easier than searching for a shortcut in your favorites menu.

But Mark’s PlugIM button does much more than just submitting the current page you’re viewing to PlugIM. Here’s a list of the features this little button can do:

• Submit to PlugIM: Click the button and you’re forwarded on to the submit page of PlugIM where the URL of the story you were just reading is automatically pre-populated so all you need to do is fill in the description and pick a category.
• Search PlugIM: Enter a search phrase in the Google toolbar and click the PlugIM button and instead of searching Google, it’ll search PlugIM.
• Recent Front Page PlugIM Stories: There’s a drop down on the button that displays a list of links to the most recent front page PlugIM stories by using PlugIM’s RSS feed.

Another great thing about the button is it’s a one click install and literally takes seconds to do.

Download: You can find the download for this little wonder on Mark’s blog here:
http://www.smoblog.com/plugim-toolbar-button/

If you like it as much as I do, please be sure to give Mark a big thank you! Thanks Mark!

Have you heard of Social Bookmarks Manager yet? If not, now’s the time to familiarize yourself with it. It’s a freeware application developed by SoftLogica which automatically generates social bookmarking code for your website. All you need to do is enter a few pieces of information, such as the URL and title of the page, check off which social bookmarking services you want buttons for then copy and paste the code to your site. It’s that easy. From their site:

“Social Bookmarks Manager is designed to simplify the process of bookmarklets creation for your blog posts, articles and any other web pages. The program comes with 60 profiles of the most popular social bookmarking sites and generates ready-to-use HTML code. You can manage appearance by choosing between text-only, icons-only and mixed links, adding prefix and selecting separator.”

The software currently supports button creation for 60 of the most popular social bookmarking services including, most recently, PlugIM! Of course I’m honored that PlugIM was selected to be a part of this software package alongside with such heavy hitters as Digg, del.icio.us and Furl and I want to say a quick thank you to Sergey Petrov, the CEO of SoftLogica, for making it happen.

You can download your free copy of Social Bookmarks Manager right here:
http://www.socialbookmarksmanager.com

All the PlugIM surfers got a new toy for their browsers with the bookmarket, so we also decided to give the webmasters something to play with as well so we present to you:
 
For Webmasters: the “Plug This” Button
 
Add this button to your site, each article, page, story, or each blog post and your visitors will be able to plug it on PlugIM with the click of a button.  If any given story has all ready been submitted, the user is forwarded directly to it so they can give it a plug to help promote it further.  All you need to do is provide the url of the story and the story’s title and PlugIM will automatically fill them in for the user when they click the button.  They’ll just need to add a description, a couple tags and a category and they’re done.
 
The link format is as follows:

http://www.plugim.com/submit?url={url of the story}&title={title of the story}

Examples using this blog post to demonstrate:
 
‘Plug This’ button only: Result:
 
‘Plug This’ button and text: Result:  Plug This
 
‘Plug This’ text only: Result: Plug This
 
Or you can use the super easy method and use the Cuzimatter button maker which generates the code for you after you enter the url and title.  It makes buttons for PlugIM as well as Digg, Del.icio.us and BlinkList.
 
*Note: Please don’t hotlink to the button image.  If you want to use it, please save a copy of it, upload it to your server and link to that, thanks.
 
Let us know if you have any questions and happy buttoning to you!

It’s the time you’ve all been waiting for!  You asked for it and you got it, a new incredibly useful feature has been added to PlugIM.com!
 
For Web Surfers: the “post to PlugIM” Bookmarklet
 
Add this as a bookmark or toolbar button in your browser and when you come across an article, story or great internet marketing product that you want to share with the PlugIM community, just click the button or bookmark and you’ll go directly to the submit story page on PlugIM with the link to the story and the story title all ready filled in.  All you need to do is add your description, tags and pick a category and you’re done.  If someone else has all ready submitted the same story to PlugIM, you’ll be forwarded right to it so you can give it a Plug.
 
*Tip: Check the ‘remember’ check box during login so you won’t have to login every time you use the bookmarket.
 
FireFox users: drag this link: post to PlugIM up to your Bookmarks Toolbar.
 
Internet Explorer users: right click this link: post to PlugIM and choose ‘Add to Favorites…’ and create the shortcut in the ‘Links’ folder.
 
Let us know if you have any questions, now get to posting and enjoy!