One of my clients has been urging me to join StumbleUpon. According to him, it has been one of the best tools he’s found for driving traffic to his website-and he recently started a blog that has gotten more traffic as well. With his high recommendation, I decided to check up on what StumbleUpon is and how it works. One of the first things I realized was that it had enormous potential in generating brand exposure through the internet, as well as traffic. So here are some of the things I discovered.
What is Stumble Upon?
Stumble Upon is a social website which allows its users a new way to experience the Internet. The way it works is that members compile a list of favorites, which are articles from websites, blog posts and anything else you can find on the internet. This makes it much easier for other members to find helpful, informative, entertaining or thought-provoking things to read. Unlike Google or other search engines, you don’t have to type in keywords or searches, you simply click on one of the categories on StumbleUpon’s homepage, and you can find all sorts of good stuff. Once you become a member, you can than start to compile your own list of favorites, which you do by voting thumbs up or thumbs down.
How Does StumbleUpon Drive Traffic to my Website or Blog?
Because StumbleUpon has millions of members, you get a lot more exposure. Now this point is important, you don’t want to stumble your own stuff, that’s a big no-no on this website. But you can, however, stumble articles of friends you have on other social networking sites or the ones you start to add on StumbleUpon. When they see that you’ve been adding their stuff, they will want to check out your website or blog and, if your content is good, do the same for you. I say this in every post, but remember this is about networking. You are building relationships that can help you learn and grow, so adding other’s stuff is a good thing. But don’t stumble an article just because you know somebody, you want to make sure it’s quality content. Providing other StumbleUpon member quality articles gives you more credibility.
Now the way you will get more traffic from StumbleUpon is by getting as many members to add your blog posts as one of their favorites. It’s kind of like that old shampoo commercial; I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on…get it; the more people who have submitted your website or the articles on it as a favorite, the more people who see your content and click to your site for more.
What Kind of Blog Posts Should I Be Adding to my Favorites?
This is entirely up to you, but I would advice that you stick to your niche or topic. Let’s take my boss who owns a website development company as an example. He stumbles articles on web design, technology, business and web traffic. You see how these all fit together? That isn’t to say you can’t add favorites to your StumbleUpon account that are completely off topic, it’s just that your best bet for driving traffic to your blog is to get other’s in that field to link to you or add them to their favorites. This will get your StumbleUpon page more visits, because they are interested in reading the same stuff you do.
These are just a few of the things I’ve learned about how StumbleUpon drives traffic to your blog. I have only started my research process on this, so I will add more detailed info as I get it. What about you? What piece of advice do you have to share about how sites on the internet like StumbleUpon can help build traffic?
JBerry Marketing Consultants 