Now, for all those bloggers, you might have at least heard about Stumbleupon.com, unless you have been under rocks all this time. But, since this is a comprehensive Guide of a blogger to get Unique Traffic through StumbleUpon, I will be covering the entire en route to gaining traffic to your blog through the Social bookmarking site StumbleUpon.
Getting Started with StumbleUpon
Okay, now lets get started with StumbleUpon from ground up.
What exactly is StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking website that allows its users to experience the Internet in a different way. Instead of merely searching for keywords of interest on Google, users select a number of categories that are of interest to them, and then randomly “stumble” through websites and articles in these categories, which have been submitted by other SU users. If the Stumbler likes the article they give it a thumbs up by clicking the “Thumbs up” button, if they don’t they can thumb the article down. The basic here is, the more thumbs up a website or article gets, the more hits it will receive. Stumbleupon users can also review articles and share them with other friends on Stumble, which again can equal more traffic for your site. If you provide good quality content there is a group of Stumble users out there who will like and share it, and there might be chances that you will get traffic.
First, Create your account at StumbleUpon. Start Stumbling others content according to your interests and follow Stumblers of your niche. What next?
Why should I Use StumbleUpon? Does it matter?
OF-COURSE YES! Slap yourself twice before thinking of neglecting using StumbleUpon for your blog or website.
Here are some interesting Stats (according to 2011 survey) on StumbleUpon that will make you Slap yourself again over the above question! :
- StumbleUpon has a market share of 50.34% in referrals, compared to the 37.4% share of Facebook.
- A post (from an average blog) after 24 hours of sharing on all top social media sites will get 83% of Stumbles compared to 5% of Facebook like’s (Most probably your friends) and 0% (Negligible) re-tweets.
- The ‘Stumble’ button has been hit more than 25 Billion Times.
- The half-life of a page shared through StumbleUpon as 400 hours – about 16.5 days! while links shared through Twitter have a half-life of merely 2.8 hours and Facebook is only slightly better with 3.2 hours.
- With more than 300,000 status updates posted every minute and 250 Million Tweets per day, having your link live for no longer a few hours.
- Since 2009, StumbleUpon had an increase of 118% in its active users.
- Stumblers typically Stumble 25 pages per day.
- The average User with Mozilla Firefox toolbar stumbles 400 times per month.
Factors governing your Traffic from StumbleUpon
There is no exact Math or Calculation to determine your amount of traffic generated through StumbleUpon. But there are some Basic factors governing the amount of traffic you get from StumbleUpon.
Number of Thumbs UP : The number of times your page/post has been ‘Thumbs up’-ed by users is one of the factors governing traffic to your blog. Its simple, the more the Thumbs Up, the more will be the traffic to your page, and in turn your blog.
Number of Followers : Though StumbleUpon now allows to Follow no more than 200 users. The reach and popularity of your follower is also a factor to get you more traffic to your blog.
Although these may be the factors, it is also important to build up your stumble profile as much as possible. Liking a lot of other peoples pages and sites helps you to become a more powerful user and will make it easier to get subscribers. If you subscribe to someone and they don’t subscribe back it may well be worth sending them a message and requesting that they add you as a friend. If you can get other users to submit your pages or sites this looks good as if you keep submitting pages from the same URL, They will catch on sooner or later and reduce the amount of traffic you get.
How StumbleUpon Works
The working of StumbleUpon is basically simple, StumbleUpon uses a classification system to collect all the content from your submission, your friends submissions and other user submissions. Then according to the ratings and your preferred interests, StumbleUpon displays the popular and relevant content to you.
Last but not the least..
How to make traffic through StumbleUpon
1. Make the Title MOST attractive
The title is the eye-catcher of your content. Make it as interesting as possible, as it immediately arouses a curiosity in your reader to view the complete post. In this part, be a little creative and don’t just think about the content alone, anyways who would like to read a post with quality content and BAD title? To develop this quality, keep reading some of the top blogs of your Niche, found at Technorati Blog Directory, and study their title’s properties. On average 8 out of 10 readers read your headline and 2 out of 10 read your post.
2. NEVER StumbleUpon OWN content
Its a Social rule of StumbleUpon that you should avoid stumbling your own content. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can never submit your own content, but it’s always better if someone else submits your content first. If you only stumble your own content, then other users won’t feel you add any value to the StumbleUpon community aside from self-promotion. Some of them might think of you as a ‘Spam’, even with quality content inside the post.
3. Network with other Stumblers
Take some time to get to know other members of the StumbleUpon community and befriend them. Your StumbleUpon presence will grow as you network with more users. Don’t just add a friend then forget about them. The power of StumbleUpon grows the more you network.
Getting followers on StumbleUpon is much like getting followers on Twitter except that there is no automatic follow back users to rely on. You have to find users to follow, follow them, and essentially hope that they follow you back. Most will receive an email notification (if they have the option turned on) letting them know that someone has followed them.
To discover Stumblers from your niche, enter http://www.stumbleupon.com/discover/YOUR-kEYWORD/ and replace the keyword with the keyword of your niche. This shows a List of users with the same interests, so you can follow them.
4. Don’t try to Fool StumbleUpon, you are fooling yourself
Don’t try to fool the StumbleUpon community by creating multiple accounts or stumbling only your friends’ content and vice versa. Chances are you’ll get caught, which could lead to your content getting buried or you getting banned from StumbleUpon temporarily or permanently. Follow the rules and ethics.
5. Improve you Appeal
Improve your appeal by using a custom profile picture which can be accessed under Settings Tab. Make use of your company’s logo and with your company’s name as the username for the branding of your Blog, if you wish to. Ad DON’T fall prey to Scammers with fake profiles and HOT profile pictures to lure you to follow them and gain more traffic. Don’t look out to make relationships on StumbleUpon, there are many other options for that purpose.
6. Use StumbleUpon Paid Discovery
If you’re not getting the results you wanted, don’t want to wait for natural discoveries, and want to bypass community building, then StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery is for you. Unlike Facebook Ads, you’re not relying on a small space and image on a page in hopes that your link will get clicked upon. When you put yourself into the StumbleUpon discovery system, people interested in your topic will get directed straight to your site.
The plans start from $0.05 per each user.
Do you use StumbleUpon for traffic to your blog? Leave a comment below. For more of the Quality Internet Guides and latest Social media news and you can also join our Digital Marketing Course to know more on this topic.
