StumbleUpon is one of best social networking and bookmarking sites for bloggers or anybody who is hunting for informative articles and posts. There are many social networking and bookmarking sites in the world. Some of them are more popular than others. Apart from being popular by the end users, there is also an X factor which is created by media buzz. Some sites enjoy more media attention than others. These include:
- Google+
There are social networking and bookmarking sites which have made it big not only in terms of the usage by the general population but also, they have received enough and sometimes, more than enough media buzz.
As these websites are always in news, most of the bloggers and website owners use them across niches for brand building and promotional exercises.
If you can refresh your memory, you will realize that there are few new names in the above mentioned list and some of the old names have disappeared. StumbleUpon is one of them.
Now when I say stumbleupon, what comes to your mind? Probably,
I have used it once,
I used it more than once,
Or
I was quite regular till some time back and then I stopped using it as I think it is not as popular as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest.
Under any circumstances, if you are not using stumbleupon in the current world, then you are missing out on a great opportunity.
This opportunity is even bigger if you are a blogger.
Bloggers need platforms where people are constantly looking for great informative materials to read.
People on Facebook might be more interested in interacting with each other than reading your blog posts.
People on Twitter might be interested in consuming your information but you need to handle it in a specialized manner to exploit its true potential.
But people on StumbleUpon have only one interest and that is reading informative posts and articles.
StumbleUpon has still got a very active community. They are the best pool of readers and consumers for a blogger because they are interested in what an average blogger produce and that is, content.
Likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest are good and there is no way you can afford to ignore them but at the same time, you should also not ignore StumbleUpon. Those who still use StumbleUpon regularly can testify that the traffic received by StumbleUpon is awesome. The most important criteria for judging traffic is its quality. These people not only spend time on your blog but also contribute to it through comments and sharing.
In fact, back in early 2011 StumbleUpon surpassed Facebook in amount of traffic. But as most of us are not using it the way we used it in past, traffic has dropped on stumbleupon. But the best part about it is the fact that the quality of visitors from StumbleUpon has improved and most of the junk has left it.
Bigger social networking sites like Facebook attracts lot of junk so often your reach is diluted but on StumbleUpon, your target audience is interested in your material so your reach is much more concentrated.
Your ROI (return on investment) is going to be much higher for your efforts than most of the other social networking and bookmarking sites.
One of the common trends which I have seen in last few months is disappearance of stumbleupon share button from many blogs.
In fact, if you have started blogging in last year or so, chances are you never had StumbleUpon share button on your blog.
How to use StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your site
First of all the basic guidelines of using stumbleupon are same as of using any other social bookmarking site, but some of the basic points to consider are;
- Have a SU share button on your site.
- Register for the site and create a profile if you don’t have one.
- Complete your profile with your images.
- At the beginning it will ask you to enter interests. You can also edit these at any later stage. You should enter your interests carefully because then it will show sites according to your settings in interest.
- Follow others and bookmark their sites.
- Install the StumbleUpon extension and start using it instantly. You can bookmark your site and other sites using it.
- Make sure you only bookmark worthy sites and not every sites on the planet earth.
- Socialize and interact with fellow members.
- Design your site in a way it can have an instant impact on your visitors because most of the visitors who arrive on your site through StumbleUpon will leave it within few seconds if they don’t find it attractive
- Think of keywords while deciding on the tags for your site because they will be deciding factor in bringing traffic to your site. If they are not targeting properly then you may end up with untargeted visitors.
- You should use StumbleUpon for your posts ideas; it will help you in developing appropriate content as per your visitor’s interest.
So if you can bring your focus back on generating traffic from StumbleUpon, I am sure you will get better results.
Please leave your comments and let me know “Are you still going to ignore StumbleUpon?”