One of the most popular, yet somewhat elusive, social bookmarking sites by far is StumbleUpon. Many of you have struggled to develop strategies or discover ways to gain maximum exposure from this fantastic community of users and drive targeted traffic to your blogs. Yet, there are others (myself included) who are simply interested in finding relevant articles being shared by other Stumblers and exploring unique content.
StumbleUpon Extension for Chrome
Either way, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the official SU Google Chrome Toolbar is available for download. Part of the confusion surrounding StumbleUpon, at least for me anyway, is based on the fact that the toolbar is often misunderstood. I recorded this video to walk you through the steps of using this exciting social bookmarking service and all of the features you can access. The toolbar is very interactive and I think the best way to highlight each of the tools is to take them one by one and that way, you can pause the video and experiment as we go along.
Basics of the StumbleUpon Toolbar
In this screencast-o-matic recording, I'll demonstrate the functions of the Google Chrome toolbar which is very similar to the SU toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer.
The key to any level of success with using SU is to install the toolbar for your browser of choice. You'll find that accessing the toolbar makes it easy for you to “stumble upon” articles and users you might like. The SU algorithm integrates your personal areas of interest that you have listed on your profile, the articles you've previously shared, shares from your friends, shares by other users from within the community and other technologies as depicted in the image below.
Su.pr the URL Shortener from StumbleUpon
You might be wondering if there are other ways to access the toolbar even though you don't have the extension installed on your browser. The answer is yes, you can use the su.pr url shortener for any links you share on Twitter or Facebook. Anyone who clicks on a su.pr shortened link will have access to the StumbleUpon toolbar. They will find a prompt on the right-hand side, alerting them to sign in or join the community of Stumblers.
Are you using SU? Tell me what you think of the video and let us know if you have some tips you would like to share. Feel free to link to your profile on SU in your comment so that we can share some great content with the StumbleUpon toolbar for Chrome!