Today I’m setting my eyes on StumbleUpon. I’ve been using it ever since I started this blog; but it hasn’t turned out any spectacular changes to my stats yet. One reason, perhaps, is my lack of activity in using it. But one thing I’m sure of is that it has the potential to benefit your site with lots of traffic if taken seriously. I’ve been receiving a trickle of visits from it (you can see it in my referral widget in the sidebar) by simply submitting my content and a few reviews and thumbs up of my favorite digests in my Google Reader. What more if I actively use it just like in Digg? For one thing I was able to get traffic via Digg whenever I submit my content and then employ the techniques I’ve been blabbing about sometime ago. It’s not great traffic like I said but it is steady traffic nonetheless.
A lot of articles have been published over the net about StumbleUpon traffic, and all of them agree on one thing; Digg traffic is nothing compared to StumbleUpon. I haven’t been a witness of that but the data they’ve gathered and the observations they were pointing out all make sense. StumbleUpon traffic lasts longer. StumbleUpon visitors browse more. StumbleUpon traffic has more potential to be converted into subscribers and more backlinks. Of course, how this traffic will react depends on how you present your content and appearance to them. The less crappy your content the more it will be appreciated, a given fact for every social media sites out there.
I think StumbleUpon presents a better platform for bloggers to market their content effectively without being too brutal about it like in Digg. I mean, if you want some good results from Digg, you have to spoon feed all your friends with requests to digg your submission before you can get it. In StumbleUpon, I think it doesn’t work too much like that. Also, SEO articles considered spam in Digg are well received and praised in StumbleUpon. To better understand what I’m talking about, we need to make a certain perspective on how StumbleUpon’s system works. After reading several resources about StumbleUpon, I came up with these:
1) StumbleUpon is not so much of a timely news site like Digg and Reddit. So even if your content is old as long as people can still appreciate it, it’s still going to be stumbled.
2) As long as people are still thumbing up your submission, even after it became popular, it still has the potential to make a comeback or generate further traffic at least.
3) StumbleUpon community is diverse, so more or less you’ll get people who’ll vote for your content besides your friends.
4) Votes and reviews count as recommendations for your submission. The more you receive the better exposure your submission will receive within the community.
5) Unique, useful, and appealing content gets more votes than ordinary ones.
6) Stumblers usually stumble through their toolbar which is affected in part by their network’s stumbles.
7) Top stumblers have more weight in their votes compared to the rest.
Read the rest of How to Generate Stumble Upon Traffic…