Market Your Website and Share Interesting Finds Using StumbleUpon
As my current blog approaches it’s first birthday on February 1st, I’ve started looking at different ways to make it better, and to push it to a higher level in terms of usefulness and readership. One of the key components of this strategy is using social media in an effective way. This post will cover a few basics, so if you’re an old pro when it comes to mingling on the social web, feel free to add your knowledge to the mix.
For me, the term social media conjures up images of blinking neon MySpace profiles, but fortunately, there’s more to social networking on the web than what MySpace has to offer. In my opinion, MySpace is the trailer-trash of social media…maybe that’s a little harsh. I think it can be used in a positive way, but it seems to be more about keeping in touch with friends, connecting with musicians, and it’s a haven for very sleazy spam….and I truly hate spam, sleazy or not. On the other hand, there are a number of social media websites that offer a more concentrated purpose, and focus on content rather than your profile. Among the best I know of are Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.
Mmmm, Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is a web bookmarking site where you can bookmark websites and articles on your own profile. You can also see a list of the most popular bookmarks at any given moment, which is an excellent resource for finding great content.
Stumble Upon Useful Content
My favorite at the moment is StumbleUpon. With StumbleUpon, you give articles and websites you like the “thumbs up”, and you can write short reviews as to why you like them. As you build a circle of friends, you are sharing with each other the great content that you find. The more people who give an article or site the “thumbs up” or write a review, the more popular that article becomes, resulting in a LOT of traffic being sent to that website. There’s huge potential here, as SU currently has over 4 million users. At the same time, browsing through recent entries by SU friends helps me find awesome content that is related to what I’m interested in. It’s win-win.
How to Get Started with StumbleUpon
Here are the basics: To get the most out of StumbleUpon, you download the SU toolbar which has several built in key components such as the ability to give a website the “thumbs up” without pulling up the StumbleUpon website. Another feature, is a “Stumble” button which, when clicked, takes you to targeted websites based on your interests. The toolbar is not required to use StumbleUpon, however it makes the site easier to use.
To get started on the SU website, you simply sign up for an account and fill in your profile details. Then search for friends who are perhaps bloggers, or SU can search your email contacts to help you find people you know on StumbleUpon. Whether you immediately find people you know, you can still use the site. If you find a website or blog post that you find incredibly helpful or well-written, you can submit it to StumbleUpon. SU will have the entry listed in you’re profile as the one who submitted the article.
Before I started using StumbleUpon, I noticed that I started getting a fair amount of traffic from them. I soon figured out that a fellow blogger friend had submitted a couple of my posts. The traffic surprised me.
Use StumbleUpon to Build a Campaign
Another interesting feature of StumbleUpon, is the ability to create a campaign. A campaign is basically where you pay SU to send traffic your way. $50 will buy you 1000 visits with there “Stumble” feature. Personally, I haven’t tried this feature out for myself as of yet, but several other bloggers I’m familiar with have done so with great results. So, as I get more familiar with the site, I may try this soon.
Other Good Social Media Sites
If you aren’t familiar with social media, here are a few more great social media sites that revolve around content.
- Digg
- Design Float (Another favorite as it’s targeted toward Web Design/Programming related content)
What Am I Missing?
I know there are some other social networks such as Facebook, MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, etc, which I have a profile on. But in this post, I wanted to point more toward content-centered sites. What other content rich social media sites have you found to be a great resource for both finding content and marketing your own?
I think I subconsciously wrote a post about myspace yesterday when I spoke of sites that look like they were designed in 1995.
Anyway, as a designer and illustrator, I have found great success marketing myself on IllustrationFriday and various Flickr Groups.
Yes, I read the post your referring to this morning…..started to comment and didn’t for some reason. The thing with hiring a copy writer made a lot of sense….
I’ve never been on Illustration Friday and I’m not a member of any Flickr groups. Sounds like good advice. I’ll checkout Illustration Friday. I assume it’s for illustrators, which I’m not, but I’ll take a look anyway.
Hey glad to see that you got your comments fixed, it’s frustrating when things like that go wrong.
I love Stumbleupon myself, one of my posts got stumbled last year and I got close to 2500 visitors from it. I haven’t ever tried to setup a campaign but I’ve got some projects where that might be useful so I may give it a try.
I just haven’t been as active on Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit as I would like, but I’m definitely going to start getting into them a little more in the future.
Yeah Clarke, that whole deal with the comments about drove me nuts yesterday. For some reason, the category I had put the post in was messing up the design and causing errors on my page. I still don’t know what the issue was. I’m just glad I was finally able to put my finger on it after several hours and re-typing the entire post.
I’m just now starting to really try and use Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us, etc. I’ve known for some time that there was a lot of potential for generating traffic, I just had my attention on other things. So far, I’m just submitting other peoples articles and finding new things to read. I may do the campaign thing at some point.
Hi Anthony!
I registered for StumpleUpon a while ago but did not really take the time to discover its benefits. A little later a friend stumbled a post of mine which resulted in a major increase in traffic. That’s when I decided I should make some more time asap and explore it a little more. Your post will help a lot!
Alina, It sounds like you’re experience with SU is very similar to mine. So far, I’ve used the site more for sharing things, and finding interesting content. In the future, I hope to also use it as a marketing tool. Good luck.
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I used this. So far it works well and deliver what I’ve been hoping for, but they still need to improve their toolbar as it still tends to get buggy and forgot to record what has been clicked.
Colin Joss
East Lothian, Haddington
United Kingdom
Hi Colin,
I haven’t run into problems with the StumbleUpon toolbar so far……I hope I won’t. If it’s buggy, I would assume they will continue to improve it, as popular as SU has gotten with bloggers.
Hi Anthony,
The toolbar error is nothing fatal. Although the counter is always correct, sometimes it forget to display the new stumbled sites in the list. I don’t why it is happening.
Colin Joss
East Lothian, Haddington
United Kingdom
But strangely yesterday and today, the bug is no longer appearing. They sure is fast in making their progress.
StumbleUpon is great for finding new sites that match up with your interests. It gets addicting at times. Nice post.
I love StumbleUpon from both a promotional and entertainment viewpoint. I have been very successful in driving large amounts of traffic to my sites through the community which is great because I begin to earn money from my work, but also I think it so much fun just to hit the stumble bar and see where it takes me, I have found some really great resources through it. Nice post.
Very good and useful post. I started my own blog recently and the information on your post certainly helps me to find readership.
Cheers!
Has any used addthis.com? It is a way to have one button and not many on your website. I was thinking of using this but wanted to get some feedback.