StumbleUpon is currently the fourth biggest platform for driving social media traffic, just missing out on a medal because of Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. The site randomly generates web content for users to view based on their interests, and gives them the opportunity to like or dislike what they StumbleUpon in order to better personalize the content they’re presented with.
Founded in 2002, StumbleUpon seems far less popular than the statistics prove it to be. While a lot of people are aware that it exists, it doesn’t seem like that many people regularly use it. Those who do, however, describe the website discovery service as “addictive”.
Compared with the three giants above it, StumbleUpon’s website traffic generation powers are slight. But that doesn’t mean you should disregard it when seeking ways to improve yours. Some websites (for example, Top Tenz) attribute their success to awareness derived from StumbleUpon, after receiving hundreds of thousands of “stumbles” that helped them gain attention from internet users.
So how can you best utilize StumbleUpon to increase website traffic? Here’s what I’ve learned.
Stumble others as you would like to be Stumbled.
If you find a great piece of content on StumbleUpon, like it! Being an active user of the site will help like-minded people to find your content – which you simply click “add a page” to make public. StumbleUpon will direct more people to your content if you’ve liked similar things to them, so don’t just incessantly post links to your own site and think that will be sufficient to generate a lot of traffic – you need to be involved in the StumbleUpon community.
Make sure your website’s posts have a StumbleUpon share button.
People are lazy, and you need to make it easy for them to share your content if you want them to. Add StumbleUpon to your RSS feed and make sure your sharing buttons include StumbleUpon.
Keep your content StumbleUpon-friendly.
Users of StumbleUpon decide instantly if they care about the page they’re shown, so make sure you have content that is visually appealing, not too text-heavy, and has a good flow. Also, as with all traffic generation, keep your titles catchy.
Use paid discovery.
StumbleUpon’s paid discovery has an advantage over Facebook’s boosting option because it directs people instantly to your site, guaranteeing you views, while Facebook just advertises your site, leaving you hoping that people will click on the link.
Add pages to the right interest categories.
StumbleUpon works by organizing content into categories that people express interest in, so don’t just guess what category it best fits into. Make sure you do some research into what kinds of things come up under each interest group,
So will it actually work?
StumbleUpon has proven itself to be useful when it comes to generating website traffic, but as with all social media sharing platforms, it only works if you do it right. Obviously your content needs to be good and actually shareable – that’s the best way to ensure that a lot of people view it. However, StumbleUpon is still significantly behind Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter in the grand scheme of things, so don’t neglect the big three. Give it a try, and see what kind of results your efforts can yield – you might be pleasantly surprised.
Have you had any great experiences with StumbleUpon? Or not so great? Let us know how you feel about its usefulness!
