For users tired of traditional searching and wading through tons of sites before finally coming to a few relevant ones, StumbleUpon offers a unique new proposition that is fast becoming more and more appealing. Using a user-driven rating process to determine site quality, and recommending these to like-minded users based on their personal preferences, StumbleUpon automatically brings quality web sites with great content to users. What’s more, rather than giving users the list of websites to chose from, they are actually taken to the websites that match their preference.
What does this mean to site traffic-builders? How can marketers generate StumbleUpon traffic? The answer is that as a social media site, social media marketing strategies also apply to StumbleUpon traffic generation.
To increase website visibility from StumbleUpon traffic, below are some effective strategies:
- Be an active Stumbler. The top Stumblers in StumbleUpon log thousands of site stumbles on the average. Keep on stumbling on great sites and share these with the community, to develop a reputation for quality stumbling and establish friendly relationship with other stumblers.
- Stumble quality sites to friends. The reason for being active in 1) is to generate a community of friends that are immediate recipients of any of your stumbles. Sharing stumbled-upon sites to friends will automatically send them the stumble, allowing them to go directly to the site. A message can come with your stumble, to which they can chose to reply to or not.
- Stumble politely. As with any social media sites, social rules apply, such as sincerity, honesty, and politeness. Too much stumbles to friends in 2), and non-quality ones at that, can be spammy and annoying. This can endanger the friendship and you may end up being removed as a friend.
- Join the community. Keeping the spirit of active collaboration, hobnob with the StumbleUpon community by joining groups and posting on forums. Choose the topical group to join, and while in the group, post quality links for the collective members to see. As with any group or forum, a moderator keeps an eye on postings, so observe social rules and refrain from posting spam, to avoid being deleted or banned from the group.
- Stumble wisely. StumbleUpon traffic generation relies greatly in the way you have discovered or stumbled upon the site. It is important to submit the stumble in the most appropriate search category. Remember that the site you discovered will be stumbled upon by other users, and they will be better-liked if they are in the right category or topic. A site on the Kiwi fruit, for example, will get a higher “like” votes in the fruit category than in the general food topic.
- Use tags for searchability. StumbleUpon still gives users and non-users the option to search using keywords, which is why it is important to choose relevant tags to assign to sites you stumble upon. An accurate tag provides better searchability because StumbleUpon also uses tagging to return search results to users.
Generating StumbleUpon traffic is an important social media marketing strategy because StumbleUpon offers a unique way to bring relevant content to users directly and easily. With StumbleUpon’s popularity and over nine million Stumblers to date, it continues to present quality websites and improve the online search experience.
