social bookmarking

I’m currently participating the the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge with the SITS Girls community. Day 29′s task is to develop a plan to boost your readership and this post explains how you can do that with StumbleUpon. You can grab the workbook and get started on your own 31 Days to Build a Better Blog at anytime.

I’ve been using StumbleUpon for well over a year now and have read a lot of theories on how its secret algorithms work. The geek in me just can’t get enough of a good algorithm and I’ve developed my own system to effectively use StumbleUpon.

The number one thing to remember with all social media is you get what you give. You’ve got to use it like it was meant to be used if you want to reap any benefit from it.

In May 2009, ProBlogger suggested the following as an effective blog promotion strategy:

Join the three most relevant social media sites and work to build value. Promote 10 times as much of other people’s material as you do your own. And don’t forget: sincere, relevant, and valuable.

First thing you need to do is set up a StumbleUpon account and install the toolbar.

Once you’ve done that, use the Stumble button in the toolbar a lot to get a feel for the system. Don’t submit any new content to the system until you’ve gotten a really good feel for what kinds of posts the StumbleUpon community likes.

While you’re doing this initial stumbling you’ll likely discover that you don’t like being recommended pages for contests and giveaways that ended a year ago, deals that are long since expired, and seasonal posts that are totally out of season. StumbleUpon will keep recommending posts for months and years to come so timeless content will do best. You’ll learn that you don’t want to submit a post that wouldn’t be relevant a month or a year from now.

StumbleUpon is a 3 part system based on ratings, friends (people you’re following and people following you; you can add me), and similar users. The time you spend stumbling before you start submitting builds your profile so that when you do submit new content, the StumbleUpon system has all three pieces of the puzzle and knows who to recommend the sites you submit to. If you’re only rating your own pages, you’re only giving StumbleUpon a third of the information it needs to recommend those pages to other users.

Don’t just thumb up every post the recommendation engine gives you. You want to build your interests, relevancy, and value so that the similar users StumbleUpon pairs you with are truly similar and likely interested in the content you later plan to submit. I rarely use the thumbs down option, it’s reserved for posts I especially dislike. Posts that I just don’t find interesting or appealing don’t get a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

When you’re finally ready to start submitting content make sure to maintain at least a 10 to 1 ratio. Promote at least 10 times other people’s content as your own. If I have a post I want to submit to StumbleUpon, I start by using the Stumble button in the toolbar until I’ve found 10 new posts I like, then I go to my page and like it, and then I stumble until I’ve found 10 more other people’s posts to like. I only want to like other people’s posts when I actually find them relevant and valuable so it usually takes me 15 minutes to half an hour to submit one post of my own with this system but that effort typically results in hundreds or thousands of hits on the post (20% of the total lifetime traffic on this site has come from StumbleUpon).

Submit the content of others too (it looks bad if all you ever do is submit your own content) but don’t just submit a post because someone asked you to. An easy way to help your friends on StumbleUpon is to check the box to accept shares in your toolbar on their profile page, but again only give a post they send your way a thumbs up if you really like it. Always keep in mind what you’ve learned about what types of posts do well on StumbleUpon and keep it sincere, relevant, and valuable.

Disclosure: Some links in this post are affiliate links.

{ 37 comments }

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is a way to mindlessly surf the internet guided by your friends and the topics you are interested in. StumbleUpon is a great way to find new content and kill time when you’re bored.

How to get started on StumbleUpon

• Head over to http://www.stumbleupon.com/ and create an account.
• Once you’re logged in, start by telling StumbleUpon what topics you’re interested in.
• Add some friends. You can find them by having StumbleUpon search your email address book or you can ask your friends what their usernames are or check their profiles on other sites for links to their StumbleUpon profiles. (You can find me here.)
• If you’re using Firefox as your browser (which I highly recommend), download the StumbleUpon toolbar. (If you don’t like your toolbar area being too cluttered up, it’s easy to turn turn toolbars on and off as you want to use them by right clicking in the toolbar area.)
• Start stumbling. Press the “Stumble” button at the left end of the toolbar to get to a new site. Use the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons to tell StumbleUpon whether you want to see more sites like that in the future or not.

How to get the most out of StumbleUpon

• I do most of my stumbling via Channels. My favorite channels: People I’ve Subscribed To (icon has two people, one in an orange shirt and one in a yellow shirt) which gives you sites based on your interests that your friends have already thumbed up and Search (magnifying glass icon) which gives you sites that other StumbleUpon users like you have thumbed up and match a search term you’re interested in, if you want to see what people are saying about a certain topic I find this more useful than a Google search.
• StumbleUpon learns what you like from what you thumb up. If a friend asks you to give a thumbs up to a site and you don’t want to see more pages like that, don’t give it a thumbs up.
• The more you put into the system in terms of telling it what you like and adding new sites that you like, the more you will get out of the system. The recommendation engine gets smarter as you participate more. If you’re a website developer, it will do you no good to only submit your own sites because StumbleUpon won’t have any info on what other sites you like so it won’t be able to find other users like you who might also like your site.

{ 8 comments }