This is a guest post on How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog is by Skellie who writes tips and tutorials on creating better content at her blog, Skelliewag.org.
The potential for StumbleUpon to send traffic is often under-estimated, particularly by new bloggers. Unlike digg and del.icio.us, an item doesn’t need to become popular before you see immediate results. One or two votes can bring a hundred or more readers — more than a new blog might see in a day.
StumbleUpon users are, however, notoriously fickle. The service describes itself as allowing you to ‘channel-surf the internet’ and I think it’s a very appropriate description. Users flick through websites like you might flick through channels, often making a decision on whether to stay or leave your site before it has even had time to finish loading.
In this post, I want to suggest some quick tips you can use to draw StumbleUpon users into your site before they stumble away.
Channel-surfing the internet
We’ve all flicked through TV channels back and forth, waiting for something to hold our attention. The decision to stay on a channel or surf elsewhere is usually made in a second or two, and the principle is the same for StumbleUpon users.
With so many other potentially great sites available to them at the click of a mouse, you need to make it immediately clear why your site is worth their time. Here are some tips to help you do just that.
1. Make your blog’s core mission-statement unmissable
A core mission-statement as I define it is a one or two sentence description encapsulating what your blog has to offer. A good core mission-statement describes the kind of content you provide and broadly what your blog is about. It should communicate a lot of information in only a few words.
If a stumbler can see straight away your blog is about something they’re interested in then they’re likely to stick around.
2. Insert powerful visual cues
When channel-surfing the decision to stick with a channel or move on is often largely determined by visual cues. Even with the sound off you can tell a drama from a news program, a travel show from a cartoon, because visual elements provide clues as to what kind of show you’re watching.
The same principle applies to blogs. If your blog’s header contains an image of a pile of cash, we can reasonably assume the blog is about money (or making it). That’s a lot of information communicated instantly by a single image.
3. Push your content above the fold
StumbleUpon users often judge a site by what is offered in the above the fold area — the area of your site which appears on screen before any scrolling occurs.
I think this blog is an example of how to do that well. Not only do headlines and the first few paragraphs of a post appear above the fold, but other content of interest is showcased in the header area. StumbleUpon users immediately see a site packed with value.
You can use the top part of your blog’s sidebar, its header area and the post area to showcase your content. In doing so, you’ll straight away show StumbleUpon visitors why they should stick around.
4. Be unique, be pretty
While it’s difficult to judge the quality of a blog’s content in just a few seconds, people are much more hasty with aesthetic judgments. A gorgeous or interesting blog design encourages a stumbler to stick around and see whether the content is great too.
Of course, a great design is a lot of work (or quite a bit of money). The next-best thing is a unique logo or header image, an interesting color scheme, and so on. There are a number of small changes you can make to create a blog that looks unique and sets you apart from the crowd.
What we’ve done
The emphasis in all the above tips is on instantly showing visitors who’ve stumbled across your blog what it has to offer. This should help you make the most of StumbleUpon traffic and turn more stumblers into readers.
So does this blog covers these points?
Yes I agree with this post, Stumble Upon keeps sending me a steady flow of traffic to my site. I will try to follow these guidelines to try to increase my exposure.
Regards
Hector Sanchez
Yes, Stumble may bring hundreds of users a day, one of my sites had 700 visitors from Stumble in a day…
The challenge isn’t drawing SU users to your blog, but making it suitable for them to give you a vote.
Whilst there is a growing number of bloggers and various kinds of marketers using SU, it doesn’t take many negative votes to get some content buried.
SU admin provide very poor support in a situation where you feel some content was “victimised” by a top SU user who thought your content was spam and directed SU friends to bury you.
Can stumbling content on your site and then having it given the thumbsup down affect your overall weighting with SU or is it simply on a page by page basis?
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Paul
Ok. This is going to sound like a dumb question, but I create a stumbleupon account. Do I post a link to my blog or links to articles I’ve written on my blog. My other dumb question is how do I do this? I’ve read the above and see when i search websites all these sites come up with the graphic in front of the site, but how do I get mine on stumbleupon?
I hadn’t thought about it too much before reading this article (great suggestions btw), but I know when I use Stumble Upon, it’s the visuals that capture me.
I tend to stay on the sites that are formatted differently, show something outrageous above the fold, and don’t have a ton of “stuff” going on like ads, links, etc.
Totally visual appeal for me in the first few seconds.
Great advice.
I followed your lead and voila had my biggest day ever (Aug 14th) on my blog. Over 10x my normal traffic flow and beat my busiest day by 3x.
Wow!
Stumble upon is a good concept if one knows how to market one’s site, this applies to all the social media websites. Its nice that you share your knowledge with fellow people.
I found StumbleUpon and didn’t even use it from a marketing aspect at first. Every now and then throwing one of my links in, but mostly I was addicted to finding sites that hadn’t been Stumbled before and being the first to comment. Eventually this built a lot of traffic to the sites I listed as my own on my homepage.
Hey Darren,
Good list, but I really thought the first key point should have been HOW to submit your site to StumbleUpon. For those that don’t know, the quickest method is to install the StumbleUpon toolbar, visit the page or post you want to stumble, and then click the “thumbs up” icon. If someone hasn’t stumbled it already, then you will be asked to add it to the SU database of sites. Not all bloggers are tech-savvy :)
It looks like your put your nofollow back on but back to the point.
I got a few votes from people that did stumble exchanges, but for some reason I still get 0 traffic from stumbleupon. Maybe they banned me or something. 0 traffic from stumbleupon for the past few months.
Thanks for the tips dude! Very enlightening. I got tips numbers 2 to 4 sown before I read this post but it sure makes clearer now that you explained it.
I’ve applied these tips on my 2 blogs below:
http://olympicblogger.blogspot.com/
http://callcenterveteran.blogspot.com/
Cheers mate!
Thank you for the great tips. Now back to the lab to put them into practice.
I’ve never been stumbled but i’ve done a lot of stumbling. Hope it happens someday
I stumbled across a blog that’s offering free service to increase blog traffic 1000 in a month or they’ll pay you 1000 bucks. Thought it was kinda cool, just wanted to share.
Oh a link might help :/ blog.othersonline.com
Yes, so true (as always ;) and great info!
I also did the ‘SU move’ on my buildvre.com blog and it gave me 100+ visitors in return (in less then an hour :D)
What’s even better is that this ‘SU move’ is just a piece of the ‘web 2.0 treatment’ you can give your site or blog, which you can all learn about too in the 30daychallenge…step-by-step (also great stuff)
Ok, back to building VRE…
Robert
That’s an excellent article! Thanks for sharing! ^_^
I started my latest blog this week, and based totally on Stumble Upon traffic alone I’m already over 1,700 uniques and 3,000 page views with an average stay of 1:44 – so at least SOME of them are actually reading the content.
I couldn’t recommend Stumble Upon more. I’ve thought about using their advertising services, but so far, it hasn’t been necessary.
Stumble Upon is a great resource. Great post!
There are so many service providers like that. You never know with how many u can register with and get more traffics. It’s a very very tiring efforts.
Stumbleupon traffic is great. We don´t get the the traffic constantly but when the Stumbleupon wave comes it is a huge number of visitor. I think it is more effective than other traffic bringing sites.
yes of course that is right, i have tried for very-very new my site and it get some hundred visitor just in 1 hour and 1 news only in my new site.
Thanks for the great information. We are always learning and trying to improve! Leveraging is the key to our success…..at Planet Berry
nice, simple and effective tips for driving traffic.
I took out a few days worth of ads on SU and immediately had a spike in traffic that has continued. I’m interested to see what happens with the trend when the campaign is done.
You Blog about blogging, isn’t there something better you can be doing with your time. I mean come on, seriously, do you think you are being productive?
Last week I saw an incredible spike in my traffic. On one day in particular, the increase in SU traffic also made me $13.95 via adsense clicks. This may not sound like a lot for some people, but it’s a big deal for me. The most I’ve made with adsense in a given day was $3.00. So you can see my excitement. I wish I could get that same spike in traffic everyday. I will definitely continue to stumble and will possibly look into an ad campaign on Stumbleupon.
Andrea
Has anyone worked out the best time to stumble?
StumbleUpon has been my best source of traffic for Hottest Girl
The best thing is that if people who stumble upon it like, some will also press the ‘I like it’ button and it just grows from there.
A million times better than Digg. I don’t even visit Digg no more. It’s so yesterday… haha
StumbleUpon has been a great source for continuous traffic for the Mapperz blog, from the date it was created.
Mapperz
http://mapperz.blogspot.com/
I also agree that with StumbleUpon, there is a big surge at first but the traffic continues to come in for a long time, whereas with Digg there is a huge surge and then although the traffic still continues for a while, it definitely does not continue to bring as many visitors as SU.
Also, certain topics and niches seem to do better on SU than others.
I’ve also noticed that with other Web 2.0 sites. Some topics do better on one site than on the other.
For example this post:
http://www.nitromarketing.com/blog/13-secrets-to-increasing-your-productivity/ has received more than 3X the votes on Netscape than it did on Digg.
I certainly agree that StumbleUpon did brings my blog a lot of traffic and continuously does.
Dont use StumbleUpon if your ad provider is Google AdSense. Google is very unfair to SU users.
No ad click throughs will register on Google.
Darren, maybe you can update your blog post on this….
I bet lot of people are taking your advice (like me) and facing this issue. I also read on AdSense forums that in some cases Google bans the account altogether.
I once got a stumble upon traffic surge, not so huge maybe some 1000 visits in 3 hrs, I’m still waiting for another one.
well, i guess the most valuable thing from SU is the number of RSS readers and ‘bookmarkers’ you get. forget that the spike in traffic will bring you adsense millions, bet keep in mind that SU is a good investment – your link is there to stay, and people will find you time by time. you never know ;)
Nice post – I’m off to sign up to StumbleUpon to rate my own posts ;-)
StumbleUpon has been my best source of traffic, I have
tryed everything it is the best.
Have a great day.
sgtwalk
I am glad you included this guest writer Darren. It was a very worthwhile read and instantly reminded me that I had forgotten to do something important before the fold.
Thanks, always great posts.
I darren, I have wriiten exactaly same article, please take a look at the same. And agree your point saying “StumbleUpon users often judge a site by what is offered in the above the fold area — the area of your site which appears on screen before any scrolling occurs.”. . http://www.jahmoney.com/blogging/how-to-get-maximum-stumbles-legal-way-to-do-so/
thanks for the tips! As a blogging newbie the advice is greatly appreciated!
Mary
http://www.mvpvisuals.com
I have found stumbleupon a very go source of quick free traffic , its not as much as digg or reddit but you don’t need to rely on editors to promote your story, you just submit and if people like it you get heaps, i do it often and get about 500 or so people everytime i do it. Which is cool
I have only recently come across StumbleUpon and was wondering how best to use it to get visitors to my sites.
This post has put quite a few good ideas in my head.
Thanks for that.
Mark.
http://www.fastwealthnetwork.com
It’s amazing how many people direct there comments at Darren instead of the author! This is a great article Skellie, cheers!
It’s amazing how many people direct their comments at Darren instead of the author! This is a great article Skellie, cheers!
@ Simon: Haha, it doesn’t bother me. I’m a staff writer over at Daily Blog Tips too and most comments run along the lines of ‘Great post Daniel!’ ;) I think it says something about how closely people attach blog content to the blog author.
These can be applied to any site in any instance if they wish to attract visitors, not just Stumblers. I think the trick is for Stumblers to actually vote for your page… Any tips? :)
Great tips. Here I have written a similar post about StumbleUpon. Effective advertising strategy using StumbleUpon
All very obvious.
However, I haven’t seen much results from Stumble.
This is a very worthwhile read, but what is with none english blogs?