Tool Tuesday: StumbleUpon
Stumble it!
If you have just started a new website, it can get really difficult to bring in some visitors. I usually promote my new site via my other sites. While this is good, it means I am limiting my horizons to only visitors to my current site and that too only a percentage of these may actually visit the new site.
What if you had a service that got you all these visitors?
Enter StumbleUpon.
So how do I get started?
You first need to install the StumbleUpon Toolbar. This works with both IE and Firefox.
Immediately after installing the toolbar you are ready to start “stumbling”. Well almost, you will first need an account, the toolbar will guide you through that.
Stumbling is basically a random phenomenon, based on the interests you select. The toolbar will automatically direct you to a website. From my experience, newly submitted websites are given priority. And more the number of thumbsup from “stumblers”, greater the chances of you stumbling on that site.
Ok, I got all this, but how do I promote my site?
Promoting your site is as simple as hitting a button and filling a form. A new window will open where you can fill in the description, tags and select a category and then submit.
Done. Now what?
That is all there is to promoting your site. You can also submit individual posts. Also get your friends to submit individual posts from your sites. You can get them to review your submissions. Remember that the more people liking your posts, the more the hits it will receive.
I see a lot of visits, but people aren’t returning
Now, this is something that SU cannot help you, nor can I, nor can anybody else. The only thing that gets a visitor to return to your site is quality content in a good presentable layout.
Realize that there is no substitute for this. The key to retaining visitors is to give them something they want and like I always say, something that they didn’t know they wanted until you told them so 
Can I do anything else with SU
Besides stumbling onto sites and reviewing them, SU also offers a minor social network. You can find other stumblers, make friends and participate in discussions.
Are you a stumbler? Add me to your list.
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Post Details
- Post Date :
- Tuesday, Dec 5th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
- Category :
- Design and Development and Services and Techtites Daily and Tuesday and Websites
- Tags :
- promotion, Social Networking, stumbleupon, Techtites-Daily, tools, website
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- You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
10 Responses to “ Tool Tuesday: StumbleUpon ”
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Wowies… I need to convey this post to my readers
Great
Just a reminder here, although SU is really a great source of traffic – you shouldn’t overdo it. Only submit your good post, and not all of them – or you might be considered as spamming SU and been penalized. Just my 2 cents.
Good point Vincent. Like Digg or reddit, SU too should be used wisely.
I actually didn’t realize that Stumble could actually consider you as spam as well.
StumbleUpon is an amazing source of traffic and I find it to be just like Digg where you’ll get “stumbled” (if that’s what it should be called) with 1,000 or 2,000 visitors in the first hour. The only thing bad with StumbleUpon is that people may just keep stumbling past your site without actually stopping to read the article, so you need to make sure you have something eye catching at the top or a clever title.
@listikal,
I haven’t seen any reports of this so far, but it is better safe than sorry.
@Ryan,
Very true. I’ve noticed that the more people “like” your post, the more the visits. But a good amount of the traffic is just stumblers. I think if you can retain around 1% of the stumblers it is good.
Hey! really great tips!