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Internet Marketing Coach
2,957 Reasons to Use StumbleUpon
October 29th, 2007 | 20 comments
Something like that (below) is great to see when checking your stats and that’s exactly what mine looked like today after receiving a good deal of StumbleUpon traffic from my last post titled “How to be a Power Stumbler on StumbleUpon” which brought in over 3,000 visitors in the last 2 days.
Unfortunately, much of that traffic was extremely untargeted. This leads me to believe that the category that is chosen when the story is first stumbled will truly determine whether or not that story receives targeted or untargeted traffic. In the case of the post in question, I submitted to the “stumbleupon” category and I probably should have submitted to “marketing” or something similar.
Although the post became the most popular post on this blog due to shear pageviews, it received very few comments and I’d imagine many of the visits were from stumblers who were just using the stumble function in there toolbar and not intending to actually dig into any site and take any action.
The post also received a few thumbs down, which made me a little upset at first, but I quickly cooled down when I thought about it.
One “stumbler” gave the post a thumbs down and stated “What in the name of sweet baby Jesus is the point?” Obviously he/she isn’t a marketer and so that comment really doesn’t get to me. If I weren’t a marketer I’d probably say the same thing.
Another stated “STOP STUMBLING YOURSELF.” And my response is “WHY?” If a story isn’t interesting, it’s not going to get many stumbles. The way I see it, if I stumble a post here in there of my own that I believe provides good info, theres absolutely nothing wrong with it. If I were stumbling every post I write then I could see how that could be “spammy.”
Then theres the guy who said “Way to state the obvious … How to become a power stumbler from someone who has no experience being a power stumbler … ??? … I don’t buy it, but someone else might…” lol I think this guy just got dumped and needs to rant?!? Did I say I was a power stumbler? Nope, I simply put a complex post made by Tim Nash into “laymen terms” and I very clearly stated that.
All in all I think it was a great success. You’re going to have negative feedback when any post goes viral on any social network and it’s very hard to get extremely targeted traffic from these networks, unless it’s a targeted niche social site like Sphinn.
Here is why it was a success:
1. I now have 61 fans, compared to the 8 or so I had before, which will help increase my own audience score and make my stumbles a little more powerful.
2. I got a few new RSS readers for sure and possibly more than a few. I received 3 emails from stumblers who gave my blog compliments and let me know they had subscribed to my feed. If I received 3 emails from people who subscribed, I’d imagine there were several others who did the same without going through the trouble of emailing.
3. It may have bumped my Alexa ranking up a bit. I was sitting at 99,000 and it’s now showing 94,899. It was on the rise in the first place so I’m thinking the real bump from the stumble is coming in Alexa’s next update.
4. Since I stumbled the actual post and it became so popular my audience score should rise even more.
Whether it’s targeted or not, free traffic is free traffic and I plan on stumbling every interesting page I find from here on out!
Popularity: 23% [?]
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29th October, 2007 at 7:40 am
Josh, that’s huge. I had a couple of posts stumbled which brought about 1000 each, but 3000 is amazing! I noticed quite a big jump in the Alexa ranking as a result (from 190K to sub 150K). I expect you’ll see a good jump, but you’re in more competitive territory, so it probably won’t be so pronounced.
Also, I’ve heard that each time you stumble a particular domain (your own included), the ’strength’ of the stumble is diminished. So you really only want to stumble a select few of your own posts.
29th October, 2007 at 7:52 am
Thanks Stephen, it was certainly nice.
I hadn’t heard that, but I’m not too worried about it. I only stumble a select few of my own anyway, so it shouldn’t be too big of a deal. Food for thought though, thanks again.
29th October, 2007 at 8:45 am
Hi Josh,
I read it in a comment at Meg’s Dipping into the Blogpond. This seems to make sense and I have heard it somewhere else, but I can’t really be sure if it’s true or not. Anyway, I’m planning to get my butt off the ground and start stumbling more!
29th October, 2007 at 9:53 am
Hi Josh, I recently had a similar post do well in the same way. Stumblers generally like posts about StumbleUpon. As for your thumbs down - almost certainly due to the fact that people who use SU just for fun object to it being used for marketing. There are many anti-marketing people out there.
I also found that the SU traffic was untargeted. I had a big boost in RSS subs and then that dropped back down over the next couple of days. It stayed a little higher than before but that could have just been natural growth. However don’t despair - even untarged traffic still has many uses as I explained in a recent post on my blog.
29th October, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Yep. Stumble upon is a terrific way to get traffic. Sure, you may get some thumbsdown — but that’s no reason not to use Stumble Upon. It can help to wait a bit and hope a friend stumbles your post. But, if they don’t that’s still no reason to not stumble if you think that post will be particularly interesting to others. Posts about stumble upon do interest stumblers. You got thumbs up to counter those thumbs down. So… tough for the naysayers.
29th October, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Congrats Josh. Good work on increasing the incoming. I love those uptrend graphs as well. Wish it was like that everyday
30th October, 2007 at 4:58 am
@Caroline and Lucia, sorry for the generic response, but theres not much to say, I totally agree with you both
@ Ian, Thanks! Yep, it’s pretty neat seeing that, even if it’s not your own stats, but it sure is great when it is your own.
30th October, 2007 at 4:22 pm
I’ve enjoyed similar boosts largely due SU friends (You and Lucia in particular, thank you). I thought the criticisms of your post were rather pointless and added nothing of value - seems that a lot of others agreed that it was a good enough article, so why worry.
As your network of friends/fans grows, it certainly translates into even greater exposure for anything you get Stumbled on. The first thing I tend to check is the most recent Stumbles from my friends and prefer to Stumble through things that my network have Stumbled. I think a lot of Stumblers adopt this approach. I also check out friends of friends, based on the assumption that their interests will be similar. Growing your network is easy because you get to choose who you add to your friends network and even if they don’t reciprocate, you can still benefit from their community.
It has been said that SU traffic is very difficult to monetize and in my experience that’s true. However, for such large quantities of traffic, even untargeted, it’s a winner.
30th October, 2007 at 4:29 pm
@Maurice, actually there’s a good reason to worry - every one of those thumbs up will LOWER the amount of traffic that StumbleUpon sends for that page.
30th October, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Caroline, I’m guessing you meant thumbs down not thumbs up right? Do you think those thumbs down would decrease my audience score or just the traffic to that one stumble in particular?
I’d imagine that a few thumbs down wouldn’t hurt too much, when there are 50+ thumbs up, but I could be wrong. It just makes sense to me.
30th October, 2007 at 7:29 pm
@Josh, Oops yes I meant thumbs down! I don’t know how the audience score works as they hid that before I got into SU. I think that if you have far more thumbs up than thumbs down then you’ll obviously still get traffic as you did, but I suspect that each thumbs down lowers the potential a bit. By how much, we don’t really know.
30th October, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I gotcha, those are my thoughts as well. I thought maybe you knew something I didn’t
*edit* that sounded bad. I’m just referring to this situation, not stumbleupon in general. You may very well know more than I about SU as a whole.
Thanks
2nd November, 2007 at 2:08 am
Thumbs down are the same as negative blog comments - if they’re constructive, great but if you get funny comments like “What’s the point?” or what I got the other day “… why don’t you show your name? hiding again..” (on my blog when my name is all over the place lol), then have a laugh and forget about them. In general, most stumblers wouldn’t thumbs down so you usually get a more positive response. Heh! I’ve got consistent traffic from SU and came across lots of good content I wouldn’t have found out myself. I honestly think it has contributed a lot to the semi-quick growth of my blog traffic-wise, experiencing the same benefits that you had, Josh, so I’m a strong believer in it.
Btw Josh, if you write about SU, for sure it’ll get a good reaction. I sorta tried it twice and both times the posts were picked up by more people than I expected. Even after more than a month, I’m still getting good referrals from it.
2nd November, 2007 at 2:20 am
Hey Josh,
I am glad it is working for you. I agree with the initial category being important to maximize hits for the stumble.
I think you are correct in focusing on the positives and ignoring the negatives. Keep it up and you get a thumbs up from me.
Cheers!
3rd November, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Nice post, I have been having some success with Stumble in the past few weeks but to get the right targeted traffic I agree initial category is hugely important. We live and learn :o)
3rd November, 2007 at 3:12 pm
@Caroline
Sorry, late to the party again! I realize that thumbs down will have a negative impact on a page’s exposure to the network.
I was trying to cheer Josh up after his first experience of negative feedback
I really wouldn’t worry too much about that on one specific post on your blog, unless it was likely to have a knock on effect for the domain as a whole. However, I’ll admit that I don’t know if it would or not.
I’m guessing that the long term effect isn’t likely to be too damaging from a few isolated thumbs downs though.
3rd November, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I’d imagine when, like anything else, when there are many more likes than dislikes it wouldn’t hurt too bad. Of course were always better off with no thumbs down, but if you have 50 thumbs up and 4 thumbs down, I just can’t see it being too negative. I may be wrong though, just using commons sense, which doesn’t always mean anything in this industry
4th November, 2007 at 11:50 am
I agree, SU is fine to get spikes, but unfortunatelly they rarely come back. I know since I stumble a lot, then bookmark the interesting sites and rarely look back. Anyway. it is a great promotional asset I guess.
24th February, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I personally think, that it is all to do with exposure - using SU Josh’s saw an increase in visitors - some will stay majority will not! Of those that will stay - you might get regular readers. Myself included!
Those that stay will refer this blog to their friends via “word of mouth” - which is a better medium than SU!
Of all the marketing mediums surveyed, word of mouth is the most powerful !
Its a win -win situation!
10th April, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I just started getting stumbles lately. I only have about 15 fans so far but still get about 5 visits to my site each day from stumblers. If I can get a couple hundred fans I would get some real traffic from it some day. Make sure you stumble some other peoples sites too or you will get in trouble down the road just stumbling your own. Jeff