By Laura Jonson
Most people aren’t aware of the fact that StumbleUpon is one of the most powerful tools to generate traffic.
Even more fascinating is the fact that it is the number one social media traffic generator on the web. It even beats Facebook in that aspect!
How does it do it? Is it just an entertaining waste of time, or does it promote academic websites, like AssignmentMasters?
Before we answer those, let’s try and understand how it works.
How Does StumbleUpon Work?
Think of it as the Internet version of flipping through channels. Finding the right content is getting increasingly difficult, and StumbleUpon provides you with excellent content on the subject of your choice.
For example, if you want to find an essay writing service, you can choose “writing” as your interest, and it will provide you with a list of similar high-quality websites.
Or, you can simply do a search by entering keywords.
It’s a great way to find the best content out there, but how do you promote your content?
Here are five simple StumbleUpon tips that will tell you how to do just that.
Attract Enough Followers
StumbleUpon and its users frown upon shameless promotion of content by its authors. Isn’t that sort of counterintuitive for a major traffic generator website?
Before you can actually attract visitors via the site, you have gain a sufficient number of followers.
Gaining followers is very similar to obtaining followers on other social media sites, such as Twitter, except for the fact they don’t automatically follow you back.
One way of going about it would be to visit the site, and insert the desired keyword.
Another way would be to choose the topics that interest you once you log in.
With every new “stumble” you will be provided with a new website, and a list of people who like it. You can access their profiles, and follow those which have similar interests.
But, in order to be able share interests in the first place, and to get them to follow you, check out our second tip.
Share Other People’s Content
Promoting your content on StumbleUpon is entirely possible, but you have to go about differently.
Think of it as a conversation inside a group of people. You can’t spend the entire night just talking about yourself, without contributing anything valuable to the discussion.
It works the same way here.
By gathering enough quality content which you can share with your followers, your reputation inside the community grows. Also, you will be able to monitor how your discoveries fare inside the community, which should give you a clear idea about crowd favorites, and ultimately, the kind of content you need to produce yourself.
Stand Out From the Crowd
There are no strict rules about what works and what doesn’t, but there are some general guidelines which you can follow to maximize your chances of attracting traffic:
- Looks are everything. “Stumbling” works in pretty much the same way as channel flipping, which means you need to capture the audience’s attention right away with professionally designed webpage.
- Lots of content. Sites that are promoted via StumbleUpon have a high bounce rate, which means most visitors check them out once, and then they leave for good. You need to keep them coming back with fresh, interesting content, and lots of it. Once they click that “I like it” button, you have them hooked.
- Keep the ads to a minimum. There’s nothing wrong with monetizing a website, but if you overdo it with the ads, most visitors will get fed up with it pretty quickly and find a similar website to yours, only with less ads.
- Put a “StumbleUpon” button on your webpage. By doing this, you will enable visitors to share, like and review your page on StumbleUpon.
StumbleUpon Paid Discovery
If you don’t have the time to be social and gather followers, or if you are not satisfied with the rate at which you are attracting traffic, you can try out the site’s Paid Discovery.
Most of you will recall a similar method in the shape of Facebook Ads, but StumbleUpon does it much better. With Paid Discoveries, instead of receiving a small banner which most people won’t notice, you will get a bunch of readers directed to your website.
You can select one of three existing plans: Light, Standard, and Premium.
Keep At It
Unless you go with Paid Discoveries, you needs to invest time in StumbleUpon, and lots of it.
Be prepared to “stumble” regularly, like pages and share them with others, and attract followers.
It takes a while before you see any real results, but they will come if you are dedicated and persistent. If you do all the heavy lifting in the beginning, it will be much easier for you to share your content with the people and increase traffic to your webpage.
And there you have. Stick with these five tips, be patient, and reap the reward of your work in the following months.
