Stumbling. The first time I heard someone say they were stumbling, I thought they were drunk and falling all over themselves. Once, I recommended they grab some sleep and get back to me. I was quickly corrected and told they were surfing the Internet through a new program, StumbleUpon. This program is an ingenious tool for visiting and browsing the Web, letting you only see the content you want.
Unlike regular search engines, StumbleUpon brings users who are interested in the same topics as you to the your page. Needless to say, the advantage to businesses is obvious. To keep attention on your page once it's stumbled upon, there are a few things you need to have: good design, good content and keep your ads to a minimum. Remember, you want to keep people interested in your site past the 10- to 30-second window it takes to skim over your content.
There are plenty of buttons on the toolbar for use.
The StumbleUpon button is self-explanatory. Click this button and you get a new page.
The Thumb Up and Thumb Down buttons are for rating websites you visit while stumbling. You can also write reviews through these buttons.
The Send To button allows you to send the website to your friends, even if they're not StumbleUpon members. Just import your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, most of the well-known mail providers and Facebook.
The Review button gives you a quick view of all the reviews of your current page. You can also submit your own review through this button.
The buttons that look like a film reel, a person and a globe are channel buttons. These take you to webpages that match your interests, news items, or a page a friend has given a Thumb Up.
The Favorites button gives you all pages you have marked as a favorite.
The Friends button takes you to your friends list, and even recommends new friends with similar interests.
The last button is the Tool button, which takes you to your account preferences, where you can update topics, report spam and modify your preferences and account.
Advertising through StumbleUpon is possible, but beware. Users are skimming though, looking for interesting pages and articles, so they may only visit your page for seconds. Look into advertising that is based on view rates, not click rates. The more views on your page, the greater the value and the more your advertisements stand to make.
There are numerous ways to attract people to your page, though we don't recommend some of them.
The biggest thing that brings new users to your page is the amount of previous users who have given you a Thumb Up and written reviews on your content. The more reviews and Thumbs Up, the more often visitors will be directed to your page. And, the more friends you have, the bigger the pool of people who can recommend your site to others.
You can submit your own pages, but don't flood StumbleUpon with too many entries or they may be flagged and you could be temporarily or even permanently blocked.
Tagging your website with certain words, like "comedy" or "technology", will also draw more traffic, but be sure your content fits the category.
There are certain websites out there, in particular XXX, that let you sign up and visit other members' sites to write reviews and like their content in return for them doing the same for you. But I am sure this is against StumbleUpon's terms of service (as evidence, StumbleXchange.com has been shut down) so use at your own risk.
Another thing you can do to bring more visitors to your page is become more involved in stumbling yourself. After all, that's the whole point of the site! Write reviews, give thumbs up and down, and recommend other pages. Stumbling is a fun and addictive way to browse the Internet. Make an account and start your journey; you'll never know what you might find!
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