This post was inspired by Steve Scott over at Stevescottsite.com who sent me a message the other night on Facebook asking me what the ‘secret was to my own articles posted on to StumbleUpon getting a lot more traffic than average.’
Steve was intrigued to see that submissions of my content to StumbleUpon typically get 100′s of stumbles compared to other articles I submit which typically get a handful of stumbles.
Well, as Steve asked the question I thought other people might also be interested in my response.
So today, I share with you my how my single biggest source of traffic has generated over 55,000 ‘stumbles’ in the last few months of my content.
What is StumbleUpon?
But before I tell you how I did it, let me take a moment or two to explain what StumbleUpon actually is. StumbleUpon is described by Wikipedia as an ‘Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate random Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles.’ Essentially using a toolbar on your browser it allows you to ‘vote’ on random web pages based whether you ‘like’ or not the content. It’s a little bit like web page channel surfing.
You can refine the pages that are presented to you by registering your interests on around 500 topics, so then you’re getting relevant pages presented to suit your preferences. The StumbleUpon Community is large, although tiny by comparison to Facebook, with around 11m members.
Obviously the more likes your content obtains the more likely it is to be presented to community members with an interest in your niche. Essentially for community members it allows them to discover content that they wouldn’t normally find using a search engine. Put another way, if you searched for information on a topic using a search engine you’d be presented with all the sites on the subject. With Stumbling you’re being presented with quality sites as voted for by the community members.
With access to 11m members, hopefully you can see the potential for visitors to your website.
Now most people submit their own content to StumbleUpon by using the ‘I Like It’ button on the toolbar or maybe through a bookmarking tool like Sexy Bookmarks.
I however, don’t do this.
Introducing Su.pr
What I do is log into Su.pr a little known sister site by StumbleUpon, developed I understand, in conjunction with Tim Ferriss. Su.pr allows you to syndicate your content directly to Facebook, Twitter and Stumble Upon.
But that’s not the real power of Su.pr it’s the ability to schedule your discoveries. Yes, I know that’s not that exciting on it’s own, but if you knew when the Stumble Upon Community was most active then wouldn’t that be useful to you?
Very helpfully, when you log on to Su.pr you’re presented with a dashboard with a box to enter your message and the site URL you’re looking to promote. In addition, the dashboard has a handy little chart which shows the average traffic on StumbleUpon at different times of the day on different days of the week.
So I make use of this information and I schedule my posts exactly when the traffic is at it’s highest – both to StumbleUpon and to Twitter – thus ensuring that each post typically gets 100-200 stumbles, shares and further clicks. Not only this is a time saver (reducing the need to Tweet, Share and Post) it maximises the exposure to my article at exactly the same time. I can even add a review and categorise the content!
Although this a little bit more complicated than just hitting the ‘I like it Button’ the results in traffic more than make up for it.
But the best bit of all of this is that once your content is in the ‘system’ it can be stumbled at any time, with sometimes surprising results. For example, a month ago this happened to me when a post that had been written in May 2010 suddenly became very hot property and over 1500 Stumblers came knocking.
So, how do you get traffic to your site?
Matthew Needham is the principal consultant and director of The Big Red Tomato Company as well as the author of his blog. Matthew is a graduate in Accounting and Finance and a qualified accountant. Having worked for prestigious companies like Rolls Royce, Matthew is more than qualified to talk about quality and business. You can follow him on Twitter.
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Awesome info on su.pr , never heard of it but it will work great for planning on when the best time to post is. Thanks Matthew.
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Hi Aaron,
It’s really good (and free too) so well worth you taking advantage o it.
Good luck, Matthew
Matthew Needham´s last [type] ..Wednesday Wisdom- Including 14 tactics to get more email subscribers
Very, very interesting Matthew! I will definitely have to try this first thing tomorrow. Thanks for sharing
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Hi Moon, thanks for the comment.
You should, you won’t regret it!
Matthew
Matthew Needham´s last [type] ..Wednesday Wisdom- Including 14 tactics to get more email subscribers
Wow, Matthew, it sounds like you’ve developed a great tip to promote articles and get more traffic.
Thanks so much for sharing because I have never used Su.pr and it looks like it’s doing it’s job.
55K hits is awesome!
Karen
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Matthew,
Great answer! Thanks for sharing with everyone!
Steve
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Hi Karen,
I had not really thought about it until Steve sent me the message and I looked at other posts I’d submitted only having 1′s and 2 hits, where as mine routinely surpass 200.
My highest traffic day ever, a few weeks ago, 80% of my traffic came from Stumble Upon.
Hope you’ve found it useful Steve!
Haven’t been paying much attention to StumbleUpon, but your post got me interested in it. I will also check out su.pr. Thanks!
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You should Julius!
Hi Matthew
Thanks for sharing this with everyone. This looks good and I am going to give it a try.
Best wishes
Roland
Sweet! This is awesome.
Only one other has told me about using Su.pr and all she said was it post to different networks, not even close to this kinda info.
Thanks man, this is an action post!
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Dennis, it’s transformed my traffic, my post today has had over 133 page views and 32 click throughs (opening another page on my site).
Good luck…
Matthew
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Hi Matt,
I’ve been a Stumbler for quite a while but have recently got into submitting my own. You may have noticed in the forum.
Interestingly, I stumbled upon your post in my RSS feed. Perferct timing for me. Thanks for sharing.
Have a good one.
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Glad you found it Gine’s I hope it works well for you!
Matthew Needham´s last [type] ..Wednesday Wisdom- Including 14 tactics to get more email subscribers
What can I say…Su.pr!
I’ve never heard of that service b4 but wow what a great resource.
Especially for figuring out timing.
Sounds like a gold mine.
But doesn’t the stumbleupon community sort of poo poo on submitting your own stuff. Or do you work it into the middle of submitting other great stuff?
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I have heard about StumbleUpon and just though it was another Digg as they are both in the top for social bookmarks where people actually get involved and they deal with spam unlike other sites. Your post have defiantly got me more thinking about StumbleUpon and hopefully I can use what you said to help myself, thanks.
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