How to Promote Your Articles with StumbleUpon

Or how about the potential to bring dedicated and extensive traffic to your articles?

StumbleUpon has become an incredible resource for promoting your articles online. Your article may be about cooking, cleaning, crafting, coloring, collecting..anything in your database of content. And the best part is - your article has the potential to bring loads upon loads of page view traffic in a very short amount of time.

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is a type of social bookmarking website that give its users a new twist on browsing the internet. Instead of the using traditional search query formula with a search engine, StumbleUpon sends you to new websites based on your preference of content. StumbleUpon also allows you to surf through specific channels of content based on your own chosen interests. Once you are randomly directed to a web page in your chosen criteria, you are then given the ability to give the page a "thumbs up" (if you like the page) or a "thumbs down" (if you don't like the page). You are also given the ability to review the page based on your enjoyment or dissatisfaction of the web page you stumbled.

How Do I Get Started?

First, you need to go to StumbleUpon.com and create a free account from the home page. Then, I would highly encourage you to install the StumbleUpon Toolbar for your browser. This feature makes stumbling, rating and reviewing much easier and more efficient. After you have created your profile and installed the toolbar, edit your profile settings, including as much detail as you would like be shown to the StumbleUpon community. Once you have completed all these steps, you are on the golden road to stumbling!

Promoting Your Articles on StumbleUpon

Now that you have created you account and installed your toolbar, it is time to get started stumbling. I would first advise you to stumble numerous websites to get the feel for how StumbleUpon works. Go and check out other stumblers' profiles as well to get a feel for what kind of content is popular on StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon users can be very fickle about the content they like and dislike, so it is best to study the community before you begin to promote your own work. I have found from personal experience and research that humor, bizarre, photography, music, arts and news are among the most popular and successful performers on StumbleUpon. Promoting articles that run along these lines have a much better chance of becoming successful on StumbleUpon than others. However, I have also found that quality content of any type has the potential to bring steady and consistent traffic, barring that the content is tagged correctly and is promoted in the proper category.

Promote Your Articles in the Proper Category with the Proper Tags

This is vitally important if your want your articles to succeed on StumbleUpon. If you place a 10-step how to article for cooking a pot roast in the humor category, you are almost guaranteed your article will fail at bringing long lasting traffic. Be sure you thoroughly research the categories in StumbleUpon to find the best match for your articles. Once you have found the best category for your articles, be sure to tag the articles with relevant tag words that would aid in bringing extra traffic. This is one of the most important aspects to generate beginning traffic to your articles on StumbleUpon!

Bringing Lasting Traffic to Your Articles

Because StumbleUpon is frequently inundated with new content, it is crucial that your article succeeds early to bring a steady inflow of traffic. In order to increase your chances of succeeding early, you need to promote quality content with intriguing titles. Dull and mundane titles are not well accepted in the StumbleUpon community. You need titles that are catchy enough to make stumblers want to read your stuff. Another key component to lasting traffic is receiving "thumbs up" nominations and quality reviews. It is at this point that you are held at the mercy of the StumbleUpon community. Like I said earlier, StumbleUpon members have the tendency to be fickle about the content they like and dislike. In order to increase your chances of stumblers liking your articles, you need to make sure that your content is placed in the proper category, employs the proper tags, poses a catchy or intriguing title and offers quality content.

What kind of traffic can I expect to receive from StumbleUpon?

Traffic and consequently page views are very unpredictable on StumbleUpon. If your article is not well received, you may get anywhere from 30-150 page views from it. However, if your article is well received, you have the potential to bring thousands of page views in just a few days! For example, my article entitled "Click, Click, Click...Yes, I'm a Stumble-A-Haulic and I Know It!" generated over a thousand page views in just a few short days!

Final Thoughts on Promoting Your Articles with StumbleUpon

I have a few final thoughts I would like to share with you before I end this article. I hope it has been insightful thus far and has encouraged you to look towards promoting your articles with StumbleUpon.

1) Do not spam with StumbleUpon! This is no different than any other social bookmarking or networking community. Do not risk compromising your integrity on StumbleUpon by spamming your work. This will only bring negative ratings to your articles and consequently prevent you from having a successful campaign on StumbleUpon.

2) You may also pay for advertising using StumbleUpon Advertising. The advertising I mentioned above is all free advertising. StumbleUpon also gives you the option of paying for guaranteed advertising through its StumbleUpon Advertising program. The cost is 5 cents for every page view generated through the advertising campaign. This may seem steep at first, but it can be very beneficial for those who think they have potential to generate lasting traffic with their articles or website/blog.

3) Stumble websites regularly and get involved in the community. Because you can stumble with the click of a button, it is quite simple to stumble regularly and get involved in the community. Find other stumblers with similar interests and share links with each other. Build a reputation for yourself within the community to establish your stumbles, including your own articles. Comment and rate other stumblers' work to build exposure for yourself and your content!

I truly hope that you have taken away some valuable information from this article. Don't neglect this excellent opportunity to promote your articles! With over 9 million stumblers and counting, who knows - maybe your article will be the next big hit on StumbleUpon!

If you have any more questions about StumbleUpon and how it works, feel free to contact me via private message!

Sources:

Personal Experience

StumbleUpon.com