How to Use StumbledUpon, Social Bookmarking and Networking Site, To Your Best Advantage

StumbleUpon is a powerful Social Networking and bookmarking site that will drive traffic to your site in matter of minutes . "StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for finding and sharing great sites. This helps you find interesting web-pages you would not think to search for."

With more than 2,555,043 Stumblers, your site will be discovered in seconds, and hundreds of viewers can instantly access your site from stumbler's recommendation. However, you do need to know how to use it effectively to get the traffic you want. You just need to learn how the system works and use it to your best advantage. If you have a blog or a site that needs some serious traffic; this is the best tool you can use to get noticed.

First, you need to make sure that your web design is visually appealing. It only takes a click of a button to stumble on to another page; therefore, you need to make sure that it grabs the stumblers attention immediately. Great header with a balanced design of graphics and text will be to your advantage. Great content is also key. Title that pulls the reader in is an essential. It has been said that if you spend half hour writing a good content; you should spend the other half writing a great headline. If you have ads, make sure it doesn't dominate the whole page. Nothing will make the stumbler click on the next button faster than a page filled with no graphics or ads placed haphazardly around. Page load time should also been considered. If it takes longer than couple of seconds; most likely, your page will be passed over for the next stumble.

Next, join StumbleUpon. It is free and easy. Do not forget to download the StumbleUpon toolbar. This makes your stumbling experience fun and easy. I will go into the functions of the toolbar later, but for now, let's focus on your profile. You will have a home page on StumbleUpon which you will use to create a profile for yourself. This is important, because this allows you to connect with other stumblers. You need to connect with others in order for your page to get stumbled. It will be ineffective for you to stumble your own pages. Go to the upper right corner and click on "Preferences". Write a little blurb about yourself and upload a profile pic. It does not have to be a picture of yourself. Some people use pictures of their pet, logos, photographs and such. List your interests. The StumbleUpon will show how many others have similar interests as you. Join groups if you want. This will help you to network and make friends. You can even change the color of your home page. Just click on settings and play around with the colors.

Next important step is to find tags. Go to the "Stumbling" Link and click on that. Here you can check the preferences of the media you want to receive: video, images, flash, PDF's and audio. After that, you need to find tags. Try to find tags thats that pertain to your site or your niche. Click on "find tags" and you will be taken to a page cloud. Just click on the tags of the subjects you want to stumble. You should try to include the most popular tags within your niche (more popular tags are in bold text). Now you are ready to stumble.

Now, back to the toolbar. A toolbar with an icon with the Stumble Logo, Thumb up with text (I like it), thumb down, Send to Icon, and Conversation Bubble will be located on top of your browser. When you are stumbling, if you see a page you like. Click on the thumb up button. The icon should turn green. Congratulations! You stumbled your first site. Want to leave a review? Click on the conversation bubble. There you can tag the site and write a short review. If you want to stumble and tag your own page; you can. Some people say you should not but I have done this to my own page and received visitors. However, you cannot stumble your pages only. Then stumbling will be ineffective. Tagging is very important; then, it will be seen by people who are actually interested in seeing that particular topic. Do not over tag. It will not be effective, and people have known to report wrong tagging. You can use the StumbleUpon Icon to land on the next page, and another site will be shown. Only pages with your tagged interests will be shown. This is great, because you will find sites that you would have never found otherwise. All these are from recommendations of other stumblers. This is how your own pages will be discovered. How a page is discovered depends on how many people like the site (give a thumb up), and how much of a master stumbler you are. Someone who has hundreds of friends and thousands of stumbled pages will have more clout than someone who has no friends and very few stumbled pages. I had a master stumbler give me a thumbs up and a massive traffic was hit on that day. So friends do matter on Stumble and So does your stumbling ability. Good news is that it is easy to stumble. Once you get into it; it's very addictive.

Choose your networking friends carefully. You are limited to 200 friends. People who have thousands of friends exploited a bug in the system, but that is fixed now. Mutual friends will be able to show you their stumbled pages. Friends you added but have not been added by them can still show you pages. People who have added you but you have not added back will see your pages but you won't be able to see theirs. The best way to make friends to participate in other social networking sites and you can add each other on StumbleUpon. Blog Catalog has a discussion forum where we exchange stumbles to help each other out. Reach out to master stumblers, but do not be discouraged if they do not add you back. The master stumbler probably reached their limit of friends; however, they can always give you a thumbs up. Leave them a review of their page on their profile. They might return with a thumbs up on your page or even a review which in turn will increase your traffic. Out of all the networking sites out there. StumbleUpon has been the best way to increase my page views. With these points, you are on your way to become a master stumbler and drive massive traffic to your site.