Using StumbleUpon to Promote Your Content

A lot of AC content producers have written helpful articles about using social bookmarking sites to promote their work. What surprises me is how rarely StumbleUpon is mentioned. It's a lot like del.icio.us, but it has even more users and, as the name implies, it lets the user stumble to a random website -- "channel-surfing the Web," as many describe it.

I've been an avid Stumbler for almost a year, reviewing over 2,000 websites before I ever thought to promote my AC work there. It's a great social bookmarking network, not only for casual browsing, but content promotion as well.

One thing I like about StumbleUpon is that many people promote their work -- including webcomic artists, T-shirt designers, and of course writers -- with pages on the network. It's accepted. If the content is relevant and correctly tagged, nobody will complain that you're promoting yourself. Some of the very sites at the bottom of AC pages we're recommended to use don't like people promoting their own work. I've received e-mails saying as much from Newsvine.

StumbleUpon uses no Top 10 lists or front pages -- the focus rests on comment pages for each website and individual user pages. You can leave reviews on your pages, and people who visit your page and like the sound of the review can follow the link.

More fun to use for casual surfing than other social bookmarking sites, using StumbleUpon usually means getting more good page views. There is a very diverse group of people there, in age group and nationality, so it's not just for teens and twentysomethings. Its clean, pleasant design is easy on the eyes, features are only introduced once you've actually used them, and it's never too hard to find what you're looking for. With the Stumble toolbar installed, you can quickly give pages a thumbs-up or thumbs-down and leave a comment abut them that shows up on your main page. If it's a new site, you just put in a topic and tags, much like Spurl. The pictures I've attached show where the most useful buttons are.

Best of all, the Stumble button takes you to a random site within your topics of interest that you've chosen -- and for content promotion, that guarantees an interested audience.

Few social bookmarking sites compare to StumbleUpon, especially for promotional uses. Promotion isn't chided, the lack of central lists and front pages level the playing field, and the focus is on user pages the users themselves maintain.