StumbleUpon, the web surfing social network, is hands down a long term traffic builder for blogs, online businesses, and Web 2.0 services.
For a quick overview of SU:
- Sites or users submit their URLs to StumbleUpon.
- StumbleUpon members can find these sites via random yet targeted web surfing called “Stumbling”, clicking on the suggestions of their SU friends, or via StumbleUpon Search which matches user generated tags and search queries.
- StumbleUpon users then vote on the sites or posts they find, with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
- The more thumbs up, the more people who see the site via StumbleUpon.
I make it a point to submit what I feel are some of the more original posts here at Search Engine Journal to StumbleUpon and let their members decide on the value of the posts. Usually, such submittals to StumbleUpon result in 400-1,000 referrals.
On occasion, the referrals hit the 2,000 or 4,000 mark, over the course of a couple of days, depending upon the voting by SU members.
The slower drawn out traffic is a nice alternative to Digg, as a top story on the front page of Digg can result in server overload as sometimes up to 10,000 Digg users could click over in the course of 15 minutes.
As a StumbleUpon member myself, I don’t only submit my own properties for reader review. I also submit blog posts and new sites which I feel are of interest to me and my StumbleUpon friends.
But why stop there?
One form of social media marketing which I’ve found to be quite useful is submitting the sites which link to Search Engine Journal posts and other properties to StumbleUpon.
Example:
- TechDirt links to Search Engine Journal post
- I see traffic coming from TechDirt
- I go to TechDirt post and submit it to StumbleUpon with lots of good tags and info
- SU users find that TechDirt post
- SU users click on the link from that TechDirt post to SEJ
- More traffic to SEJ
It’s a form of rewarding or surprising those sites with some extra traffic, perhaps some links which will help with SEO, and the end result is more referrals to my site from the site which originally linked to me.
In such practice, by submitting sites or posts which link to your site to StumbleUpon, you are supercharging those links by adding more value to your incoming links and the sites which link to you.
