How To Use StumbleUpon To Drive Traffic To Your Website

You’ve probably seen a lot of your favorite websites display StumbleUpon buttons at the bottom of their posts or at the sidebar. If you’re wondering what the heck these buttons are for, let me help enlighten you a bit.

Although many are familiar with StumbleUpon (SU), there are still some with very little idea as to what this social media site is for. For the uninitiated, StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site that makes looking for relevant links/materials easier by using keywords as filters.

With SU, users have the privilege of filtering results further by rating it with a thumbs up or down to indicate whether they want to see it again or not. It’s so much easier to browse if you have the power to filter this way, right?

Also, SU allows you to submit your own site and share it with the site’s millions of users. It’ll be a really nifty way to spread the word about your site, no?

Now, let’s go over to the more important questions: Why should you consider using SU?

Using SU will actually help you gain exposure as well as readership. Not to mention that if you’re lucky enough, you can actually get a lot of back links from submitting your site to SU.

If you think about it, people all over the world use SU to search for a lot of things. By posting your site in SU, you gain access to this diverse pool of readers. And if you’re posts are good enough, you’ll actually increase your subscribers through SU, too.

You need to remember, though, that quality content combined with a good site layout and design is your best key to attracting followers in SU. People tend to look at the website/blog layout and design first and then read the title and content after. It weird how it works out that way, but it does.

There are things that you need to remember if you’re thinking of using SU to promote your blog/website, like:

How many people do you have as friends in SU? The higher the number, the more authority you present.
How many people in SU have tagged or thumbed up your stumbled page? Of course, the more thumbs up your site gets, the likelier it appears when someone searches for your tags in SU.
How many people in your network use SU? The more friends you have, the more thumbs up and tags you can get.
Who tags your site? Are they occasional users or power users like yourself? If you’ve been tagged by an SU authority figure, it’s very likely that people will start taking notice of your site, too.

Also, keep in mind that if you’re planning to self-submit and self-review your site, it’s not going to help you increase your traffic. You’re going to have to wait til other people do it when they like your submitted link.

Personally, I enjoy using SU because I get a lot of information on a broad variety of categories. It’s easy to use and very helpful in terms of bringing people over to my site.

What about you, though, are you an SU user? How do you find it so far?