JACK'S BLOG
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8/26/2012 6 Comments Wouldn't it be nice to have a few hundred new visitors “stumble” into your website every day?BloggingNOTHING PROMOTES TRAFFIC to your website like StumbleUpon. Nothing! I'm still surprised when I check my website traffic reports first thing in the morning and find that it's way up. Then I click on the most recent blog and check the number next to the StumbleUpon logo to the right of the text, just under the blog categories list. Yep, that's it. The StumbleUpon “crowd” has been here. Take a careful look at this chart. 83.63% of all referrals to my website are generated by StumbleUpon. More importantly, almost 95% of them are new visitors. They've never visited JackDurish.com before. Some of them may become regulars, and my website traffic grows. Last week I demonstrated how Triberr helped me grow my website traffic from fewer than 2,000 per month to more than 12,000. That's a six-fold increase. Now StumbleUpon has merely doubled it. However, since the initial increase, Triberr has settled down into a more predictable pace – solid but no where near as spectacular as StumbleUpon. Whereas StumbleUpon is referring more than 1,000 new users every month, Triberr is referring less than 200. No, I wouldn't stop investing time and effort in Triberr, but I must admit that Triberr requires a far greater investment in time and effort every day. With Triberr, I have to visit each and every new blog posting for each and every member in my “Tribe” every day, comment where appropriate, and approve them for automatic Tweets with links to drive traffic to their website. StumbleUpon only requires that I “like” my new blog posting once, and it will begin driving new traffic my way. If they “like” it too, StumbleUpon will promote my new posting more frequently. That's all there is to it. Let me give you an example. Last Sunday, I posted a story about heroes and Walt Kelly, one of mine. I posted it before going to bed Saturday night and found that more than 1,000 people had visited it by the time I woke up the next morning. 476 of them had “liked” it on StumbleUpon. (Go ahead and look, you can still see the StumbleUpon "Like" count.) One of the other great features of StumbleUpon is that its impact lingers. Usually, your efforts to promote you website don't last any longer than your endurance. You stop tweeting about it, and people stop coming. Triberr only repeats automated tweets for a day. However, StumbleUpon keeps on working long after you'd expect it to have quit. Let me give you another example. JackDurish.com contains a set of pages that promote other blogs – my favorites. I was again surprised the other day to find that some of these are highly ranked in my website. Again, I looked to see what was going on, and StumbleUpon was the cause. One of them in particular - Michael Rivers - was ranked fourth. [Note: Disregard the number of pageviews – it is only a sample of the total.] I don't remember having “liked” that page. I can only surmise that someone who also uses StumbleUpon found and “liked” it. I then “liked” the page for Claude Nougat, and within a few days, her page had jumped to fifth. If you've gotten this far, you must be asking yourself, “What the hell is StumbleUpon?” Well, it's a search engine that ranks pages by the number of “likes” that they receive. Thus, my humble website is equal to the most powerful so long as people “stumble upon it” and like it. Apparently, I've been providing content that they like. Think of it as a place you go to “Google” something when you don't have a clue what that “something” might be.
Sometimes, in the evening, when I've finished for the day but there's nothing good on television, I'll go to my StumbleUpon toolbar and click “Stumble.” I've already provided StumbleUpon with the categories of things in which I'm interested, and it will randomly take me to webpages that fit those categories, beginning with the ones that most other people “like” the most. Surprisingly I have accumulated more bookmarks this way than I had ever collected before. I frequently share these pages on the social media. They're always fascinating. Now, there's a trick to using StumbleUpon, and I'm going to tell you what it is, for free. It's based on the simple fact that some categories appear to be more popular than others. If you are the first person to “like” a page, you will be prompted to answer some questions about it:
As I mentioned, I “like” my blog entries as soon as I post them so that I get to set these items. I am most careful in selecting the category. For example, I blog frequently about military matters and it seems a simple choice, but “military” does not appear to be a popular one. Thus, I consider this choice more carefully, looking for an aspect of my posting that would fit a more popular category such as “humor.” Don't lie! Don't categorize your webpage as “humor” if it isn't humorous. That's a good way to upset people and they won't “like” it. Now, get over to the StumbleUpon homepage and register if you haven't already. Install the StumbleUpon toolbar in your browser. Then, begin “stumbling.”
6 Comments
8/26/2012 07:20:38 pm
Jack, I'm registered with StumbleUpon but so far haven't been very organized about using it. I certainly will be from now on!
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8/27/2012 03:26:06 am
Good luck with it. Let me know how it works out for you. Remember to keep a record of the categories that you assign to each posting and watch the reaction in your weblogs as well as the number of "Likes" you get.
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8/26/2012 07:55:30 pm
Jack I've registered with Stumbleupon and 'Like' my page daily but never have more than 9 or 10 visits! Is 'writing' not a good category?
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8/27/2012 03:24:22 am
I believe that "writing to" the greatest audience is most important in garnering a large StumbleUpon following. The audience is "categorized" for your convenience. "Books" does well. "History" and "Military," not so much. I categorized this posting under "StumbleUpon." It seemed appropriate to me. I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed. As of this moment only 56 "Likes" so far. Humor seems to be the best.
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8/27/2012 01:05:25 am
Stumble Upon has consistently been a major driver of traffic to our Venture Galleries site.
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8/27/2012 03:27:31 am
Of course, you're not just relying on StumbleUpon. You have a beautifully designed website and rich content in your blog. That helps, too.
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