One of the big issues that will confront any business blog is actually finding people to read it. You could have great ideas, interesting content, consistent posts, in fact maybe it’s the best blog in the whole world! But if all your effort is only reaching your mom and the other two people you told about it then I think its time for a new promotion strategy. Enter StumbleUpon. If you haven’t heard of StumbleUpon, you’re not alone. It is not as well known as Twitter or Digg, but its power to drive traffic to your business blog is unparalleled. So are you interested in doubling or tripling your blog’s traffic? Here are five tips on how to use StumbleUpon to do just that.
1. Become an active Stumbler, trust me it’s worth it!
To give you a quick overview, StumbleUpon is a website and browser toolbar that allows people (known as Stumblers) to give a Thumbs Up to websites they think are interesting. Then, when people click on the “Stumble” button in their browser they are taken to a random page (within their stated interests) that someone else has given the Thumbs Up to. Similar to Digg, Twitter, or Facebook, StumbleUpon has social networking features that let people friend other Stumblers. So your first step in leveraging StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your business blog is to start using StumbleUpon, and start finding and adding friends. Right away you’ll start to find interesting sites that you never would have found before, all while setting the stage for getting your own content Stumbled.
2. Create content catered for Stumbling
As I mentioned before, people using StumbleUpon give the Thumbs Up to content they find interesting. So in order to utilize the power of StumbleUpon, you need some content that Stumblers find interesting! After you’ve been using it for a while, you’ll start to see patterns in the kinds of content that is stumbled. To give you a quick idea, Stumblers usually find videos, unique photos, or good how to’s interesting – among other things. Now I’m not saying that all of your content needs to be catered for StumbleUpon, but you’ll need at least a post or two that is in order to get the most out of this strategy.
3. Ask fellow Stumblers to take a look at your Blog
So far you’ve started to use StumbleUpon, you’ve been Stumbling interesting stuff, adding friends, and created Stumble worthy content. Now comes the part you’ve been waiting for, actually getting traffic sent to your site. To accomplish that, forward links to the content you created for StumbleUpon to the friends you’ve made since you began. You may also want to ask them to add a quick review, as having reviews will help get more Thumbs Up in the future. Most Stumblers have no problem helping out a friend, and they will take a look and give it a Thumbs Up (just be sure to return the favor some time). Every time your page gets a Thumbs Up, traffic gets diverted to you when other Stumblers press the Stumble button in their browser. And if those Stumblers like it, they’ll send more Stumblers, and on and on it goes. So now do you see why StumbleUpon can be so effective at driving traffic to your site? It is basically the raw power of viral marketing at work.
4. Use StumbleUpon Ads targeted to the right content
The above steps are definitely best, most consistent way to drive traffic to your site from StumbleUpon. And best of all, it’s free. But there is a way to bypass some of the harder aspects of the above tips. That way is StumbleUpon Ads. Just like you would set up a PPC campaign with Google AdWords, StumbleUpon lets you set up a campaign to send traffic to your site. In an interesting twist, Stumblers seeing one of these “Ad” pages have no idea that it’s been paid for, it looks like any other page in StumbleUpon. In return for sending Stumblers to your site, StumbleUpon asks for $0.05 per visitor. All you have to do is tell them what page to send the visitors to (your StumbleUpon specific content), tell them how many visitors you want, and then pay via PayPal. That’s it. I suggest running a $5.00 campaign to send 100 visitors to your site just to give it a test run. One thing to note: Using StumbleUpon Ads will let you bypass the work of stumbling and finding friends, but not whether or not people with like your content. People can still give your page thumbs down, which will greatly reduce the effectiveness of your campaign. Make sure that you’re content is catered for this audience, and make sure you put it in the right category when you start the campaign.
5. Make it easy for your content to get a thumbs up
The last quick tip for driving huge amounts of traffic to your business blog using StumbleUpon is making it easy for people to Stumble it! Doing this is a relatively easy but often overlooked. All you need to do is put a StumbeUpon button on your posts. Yes it’s that easy. Not only will your regular readers give it Thumbs Up, but it signals to Stumblers that you’re one of them. Check out the box below this post to see what I mean.
So that’s it, 5 quick and easy steps to driving traffic to your business blog. Using these tips I have no doubt that you’ll see instant results in the form of double, triple, maybe even quadruple the amount of visitors you had before. Yes, it’s that powerful – so don’t wait around for people to miraculously find you, go out and grab their attention!
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