Targeting StumbleUpon Users

What types of readers do you want to attract to your blog? Readers who regularly add comments and contribute to the conversation certainly are important. Other bloggers that are willing to link to you are also valuable. How about those who use social media websites to help your blog get more exposure and reach new readers?

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StumbleUpon is one of the largest social media sites and best of all, it’s easier for new users to get traffic with StumbleUpon than with nearly any other social site, especially Digg. Many bloggers receive hundreds or thousands of visitors each day as a result of a handful readers stumbling their posts.

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If you’re fortunate enough to have active SU users as subscribers you can quickly reach a much bigger audience and gain new exposure. It’s like having a team of people who work for you going out and telling people about your blog. Simply put, StumbleUpon is one of the ideal ways for new bloggers to promote themselves.

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If you do much reading on the internet you’ve probably seen a number of articles recently about StumbleUpon. Most of these articles focus on 1) general information and use of SU, 2) tips for creating content and drawing traffic from SU, or 3) SU’s features.

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My goal with this article is to cover 1) sending traffic to other SU users, 2) being a valued “friend,” and 3) how this will wind up benefiting you.

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One of the big advantages of StumbleUpon is that it is not anonymous. What I mean by that is each time you use the system to stumble of page, review another user, or send a message, your avatar will be right there to give you credit. The idea is to help others, let your avatar and your activity show others that you are helping them, and naturally attract others like yourself that will return the favor.

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StumbleUpon is consistently the number 1 or number 2 source of traffic to my blog. Shortly after I began seeing considerable traffic, I started to consider how I could maximize this traffic. Creating blog posts targeted towards social media users and including a link to remind readers to stumble helped me to keep the traffic coming. But I’ve also had great results from networking on StumbleUpon and targeting its users as readers of my blog.

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One of my favorite features of SU is that it gives you more ways to connect with other users than most social media websites. It’s simple to find the right people to target, and then it’s possible to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

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To target StumbleUpon users you basically want to find users who have interests that correspond to the topics covered in your blog and try to get them to visit your blog. If their interests match up and your content is solid, there’s a good chance they’ll stick around.

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Finding the Right Readers

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Step 1 – Check other blog posts in your niche.

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To find those who have similar interests you’ll simply want to see who has been stumbling other blog posts on the same topics that you write about. I’m sure you know of a few other blogs in your niche that you can use to research. Preferably try some of the more popular blogs as they’ll probably have more stumbles.

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If you’ve installed the StumbleUpon toolbar, all you have to do is visit a particular blog post and click on the icon that looks like a little speech bubble (shown below).

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Now you’ll see who has reviewed this page and who has given it a thumbs up. You’ll also want to check your own blog posts to see who has been stumbling them. If they liked one of your posts, they’ll probably like others.

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Step 2 – Visit their profiles.

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By clicking through to the profile of the user you’ll see the interests that you have in common with them (on the right sidebar), and if you click on “About Them” you’ll see a link to their website or blog (if they have one). From their profile you can also see some other pages that they have recently stumbled.

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Step 3 – Help them to notice you.

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If you think they might be a good fit there are a few ways you can get them to notice you. First, StumbleUpon has a system that grants you to send a message to them (these messages do not go directly to their email, although notices of new messages do get sent. The messages can be read and sent from within the SU profile). Second, you can write a review of them by clicking on “Review Their Blog” in the sidebar.

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Step 4 – Build a relationship.

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Finding the right people to target is a great start, but in order to really benefit you’ll need to develop a mutually beneficial relationship. The concept is pretty easy, if you help others, they’re more likely to help you too. I’ve found most StumbleUpon users (at least those who have their own blogs) seem to follow this principle.

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In the previous step we looked at the options you have to send messages to other users and submit reviews for them. Reviewing other users is especially productive. Everyone cares about a good review. Most of the users that you review will take a look at your profile, and many will add you as a friend. Several times I have submitted a review for another user and then noticed them stumbling my blog posts.

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My goal in developing relationships with other stumblers is to regularly read their blog posts and comment whenever possible and stumble the posts that I like (and I’m more prone to stumble posts from my friends than from others).

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To make this easy, I created a folder in my RSS reader for my SU friends. Now whenever I go through these feeds I pay closer attention to the content and I look for opportunities to help my friends with a comment or a stumble.

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As soon as I started doing this I started seeing those other bloggers stumbling some of my posts. Of course, not everyone that you help will return the favor, but many will. Submit as many reviews as possible, leave comments, stumble posts, do whatever you can to help send traffic to others.

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Step 5 – Provide quality content.

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Getting to know other stumblers is a great way to grow your traffic, but that doesn’t lessen the importance of having good, original content. In order to have real success with StumbleUpon this is necessary.

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Begin using StumbleUpon today to send more traffic to your friends, and see what happens.\n

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