StumbleUpon - It’s More Than Stumbling!

Posted by Justin Smith at 22 September, 2008, 9:45 pm

Start Stumbling!

If you all remember, last month I posted a brief overview about Social Media and some of it’s many uses for SEO and exposure. Well, in this post and several to follow, we will explore a handful of sites in some detail.

The first Social Media site I want to look at is StumbleUpon

What is it?

Simple Description:

Owned by eBay StumbleUpon is similar to YouTube but very different (and broader) in it’s media content. StumbleUpon is a user driven platform where “Stumblers” specify the content they want the technology to find and display. Once the user selects their preferences the videos, news, photos, websites, blogs and over 500 topics/categories will then be found and displayed with a click.

Each item displayed is filtered through your preselected preferences, we’ve gone from Surfing to Stumbling! Not sure if that’s good or bad? Nevertheless it’s addicting! One could spend hours Stumbling! The simple user interface can be installed and embedded into your browser so there’s no need to go to a specific site to search for stuff, all you do is click “Stumble” and…well, your Stumbling or surfing or…guess it depends on what you did the night before?

Here is a capture of my StumbleUpon toolbar.

$Jya\' Toolbar$

One cool feature of the toolbar is the user’s ability to select the channel they desire to pull content from. For example, you’ll notice in my tool bar from left to right - Stumble All, Stumble Favorites and Friends, Stumble Images, Stumble Videos, Stumble People, News, and so on, you decide. The entire interface can be set up within your browser and you can set all your preferences, sign in and out, and for the most part do it all from there!

Another neat feature is you will know if your website or any website for that matter has been Stumbled and tagged by other users. You will see the “thumbs up” along with a “star rating” of the page.

Here’s and example…

OK, so your asking the question, “what does this mean to me” right? Or, “how can I use this as a tool to gain exposure,” I wouldn’t leave that out! Besides the cool little rating feature above there’s more…

Social Bookmarking and Publishing (Or Social Stumbling your stuff)

The toolbar is very fluid and easy to use and this is where the benefit to you comes in. Let’s say you write and publish a new article on your Blog, good for you. Stumble it!

Like or Not?

You like your own Blog article right? Well, tell others! Get them to like it! Sign into your account, find the page you want to share and give it the “thumbs up!” You can select the appropriate category and add a little text if you’d like but that’s it, you have now just exposed your piece to a potential 6 million plus Stumblers! This might be why people say “Hey, I stumbled across your website and….” Happy Stumbling!

Category : Social Media Marketing

Comments

earth4energy review October 3, 2008

i use stumbleupon all the time and think it’s probably the best social bookarking site for getting traffic along with digg.

Eugene Real Estate October 4, 2008

Good article; I have been stumbling, mostly real estate related sites for a while but I learned some things here that I didn’t know. I really did’t know if there was much value here but I think know I will look at stumbling in a new light.

Oh, by the way. I stumbled this article.