Stumbleupon explained for lensmasters

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Ranked #193 in Squidoo Tips, #21,979 overall

A how to... stumble

Stumbleupon is great fun, and a tool for self-promotion, but for lensmasters there are also a few drawbacks. There are limits to the amount of self-promotion you can do.

Stumbleupon explained 

Stumbleupon is a toolbar you can add to your browser. Once installed you can use it to find sites on your interests from all over the internet. It is also, for webmasters, a way to promote your own material.

More votes for pages, means that more people will see them.

The limits to that, and there ARE limits, will be explained further on.

With each page you see, you can say you like it (thumbs up) or you don't like it (thumbs down).

If a lot of people give a page thumbs up, it will be sent to more people through the stumbleupon network.

How to give the thumbs up



See the circled thumbs there? Thumbs up is done by clicking the thumb that points upwards. Thumb down (if you don't like something a stumbler sent you) is clicking on the thumb that points down.

So simple once you know how.

What's stumbleupon for? 

The new websurfing

Stumbleupon is meant to be a sort of channelsurfing for the web. It is an easy way to find interesting or funny stuff online.

This fits the mood of squidoo perfectly. Squidoo at its best is also about having fun and informative content.

But as I said: that doesn't mean you can just thumb up only squidoo pages. That will not work...

FAQ - any questions about Stumbleupon? 

(general comments in the guestbook below please)

Lensmaster

i have tried stumble upon but don't seem to get much traffic from them, i do keep going back to stumble every now and then. good lens 5*s

ReplyPosted June 22, 2009

Lensmaster

AndyPo wrote...

Great lens. Very useful information.

ReplyPosted June 15, 2009

Lensmaster

Tipi wrote...

I use to Stumble when I first started out on Squidoo. I guess I dropped the ball along the way. I know that it is a great site and I should reconsider!

ReplyPosted June 05, 2009

Lensmaster

Jon_Lyles wrote...

I use StumbleUpon and other services such as Delicious with tags to get indexed in Google quickly and backlinks to the site or page to increase it's search engine rankings. It is most effectively done in groups that are supporting and rating each other's work. So to reply to Orhide if you do it right it will be worth the effort.

ReplyPosted January 13, 2009

Lensmaster

mdvaldosta wrote...

Stumbleupon is great for driving traffic, however it's largely untargetted and visitors don't usually stay and engage in discussion, vote, or sign up to Squidoo. Kind of a waste of bandwidth if you ask me.

ReplyPosted November 04, 2008

Lensmaster

spirituality wrote...

I personally do spend time on it. It really depends on whether or not your lenses fall into their niches. Funny or informative stuff does.

If you had to choose between blogging and networking with bloggers and stumble - I'd say do the blogging and networking with bloggers thing first.

As stumbleupon is only going to work as a promotion method if you also thumb up other people's work, you have to be willing to do that. If you aren't, don't bother.

Ultimately: stumbleupon is only one way to get traffic and each online publisher has to find their mix of traffic sources that fits their personality.

ReplyPosted October 20, 2008

Lensmaster

Is it good way to promote squidoo lens or not? Do we need to spend our time for it? Thanks for help

ReplyPosted October 20, 2008

Lensmaster

spirituality wrote...

I have a feeling I know which online forum you're talking about :) it also has a thread where people can get ratings for their squidoo lenses.

Stumble is actually better insulated from stuff like that than squidoo is. In squidoo any vote counts (as far as I can tell, though there has been talk about lowering the influence of gaming the system). In stumble if you vote for stuff that's low quality (shown by low votes from others), your profile will be trusted less.

Or in other words: My stumble profile shows an interest in spirituality, art, online marketing, CSS etc. My vote for a page on s*x won't do anybody any good - because it's not in the neighborhood of other pages I've voted on. It makes my profile look spammy, it will probably get that page few actual visitors and a few of my fans get annoyed seeing a page they never bargained for. Which might make them unfriend me.

Like any good social network there is an incentive to 'keeping it real'.

ReplyPosted September 23, 2008

Lensmaster

packetlog wrote...

i saw a forum where people try to "game" the stumbleupon system. that's not sportive. i hope people will vote honestly for sites they like.

there was a linux guy who argued that he would never vote for a site if it extolled the virtues of WinVista, and for this he was being punished on the forum !! sad ..

ReplyPosted September 22, 2008

Lensmaster

spirituality wrote...

I totally agree. Stumbleupon, like Digg is a place where you can really only be succesful if you invest time. Don't just promote your own stuff. Most social media platforms are like that - but since it takes energy to do all that, it's best to concentrate on only a few: the ones best fitted to your personality & niche(s).

ReplyPosted September 15, 2008

 
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Self-promotion: stumbleupon site promotion limits 

Stumbleupon is about sharing, not about merely promoting

Because stumbleupon can bring huge amounts of traffic to websites (I've had a few thousand come to one page in 24 hours), it has become a way for webmasters to promote their own stuff.

But since that is an obvious incentive for misuse and spam, there are limits. These are some of the rules that apply:

Don't Thumb up too many pages from the same domain (say squidoo) - the votes will NOT count.
I estimate that you can not thumb up more than 10% from the same website without tripping their filter. But I've seen the effect faster. The first squidoo page I thumbed up (one of my own) got a few hunderd visitors from that one thumb up. The second only a few dozen.

After a few the votes will not even be counted. That's when it is time to go stumble something else. After a while (and 10 other pages is an optimistic estimate) your votes WILL count again.

If you and your friends consistently thumb up the same sites/pages (for instane squidoo-pages), the votes will also be ignored. Stumbleupon will see it as an attempt at manipulation of their results.

The way around this issue is to thumb up online pages that link to your lens. This will still only work when those pages aren't all on the same domain (like your blog). But if your lens is so good it gets links from outside squidoo, give that page the thumbs up, instead of your lens itself.

Tags on stumbleupon 

On squidoo you can add tags to pages and there's room for a lot of tags. You can go up to 40.

In stumbleupon you can only add about 5 tags, and most people only add one. Because of that it only works to have very broad tags.

Tags like 'politics', or 'squidoo' will work, whereas a tag like 'Purple squid' will be way to specific. Think broad match.

If a page of yours is being stumbled, go check if it's been 'categorised' correctly. You can go change it, and it can make a lot of difference. Squidoo pages for instance will usually be indexed as 'internet'... And since many pages are about other things, that is often not the best place for them to be.

People get shown pages based on the categories they chose and the tags they use - so you don't want your page in the wrong category.

How to find and change the category your page was put into in stumbleupon 

stumbleupon tip

So - you know you want your page in the right category... But how do you know which category it's in?

1) Go to that page in your browser
2) look at your stumbleupon toolbar, it will look something like this:



3) click on the button I highlighted above
4) Go to the bottom of that page, where you will see (on the right) something like this:



5) You can probably guess the rest: click on 'report this' and change the category into one that fits your topic.

Don't just promote - be real

The main thing I hope you all take away from this is:

Don't use stumble to only promote squidoo pages. That will not work. What will work is to participate in the community, thumb up things you think is interesting. THEN every once in a while you can thumb up your own, or other peoples, squidoo pages.

In other words: don't be a promoter, be a human being.

What kind of content works on stumbleupon - and what doesn't 

What is NOT going to work (so don't even try):
  • selling things


What IS going to work:
  • Unique, inspiring content

  • Funny stuff

  • Beautiful stuff

  • Very informative stuff

What can you stumble? 

You can stumble basicly two things:

  1. webpages - any webpage, including squidoo-pages

  2. pictures - this is what makes it so nice to have a stumbleupon blog: you can show off some of the great pictures that can be found online. And through the rss module you can show those off on your lenses

The beauty of stumbleupon 

featured lens Beautiful stumbleupon photoblogs

This page will change daily as the photo-blogs themselves change. Stumbleupon can be used to find great websites and great pictures. Stumbleupon is also a layman's blogging tool: you can just put anything on your blog that you enjoyed in other peopl...

General tips on social bookmarking and social marketing 

Get to know the culture of the space you are getting into first.
Market second.

The thing about social bookmarking and social marketing is that it really is social.

Every group has its culture. Every company has its culture. Every country has its culture. Get to know the culture before sticking your neck out.

Within Stumbleupon that means:
  • check out what kind of blogs people are making.

  • Stumble a lot.

  • Check out the comments people are making on the sites you are stumbling

  • Check out the comments people make about sites you know well

  • Comment on sites you know well (I didn't mean your own sites)

Stumbleupon and lensrank 

Stumbleupon can bring hundreds of visitors to your page. That is good: more visitors means higher lensrank.

BUT stumbleupon visitors are not likely to:
  1. click out of your lens.

  2. buy things on your lens.

  3. even do more than glance


Stumbleupon visitors have a very easy way to find something new: they click on the stumble button. This means that following the links you painstakingly put on your page is not high on their priority list.

And lensrank depends on everything I just mentioned:
  1. visitors

  2. followed links

  3. sales

  4. + votes: stumblers are just like ordinary visitors from google: not likely to vote for your lens

My stumbleupon blog 

Kh7 aka Sprituality on stumbleupon. You can add your stumbleupon blog to your lensography (for instance) as an RSS-feed with the RSS module. Turn on HTML so the pictures show up.

Loading Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

Any use to stumbleupon visitors? 

Sure:

Stumbleupon visitors are an interesting crowd:
  • They are web savvy - and therefore more likely to link to your site than google-visitors

  • They are potentially interested in your topic, so they may bookmark your lens

Has stumbleupon worked for you in promoting squidoo lenses? 

Have you had squidoo lenses become hugely popular through stumbleupon?

Loading Fetching blurbs now... please stand by

Yes, stumbleupon is great for promotion

Tipi says:

You know what, I did get traffic from Stumble before. I relly should use it again! Hmmm!

Posted June 05, 2009

OhMe says:

yes it has but I sure needed all this information, too. Thanks

Posted May 31, 2009

dc64 says:

My foster child lens gets lots of visits from Stumbleupon.

Posted May 15, 2009

Jon_Lyles says:

Yes. If you use tags properly it will bring traffic.

Posted January 13, 2009

bgamall says:

Yes and if the stumbleupon theme gets listed in search you can get clickthroughs from that page. There is a Palinsucks thread I started and I listed some of my pages and some other pages and they are probably all getting some clickthroughs as that page shows up in the palin sucks search on one of the lead pages in Google.

Posted November 19, 2008

No, I never got more than a few dozen visitors through stumbleupon.

SudokuNut says:

Erm, no. I get the occassional bit of traffic but not much and not often. Still, it's free so who's complaining. :P

Posted October 23, 2008

Cajean says:

Not yet, but I admit I hadn't gotten the hang of using it well. I hope to invest some more time in working it, and then I'll see if it's worthwhile!

Posted October 18, 2008

aj2008 says:

No, I have no lenses that have become popular through Stumbleupon, but that is because it is something I have not put enough time into. I am just about to start rectifying that!

Posted September 18, 2008

GreenRevolution says:

I just started using stumbleupon, so I don't get a lot of traffic to my lens yet. I'm sure that the information you have shared here will help me to change that. Thanks.

Posted July 03, 2008

sallyaloha says:

I forgot all about stumleupon, thanks for reminding me about it.

Posted May 27, 2008

 
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Stumbleupon and SEO - search engine optimization 

Stumbleupon will NOT help your lens rank any higher in google. Not directly anyhow. This is because links in squidoo are no-followed. It's a measure they took to avoid people spamming the system.

Indirectly however stumbleupon CAN lead to links.

  • It can help you find related sites that just might give you a link if you ask them nicely

  • People on stumbleupon just might have websites related to yours and might just link to your lens without you even noticing


More about SEO for Squidoo

Did this help you understand stumbleupon? 

Lensmaster

Tipi wrote...

It helped me realize what a great site I'm passing by ... by not using it!
Very good information!
Susie

ReplyPosted June 05, 2009

Lensmaster

OhMe wrote...

Thank you for all of this great info. I have been using Stumble Upon for some time but needed to know more and found everything right here.

ReplyPosted May 31, 2009

Lensmaster

dc64 wrote...

Great description, and I do get visits from Stumbleupon as I stated in the duel module above. The only lens that gets anything is the foster child one, and I'm grateful for any visit to any of my lenses! I don't use Stumbleupon much myself though, there's too many other things I need to do with my time that are more profitable or worthy.

ReplyPosted May 15, 2009

Lensmaster

alteredkat wrote...

I needed this explained to me...I am stumbleupon challenged ;o)
Well done!

ReplyPosted May 15, 2009

Lensmaster

seegreen wrote...

This helps me tremendously. Thanks for the taking the time to make this page.

ReplyPosted March 24, 2009

 
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