Become A Better Blogger - 5 Reasons to Use StumbleUpon

Published: Mon, 03/02/15

Do you use StumbleUpon?

Over the past year, we've consistently spent a small amount of time using StumbleUpon, and seen good results. In fact, I'm going to increase our efforts over the coming months.

StumbleUpon doesn't get much attention these days, but it still can be a very good source of traffic.

So in this issue of our “Become a Better Blogger” email series, I'm going to share 5 reasons why we use StumbleUpon.

1. Sharing Content Directly To Your Contacts

My favorite way to use Stumble Upon is sharing content with contacts that I follow. (And the receiving side of the share feature is a great way to support my blogging friends and find content to share on my other channels.)

These days there aren't many appropriate ways to directly send content to a small set of individuals through social media. 

The share in StumbleUpon allows you to send a link to a set of contacts in a way that they actually want to receive it.

I am careful to not send too many posts to the same people very often. If you overwhelm your contacts with too many shares, they may select the option to stop receiving shares from you.

Another warning... you do NOT want to submit or "add" too many of your own posts to StumbleUpon. Instead, try to get other friends and contacts of yours to first thumbs up your posts.

Here's a screenshot of sharing through StumbleUpon...

2. Increased Share Stats on Your Blog Posts
 
If you include social share buttons at the top of your blog posts, such as the mashshare plugin that we use, you can show a total number of “shares” for a post.

I’m not exactly sure how the different plugins calculate those numbers, but the interactions on StumbleUpon increase that total social share count. 

For example… take a look at our post Peanut Butter and Hazelnut Popcorn.

This post has performed well in StumbleUpon and currently shows a total of 5997 shares despite having a relatively low number of pins.  

3. Traffic 

We actually receive more referral traffic from StumbleUpon than we do from Facebook or Twitter. It’s nowhere near what we get from Pinterest, but it’s consistently our second top social media referral source.

4. Find Good Content to Share

You need to find good content to pin and tweet… so why not discover it by stumbling. I like to stumble the likes of people that I follow as I know I’ll find quality content to share on my other channels.

Also, since you're sending "shares" to your contacts, it's critical that you regularly go through your received shares. I often use these posts to add to my Twitter Buffer and to my scheduled list of pins.

Here's a quick look at the Received Shares screen...

When I'm going through my Received Shares, I open a set of them in separate tabs and then go through giving a "thumbs-up" to each and adding the best ones to my Twitter Buffer and Pinterest through Ahalogy or Viral Tag.

5. Stumble Bloggers Lists

Recently, a platform called "Blog Meets Brand" announced #StumbleBloggers, a free program for bloggers in partnership with StumbleUpon.

Basically, every month or so, they create a new #StumbleBloggers list that you can submit content to. For example, the most recent one was All Things Dogs #StumbleBloggers. You can find more information on how to sign up for the next list here.

We also create our own Stumble Lists, which are similar to Pinterest Boards. These lists can be great places to find content to share on your other channels.
Let's Connect on StumbleUpon


If we're not yet following you on Stumble Upon, reply to this email with your link and we'll be sure to start following you. 

Also, definitely SHARE your content with us... we're looking forward to hitting "Thumbs-Up".

Did You Miss Anything?

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What Do You Want To Know?

What would you like me to cover next week? Shoot me back a quick reply and let me know.

Talk soon,

Susan (and Janice)
5 Minutes For Mom

ps. To tell your friends about this "Become a Better Blogger" email series, you can send them here.

pps. If you missed my email last week, I apologize. I got extra busy and didn't send one out. But thanks for noticing... it's kinda nice to be missed. ;)