How to Use StumbleUpon to Get Targetted Traffic

Social bookmarking websites are huge at the moment but the truth of the matter is that a lot of people don’t know how to use them. There are more people using spammy tactics on these sites than those that are using genuine tactics and I think this is crazy. All social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Reddit and of course, StumbleUpon can be absolutely excellent sources of traffic, you just have to know what you’re doing.
In my opinion, StumbleUpon is probably the best social bookmarking website for getting targeted traffic that is really going to help you in terms of SEO and many other areas. However, a lot of people are not even doing the simple things when it comes to StumbleUpon so here are a few things you should think about before doing anything.

Think about the StumbleUpon audience

To be honest, I think this is probably the biggest point that people should be taking on board when trying to obtain traffic from StumbleUpon and if you have ever actually used the StumbleUpon website for your own enjoyment, hopefully you will have already figured this one out.
Firstly, the people that are using StumbleUpon are looking for GREAT content. This means not content that is good or average, but GREAT. So, first of all, you are going to need to come up with something really exceptional in order to grab the attention of the individuals using StumbleUpon.
Secondly, people that are using StumbleUpon are just one click away from your website, which is great. However, they are also just one click away from leaving your website. Usually, those that are using StumbleUpon will have their mouse hovering over that Stumble button and if they are not impressed with what they see in the first few seconds of the page loading up, they are going to click that button again and there you go, you just lost a visitor.
Thirdly, people are using the StumbleUpon service for fun. They are not usually looking to read the next big novel so give them something interesting and not too heavily. These people want to see fun content. This could be a video that might make them laugh or it could be a brilliant image. Of course, it could even be a regular article but it needs to be something a little quirky and a little bit fun if possible. One of the things that works really well on StumbleUpon are posts like “10 Of The Funniest Cat Photos Ever”. This is a title that grabs the attention of the Stumbler and is both fun and not too heavy.

Think about the design of the site

This is another big point that I really want to make. As we mentioned above, StumbleUpon users haven’t got time for crappy content and if they aren’t impressed by what they see in the first few seconds of the page loading, they’re gone. This means that you really need to think about the overall design of the site that you have. If you have a site that is out-of-date and uses a boring colour scheme and doesn’t work on half of the browsers people are using these days, you’re not going to see much success.
If you have a fun looking website where the content is clear and readable and there is a lot of rich media such as images and videos, you are much more likely to get visitors to stay on your website. It is good to have a well designed site anyway but for StumbleUpon, I truly believe it is paramount if you want to get the most traffic possible.

Put Social Buttons On Your Site

Now, this one is absolutely crazy. You NEED to put social buttons on your site and they NEED to be where the users are going to see them. Every visitor you get from StumbleUpon could be so impressed with your content that they will want to share it with their friends. Their friends might not use StumbleUpon so they might want to share it on Facebook.
If you aren’t giving these visitors a clear option to do this, they are going to click away. StumbleUpon users are LAZY. They haven’t got time to be looking for share buttons on your site or copying and pasting links, they just want to see what the next piece of awesome content that StumbleUpon has in store for them is.
Doing this will not only allow you to spread the message on StumbleUpon and other social networks about your content, but it will create a social buzz around your content and we all know how much Google loves that are the moment.

Use StumbleUpons Paid Discovery Tool

Yes, that’s right, you don’t have to just use Google AdWords! StumbleUpon now has a paid discovery system where you can actually pay for users to Stumble on your blog post! Want to know what the best part of this is? It can be done for as little as $0.05 per visitor. That means that you can drive 100 visitors to your content for just $5.
I have actually used this system myself over the past week to try it out and I have to say, the quality of traffic from this system is great. I was using the $0.10 per visitor option (still cheap) which gets you engaged visitors only. All of the visitors I got from StumbleUpon stayed on the page for a good few minutes reading the content and there was a relatively low bounce rate too. Plus, if your content is really great, you will get thumbs up from the users on StumbleUpon and you will have more chance of getting free stumbles! Brilliant!