Getting new readers with StumbleUpon

 

Writers looking for an additional way to market their book should consider leveraging StumbleUpon’s potential. Though not specifically geared to writers, this popular website can be used for everything from procrastinating on homework to educating oneself on a variety of topics. This at least is how it began back in 2001. Since then, business owners have discovered just how helpful the site can be in driving traffic. Since every writer with at least one book published is a business owner, why not take a leaf out of their book 🙂 ?

 According to analytics firm Statcounter, StumbleUpon recently surpassed Facebook to become the top source of social media traffic in the United States. Unlike traditional search engines, StumbleUpon provides users with completely random results. The site is set up in such a way that users can discover new websites they would probably not visit otherwise. This means a writer’s blog with a very low Google ranking has far better chances of popping up on StumbleUpon than as a result of a surfer’s search.

Except on rare occasions, no immediate surge of traffic is generated through StumbleUpon. Yet, n important benefit of StumbleUpon is its ability to drive traffic over a long period of time. Months, even years after posting a link, random users will continue stumbling the registered pages, creating a consistent trickling in of StumbleUpon for a much longer time that pages showing up on search engine which are now biased in favor of more recent content.

StumbleUpon boasts a highly engaged audience, averaging over a billion hits per month from around 20 million users are truly interested in discovering a variety of websites and finding new leads. This translates into a huge pool of readers eager to hear about things not easily found from traditional search engines.

How to catch a Stumbler‘s attention and get a Like

Though numerous and curious, traditional stumblers suffer from a short attention span and need incentives to stop zonking through pages and actually look at one of the pages they stumbled upon.

This means visual is essential.

An eye catching picture might get the desired result.

An intriguing or enticing title as well.

The combination of an arresting image and a brilliant title is best.

Use large character for short titles that can be read in one “sight-bite”.

The other aspect of intelligently maximizing StumbleUpon’s potential is to properly categorize the page when registering it.

 When registering a page on StumbleUpon, the site requires indicating whether the page is suitable for work or not. Presumably, that is to filter out porn content.

 It also offers the possibility to choose a tag for the page from a scroll down menu. Only one tag is accepted as the main tag, but there is an option to include additional tags. Choosing relevant tags is important to avoid being voted down, as stumblers do not like to be forced to stumble through irrelevant content, yet, choosing as many tags as possible is the best way to increase chances of being stumbled upon. So it is a fine balance.

So, now, follow our StumbleUpon account and let’s Stumble together….