My StumbleUpon Methodology
1) I have read that there is benefit to being involved in SU, meaning, to use the service to both ’stumble upon’ other people’s stuff and to ‘add’ stuff to the mix. I try to play with SU daily. It doesn’t take terribly long, I just use the ‘Stumble’ button and check out what is new. It is fun.
2) I then like to check and see if any of the people, who subscribe to me, have put up anything new.
-If they have, then I go read it. If it is good, I will use the share button to generate a Stumble Upon shortened link and tweet it to my followers. The advantage of tweeting the SU link, is that it increases the number of SU hits, which may help it get sent randomly to more people.
3) Next I go to my favorite blogs, people who may or may not use Stumble Upon and I add their content to the mix. I did this today for a friend’s blog. She doesn’t use SU, or care much about traffic. I don’t tell her that I have been sending her stuff to SU, I just do it. Today, it resulted in 25 hits. She is a funny writer and if people read her stuff, they will laugh, which will perhaps get them curious about what other stuff I have added to SU. They just might subscribe to me then.
4) I blog every day, but I don’t always post my pieces to SU. I would say I do it about 5 times per week. There are certain posts, which are more factual than entertaining. If I don’t have two or three good laugh lines in the post, I don’t submit it. I want to make sure my list of favorites on SU is filled with posts which will appeal to a broad audience, even though I write a niche blog.
5) I haven’t really developed a formal SU Cabal with my blog friends, but they do it much the same way. This means that there may be 2 – 6 people who give my posts thumbs up, which helps it get sent out to people I don’t know. One of my friends had a great post he had put up a few days ago, which I had missed. It was at 59 hits on SU. I gave it a review and a thumbs up. In the last few hours it has gone to 119, which is slightly more than a 100% increase. (It should be noted, that most posts stop getting traffic after a few hours of being submitted, unless someone else gives it a thumbs up. This is what happened with my post, “Undeniable Forehead of Adrian More”.
An interesting question.
Neal has asked an interesting question, “Does traffic from SU count as hits on one’s site?” We did some tests and I found an old post of his, from April 10. I gave it a thumbs up, then tweeted it to around 350 people. As of the writing of this, there have been 23 people who have clicked on the link and been to his site. This doesn’t answer the question though. When talking to Neal, he didn’t see a matching number of visitors.
I have several theories for why this might be. Before I get into my theories, let me give an example. I posted to SU “The Undeniable Forehead of Adrian Moore” on May 4. It sat for 3 weeks with only 3 hits on SU. Then someone found it and gave it a thumbs up, then another, now it is up to 6 or 7, it has been viewed (from SU numbers) 715 times. On my Google Analytics, I have 655 hits for that time period, which is a difference of 60, so it appears that sometimes the views don’t register on GA.
Here are my theories.
1) There might be a minimum amount of time before a view registers. If it were, for instance, 2 seconds, then that could explain why 50 people weren’t counted.
2) I don’t know for sure if Neal has his GA code on the post I selected, as it was actually a guest post. I may have chosen a post which wouldn’t record a hit regardless. (Note: He has now informed me that this is not the problem, but I left it in, because it is a good reminder to always check your code.)
If my theories are correct then I think the system works really well, because I don’t want to have people included, who see the site and immediately choose to leave. They weren’t there long enough to matter.
I continue to work to understand StumbleUpon and if I make any new discoveries, I will be sure to share.
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