You may already be tapping into social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your business and to create a community of followers who enjoy your posts and snap up any offers you advertise. But do you know if your target market is stumbling?
StumbleUpon is a social media site unlike the others. It’s like free falling between different website pages which are pushed the user’s way based on areas they have expressed an interest in. As StumbleUpon explains, it is “a giant collection of the best pages on the internet…. We recommend great websites, photos and videos.” If your target market uses StumbleUpon it makes perfect sense to use it to get some exposure for your business.
Some specific advantages of using StumbleUpon as a tool to promote your business are that it directs traffic directly to your website pages and therefore you don’t have to create exclusive posts as you do for some other social media websites. As long as you are regularly updating your website with blogs and interesting news, you don’t need to create anything further for StumbleUpon.
So how does StumbleUpon work? When a person signs up they firstly identify their areas of interest such as beauty, humor, health, exotic pets, celebrities, graphic design, advertising, cell phones and many, many more. Then they simply click on the big, red ‘Stumble’ button to start the free falling process. Web pages appear, apparently at random, but the algorithm working in the background is considering the user’s interests and will also offer up the most popular web pages in any given category. Popular web pages reach this enviable status when users give them a ‘thumbs up’ using a specific button – equivalent to a Facebook ‘like’. And if a stumbler really, really likes a web page they can add it to their favorites.
In terms of promoting businesses, StumbleUpon certainly has its niche. There have been over 5 billion stumbles since it was founded in 2002 so there is certainly plenty of activity amongst the StumbleUpon fans. Even if you’re not sure if your target market is stumbling, there is no real reason not to try out this social media website to advertise your company.
To use StumbleUpon to promote your business, there are some simple steps to follow:
- Set up your profile on StumbleUpon. Choose a great image and list your interests to flag to other stumblers what you are all about so they can decide if they want to connect with you or not.
- Submit web pages to StumbleUpon but make sure you don’t only submit your own content or you will seem to be purely self-promoting. Other stumblers may start to give these pages the thumbs down as this kind of behavior is not appreciated on StumbleUpon. So find other high quality web pages to share. For all pages you submit include a strong title and description plus relevant keywords to make it easier for people to search for your content.
- Place the StumbleUpon badge to your website and blogs in a visible place. This is essential to encourage your website visitors to ‘link’ the page to StumbleUpon which will allow it to be found by other stumblers.
The StumbleUpon philosophy is very different to that of Facebook and Twitter and this social media website is targeted to people who enjoy internet browsing and seeing what pops up in a random way. But as with all material on the internet, the better the content, the more likely it will be offered up by the StumbleUpon algorithm to different users. Better content is appreciated by the reader and will get a thumbs up. And as you develop a reputation for sharing only great content, stumblers will learn to click on your links because they know what you are sharing is bound to be of interest.
So if you want to add StumbleUpon to your internet marketing plan for your business, just follow the simple steps above. It certainly offers a great opportunity to get your website content shared amongst many and in today’s competitive market it’s a social media channel that should not be overlooked.