First, welcome to SU friends checking out this post. As background, AIMCLEAR blog’s readership is made up primarily of our medium and large size corporate and regional advertising agency clients. Believe it or not many of them have never even heard of StumbleUpon. Given SU’s propensity to drive significant amounts of traffic and generate quality links to worthy websites, the SU community should not be overlooked by any serious Internet marketing professional. The question now is Will ebay Wreck StumbleUpon?
That said, I want everyone to know that SU is also an amazing place to make friends of all stripes and hang out in the coolest of communities. The value of this social media tool is well known. According to Search Engine land eBay May Buy StumbleUpon For $75 Million.
SU Basics
At the moment 2,427,477 channel surfing subscribers peruse the internet via StumbleUpon. The SU algorithm learns what they like by their bookmarks, behavior, and makes content recommendations- many of which are stunning in quality. SU is my personal social community of choice to connect with friends, share content, and meet new people that have interests similar to mine. Here are the top 6 reasons I love StumbleUpon:
1: The content to discover is outstanding. Bookmarked website suggestions from my SU friends (and even the random SU toolbar “stumble” button) consistently generate useful content suggestions. Sometimes pages I learn about make me laugh out loud or want to study. The search functions in SU include queries by category, friend, tag, and other methods. The interface is deceptively simple and intuitive for the engine’s depth and sometimes more useful to me than Google as I search for niche’ content. Keeping in mind that I’m an SEM practitioner, check out these suggestions from SU friends, random stumbles, and category searches:
From my SU friend lyndoman over at CornwallSeo.com
Is Yahoo! Autos Cloaking?
StumbleUpon: A Whole Lot of Fun! – The Article Writer – Press Releases
…and from my friend flyingrose
BBC NEWS | Health | Magnets help regrow brain cells
About Cost-per-click Keyword Advertising by Sun Hunter Communications
Here are some discoveries from random stumbling
Test your web design in different browsers
Prediction: Facebook will be the largest social network in the world
Cool Websites and Tips (makeuseof extra #58)
2: The people I meet on SU are so flipping cool! For instance my friend Rose is a 50 year old pay per click professional who is a highly respected writer and forum moderator over at Search Engine Forum. Lyndoman is a kick ass master linkbaiter from the UK. These folks are among my favorite new friends. I’ve met many others on StumbleUpon some of whom I’m likely to be in touch with for the rest of my career. If you’re shy about meeting people and aren’t only out to get laid (though I’m sure you can do that too), Stumbleupon is the place to be to hang with deep grownups who want to share.
3: The interface is second to none. All social communities, to varying degrees provide mechanisms to share and rate people and content, make friends with differing degrees of anonymity and voyeurism, and offer stepped level of authority for committed users. StumbleUpon is the best programming out there and almost always works perfectly. It’s simplicity is deceptive for the massive programming depth.
4: The etiquette is refined and rare. I’ve never met a more polite troupe on the Internet or in the physical world. There is very little or no spam and I’ve rarely encountered a rude person who would not go away when asked to. I’m not approached by prostitutes or overt marketing pitches. The SU algorithm prevents gaming to great extent…ok it limits it except for those who are clever 🙂 .
5: The traffic StumbleUpon can generate is prodigious. I have SU friends who sometimes bookmark content from this blog. We’ve seen spikes in traffic ranging from 150 unique visitors in a day to over 1000 in 4 hours. I hang out in SU for friends, community, and cool content. The fact that our blog receives thousands of visitors from SU is a happy extra. *blush*
I hope you all check out StumbleUpon and join. DO NOT start by bookmarking your own content. Like all social communities it is best to let others promote you and for you to promote others. If you’re tired of the MySpace meat market mentality (perhaps you’ve grown up a bit) than for sure you should check out SU. Find me in SU and say hello. The user name is AIMCLEAR.
