Stumbling Again — Traffic Experiment
If you read my tutorials and my posts here, then you know that I disparage or at least dismiss social media as being more a distraction factor than a worthy blog-building activity.
I focus my blog marketing attention on building subscribers – the essential capturing and retention of traffic. My major criticism of traffic from sites like StumbleUpon is that, while the raw numbers (in terms of hits, visits, and pageviews) can be huge, the conversion rate is weak.
Back in November, 2007, Andrea Hess and I were talking shop and discovered that we disagreed — some of my most effective subscriber-building strategies, Andrea considers her weakest, and vice versa. Considering that Shift Your Spirits and Empowered Soul share a very similar niche, I’m a little bit stunned that we could have such different results.
Slade on Blogging continues to evolve from my general, professional web development days of a few years ago into more of a place where I share my experience in the personal development blogosphere, specifically — the peers among my Shift Your Spirits readers who are also spiritually-motivated bloggers.
A lot of New Age & Personal Development bloggers I consider my peers and colleagues tell me they don’t read meta-bloggers — the bloggers who blog about blogging. Really? I assumed you were just as burned-out and saturated on those kinds of blogs as I am, that maybe I’m wasting my breath with this resource…
The lesson ultimately is that some strategies work for some bloggers; what works in one niche may not work in another. Different strategies may work for different bloggers in the same niche… So, as long as I continue to receive questions and requests for advice about blogging from you, I’ll continue posting my opinions here, and sharing what works and doesn’t work for me…
In the case of social bookmarking, a few years ago, blogging entirely about web design resources, del.icio.us brought me tons of traffic because del.icio.us users tended toward practical problogging interests. Blogging about spirituality and metaphysical subjects, I’ve never seen a single blip of traffic generated by del.icio.us or digg users.
I have seen a lot of traffic coming in from StumbleUpon.com, without actively courting it. I still had a Stumble account floating out there from 2005… Three years is a long time in the virtual world.
I’d love to be proven wrong. I value Andrea’s opinion, and I’m not so set in my ways that I wouldn’t give it another look (especially since I’ve publicly dismissed it).
Andrea invited me to participate in an active, traffic-building venture, so I dusted off my account and quizzed her to try to see if there was something I was missing. Andrea shared a few tips with me that make using StumbleUpon more active and engaging and highly-targeted:
- Reviews – share a blurb or brief comment about the pages you add to your account
- Fans & Friends — focus on the networking functions — make sure to explore the collections of those in your network — the more highly-targeted, like-minded connection doesn’t come from the stumbling “masses” — the most valuable traffic and potential subscribers are the other bloggers who share your niche.
- Stumble One Another — the personal one-on-one alliances with other peer bloggers can be actively used to promote and review one another’s posts
Update: Andrea offers some additional tips:
In the comments, Andrea added “These methods really upped the quality of traffic I was receiving from StumbleUpon”:
- 1. Reviewing other people’s stumbling blogs. Not their written blogs, but their collection of stumbles. It’s a great way to make friends.
- 2. Saying thank you through Stumble when someone reviews your stumble blog, or even just a blog post.
- 3. Visit the profiles of your friends’ friends. I always check out who’s been visiting me - they will come and visit your stumble profile to do the same. If they visit your blog, based on your stumbles, it’s excellent quality traffic!
The simple fact is Yes, StumbleUpon does increase my traffic. The jury is still out, for me, on whether or not this traffic is impacting my subscriber count (but my conversion tactics are weak on both my blogs right now, following a little re-design work).
The More, the Merrier — Wanna play?
Andrea and I share the opinion that if we are indeed benefiting from this experiment, then the more the merrier!
So I’m inviting you to join in and participate. I plan to continue watching the performance closely; having other blogging peers actively stumbling and reviewing one another’s posts should have a noticeable impact.
I easily discovered and added Andrea and Albert to my network of friends, but you may already be there, and I haven’t found you yet.
If you would like to join our StumbleUpon network, please leave your Profile/User Page address in the comments — or add us as directly through your Stumble Friend requests.
- Slade — http://slade.stumbleupon.com/
- Andrea — http://andihess.stumbleupon.com/
- Albert — http://urbanmonk.stumbleupon.com/
If I’m going to be wrong about my judgment of social bookmarking, and whether or not it’s worth the efforts, then I’d like to be really, really wrong.
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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115 Responses to “Stumbling Again — Traffic Experiment”
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I have found that Stumble Upon is great for traffic, and some of the visitors do become subscribers. On days that I get a lot of Stumblers, the sub count goes up by 10-20.
Oops, got ahead of myself.
http://hdbizblog.stumbleupon.com/
I have added the three of you via my profile, and would happily join in any promo ventures.
Hi Slade,
Great article, and I would love to hear other bloggers’ opinions and experiences with stumbling. I do want to add a couple of things about stumbling - and if these are totally self-evident, please forgive me! But these methods really upped the quality of traffic I was receiving from StumbleUpon.
1. Reviewing other people’s stumbling blogs. Not their written blogs, but their collection of stumbles. It’s a great way to make friends.
2. Saying thank you through Stumble when someone reviews your stumble blog, or even just a blog post.
3. Visit the profiles of your friends’ friends. I always check out who’s been visiting me - they will come and visit your stumble profile to do the same. If they visit your blog, based on your stumbles, it’s excellent quality traffic!
Okay Slade - now I’ve been “blog hogging” - was that the term you used in my comments the other day?
Sorry!!! Stumbling this post now … hee hee.
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea,
No apologies necessary — thank you so much for leaving your input. I was paraphrasing a phone conversation from months ago, so it’s very helpful to have your tips and strategies spelled out here.
I’m glad you fleshed out how to make the most of these Stumble networks and the “blogs” within Stumble. I don’t think it’s so obvious to a new user that they could and should be taking the action you advise.
BTW: I don’t think it counts as blog-hogging when you’ve been personally featured as part of a post.
Thank you for including me, Slade! I get nearly nothing from delicious, digg has banned me for some reason (don’t know why, I haven’t touched it half a year), but stumble gives some decent traffic for a lot of my readers are stumblers.
I think its the only one I’ve seen so far that fits into your, Andrea, and my niche of spirituality, so it’s the only one so far thats worth spending some time on. Otherwise, it’s the usual commenting and guest blogging
I’ve have to implement Andrea’s tips for SU though, thanks for the Andi!
Albert,
I assumed you wouldn’t mind being drafted for inclusion in this one.
I already considered you a willing participant, but thanks for making it official.
I, too, need to implement Andrea’s strategies even more, and am very grateful that she shared them with me (us).
Slade,
Why not? I’ve gotten a steady trickle of traffic from SU, without active participation, so there’s definitely potential there.
I will be registering shortly.
Hey Slade, great article… as usual! I agree with Albert and Andrea that SU is definitely one of the greatest source of traffic for personal development bloggers like us. It has constantly been one of mine too.
I’ll be glad to be part of the experiment too. mine’s http://ellesse.stumbleupon.com
Cheers,
Ellesse
I have attempted 3 different times to add a StumbleUpon button to my blog. The mechanics of it seem to be beyond my comprehension. I did just add all 3 of you as my friends. Don’t know if that makes a difference or not. I sent StumbleUpon an email asking for help. They haven’t responded. Slade, do you have a StumbleUpon button hidden somewhere and I am just not seeing it on your blog?
Thanks Slade for the advice, I’ll give stumbleupon a try since I’m just getting a trickle of traffic currently, your blogs and advice are awesome brother!
Everyone,
I’ve updated the post to include Andrea’s additional tips — they’re critical, and not something you might know to do…
Vitor,
Cool — feel free to come back and add your Stumble profile address here.
Ellesse,
I tracked you down and added you to my friends network. (See, I wouldn’t have known you were there…)
Patricia,
Thanks for adding me. I’m going to answer your question about the “buttons” in another post, because clients often ask me the same thing…
Okay, I’m seriously frustrated here.
Nothing I’ve Stumbled since January 18, 2008 shows up on my Likes/Dislikes, etc.
I can’t figure it out. I feel like I’m saving web pages into a black hole…
Hi Slade,
That’s odd … I just visited your StumbleUpon profile, and there are stumbles in there from today. Hmmmm.
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea,
I’ve been able to get 2 new items (discovered pages) to post today — but that’s out of a few dozen. As for the past week’s worth of pages I’ve added… nothing.
I just don’t get it… I’m not doing anything different. I’ve combed the Help section… I’m going to leave it alone for now and see if it corrects itself.
Slade (and Andrea),
Thanks for this great post. I saw a big surge from Stumble one month for a week, but it did not really convert into long term subscribers. After that traffic from there just died down. However, I did not really do any of the activities mentioned in this article, except stumbling my own articles. I did not know, how to actually use StumbleUpon until now. I will try the other activities mentioned here and keep you posted. I am stumbling this article right now.
FYI: My stumble link is: http://desika.stumbleupon.com/ .
Thanks,
Desika
Slade,
Ok, just installed the toolbar and have an account set up:
http://fractalforest.stumbleupon.com
Vitor
Slade,
I am glad you posted this item, as StumbleUpon has been virtually my main source of traffic. Bart the Bear at Moxie-drive.com has written a series of articles on using SU as a source of traffic at: http://www.moxie-drive.com/blog/2007/11/stumbelupon-advanced-tactics.html
which are worth reading.
I echo what Andrea has said about SU. And all three of you are already on my SU friends list. If any others wish to add me, visit: http://reddykilowatt.stumbleupon.com/
What I need to do now is to start getting links to our blog from other like minded bloggers. Now who might that be??
I look forward to reading more of your posts, Slade. They are both useful and interesting.
Stephen | Productivity in Context,
Sorry for the delay in approving and responding to your comments (I had to rescue you from Akismet — but not to worry, you have been de-spammed).
My conversion experiences with StumbleUpon are similar to yours. And, of course, we shouldn’t discount the importance of a single new subscriber — you never know what doors of opportunity or connectivity can open with a single new reader…
Vitor, Desika — thanks for posting your Stumble profile — I’ve added you both to my friends network.
ReddyK,
Thanks especially for pointing us to some other articles about making the most of using StumbleUpon — between Andrea’s suggestions and the post you shared, I have a lot to put into practice in order to maximize this experiment.
I do hope you will keep participating here in the comments — your input and collaboration is greatly appreciated!
Slade,
Thanks for adding me to your friends list.
@All: I have added all of you who gave your stumble profiles in the comments to my friends list.
Now, time to make implementing the suggestions in Andrea’s article and the link that ReddyK shared part of my daily planner.
Thanks,
Desika
To Everyone:
A Grumble about Stumble
One of my beefs about StumbleUpon (let’s call it an area they could certainly improve upon) is the garbled translation of HTML code.
Have you noticed that when you “discover” a page that hasn’t been stumbled before, and the window pops up for you to tag and review the post… many URLs, blog post titles, and permalinks will end up looking like:
A Big &*$%^Mess of Ampersands & Stuff &#$@
There’s no better opportunity to clean up the titles. I encourage everyone to manually improve upon this wherever possible.
Hi Slade,
Yes. I have observed that. I end up editing all the fields while adding an article to the stumble.
Small pain, but … oh, well!
-Desika
Slade,
I just noticed (after I saw your comment above) that everything I stumbled from Sep’07 to Jan 16, 2008 did not make it to my list, everything prior to that is in there. Only one of the few that I stumbled on Jan 16 made it and nothing after that. Today, I stumbled a couple of sites and they did not make it either.
I am also wondering what is going on. I will contact the admins at stumbleUpon to see what is going on.
Cheers,
Desika
I think that only pages you actually review are put on your stumble front page. A blank review will just fall under “pages liked”. Could that be the problem?
I haven’t found a way to review a site with one click. I have to give thumbs up, then click on the bubble, then click review… it’s not very friendly. Am I missing something obvious?
Slade and all,
SU has it’s own strange coding if you wish to spruce up you postings. I have found Mr. Helpful’s profile and his tips useful: http://mr-helpful.stumbleupon.com/
Another SU peculiarity: I have found that I can no longer give an initial review to any article from the Atma Jyoti Blog. I have to wait for others to get the ball rolling, and only then can I add may review. Albert seems to think this will not last long as I continue to stumble and review other sites. We’ll see.
ReddyK,
Thanks again for contributing these useful links.
Yes — that makes sense as to what I was experiencing — I think I hit this “wall” for Stumbling so many of Andrea’s posts (and several old, buried articles from Shift Your Spirits, all in a row).
Hopefully, inviting this group of people to participate and discover one another’s articles will help distribute the activity in a more authentic way.
Vitor,
Yes, only your reviews show up on your profile page. You can also pull pages out from the “Pages I liked” and add a review by clicking review beneath the post or page title.
Desika,
Were your “missing pages” pages you “discovered” (and reviewed through the pop up window) or just sites you gave the thumbs up that may already exist in the general database?
If, like me, you were reviewing and tagging them, but they weren’t listing, then See ReddyK’s explanation — I believe that’s what I was experiencing.
Anything helpful you find out, please leave a link or tip here in the comments. Future visitors to this post will find a lot to work with.
Thanks for beefing up this post, guys — awesome!
You guys are awesome! It is probably the I tagged articles that are already reviewed. Also, when I click on the thumbs-up icon, it used to pop a window for the review and it does not anymore. It is probably what Victor was mentioning above. I am going to go ahead and start stumbling all your articles and see what happens.
Thanks to ReddyK for all the links and also to you guys for your valuable advice.
-Desika
ReddyK - I have had exactly the same problem with stumbling my own posts … they don’t show up unless someone else stumbles them for me first. THEN I can add my own review. Very annoying … I think it automatically happens when you stumble a ton of articles, all from the same site. Maybe there’s something in the system that detects this sort of repetition.
Anyway, I’m subscribing to the blogs of everyone here, and I promise to stumble/review every post! I think if we all do this for each other, we’ll get lovely bunches of consistent, quality traffic.
Desika - if you “thumb up” an undiscovered page, you get the pop-up. If someone else has already discovered it, the thumb will just go green and you have to click the bubble to review.
Having said all that … could someone go and stumble my latest post? Because I can’t do it myself … aaaaargh.
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea,
I’m pretty certain now that the “missing” posts have a lot to do with the main database being sensitive to someone “spamming” the system. I must admit, this is probably a good thing…
But, if we all make a point of watching one another’s posts and Stumbling each other — especially with this little crowd of participants — that should insure that we get our posts into the system.
I’d personally love it if people would visit my older articles (at the bottom of my blog) and stumble the ones that appeal to them. There are some articles I really like that I’ve wanted to bring up into the current light of day…
I have simple chronological lists at:
Shift Your Spirits — Archives (all articles)
http://sladeroberson.com/archives/
Spiritual Blogging — Archives (all posts)
http://sladeroberson.com/blogging/?page_id=73/
That’s my personal Stumbling Wish…
I stumbled one of my favorites, “Fear Shift”. I’ve read and it a number of times and always find it enlightening!
Everyone,
This has been amazing so far. I have not stumbled a lot of your pages yet, but I’ll be starting to do that soon. As Slade said, we all have some older articles we’d like to get stumbled.
Today I have already received as much traffic as I normally do in a week, I was really surprised when I opened up my blog a few minutes ago.
Michael,
Cool — I’m so glad you gave Fear Shift a boost. I had forgotten about him… (I dig that illustration a lot!)
Vitor,
Great news, man. I’m glad it’s working for you.
Hi All,
I found out that if I use the “Share This” button in my articles (from AddThis), that I added to stumble my own articles instead of the toolbar buttons, I am getting the review pane and I am able to stumble them and I see them in my account. I thought that this may help you, if you are having problems stumbling your own articles.
Andrea: I have just stumbled your latest article and I will do more of it as I read the rest.
Slade: I will start stumbling your archives too one by one.
If you all would help me stumble my articles (based on your liking, of course
), they are here:
http://www.desikanadadur.com/blog/archives/
Thanks and Cheers,
-Desika
Slade, I have been doing Stumbles all day as I read articles. Slade, I haven’t Stumbled yours since I can’t find a StumbleUpon button on your blog.
Sure Slade, I’ll take some time to SU some of your old posts. Good stuff!
Cheers,
Ellesse
Patricia,
Go to the home page of StumbleUpon’s website and install the Toolbar for your web browser.
That will allow you to add any web page you visit (whether there are “buttons” or not).
Ellesse,
I love the new Gardner magazine theme on your blog — it looks great!
Patricia,
I’ve added the “Stumble It” option through Feedburner Flares — at the end of each article, before “Related Posts” you’ll see the options like so:
Subscribe to this feed • Email this • Add a comment • Stumble It! (7 Reviews)
These options will also show up at the end of posts delivered by email.
Keep in mind though that older posts may no longer be part of my feed, but again, the StumbleUpon toolbar installed on your web browser will give you the most options.
I will also experiment on your social network. See what comes of it . . .
I am tired of reading the same stuff on how to improve your blog 1001 ways.
Hey Vincent, glad to have you!
Man, I hear you… I keep this blog going as a place to discuss what really works for me — for me. I don’t post here that often because I see no reason to churn out or rehash the same old stuff you can read a million different other places.
BUT, having said that, I am constantly in communication with other bloggers in the spirituality niche who want to talk shop and share ideas. My hope is that you’ll find some good ideas here you can borrow from or adapt.
Slade and all,
I had an interesting SU experience, showing that persistence pays off. Any article of note from our blog I try to review on SU, or if I can’t (see above) I ask a kind soul to help by doing so. At first it brought a fair amount of traffic if I had 3 or more thumbs-up, say 100-200 stumbles. This amount increased to 400 to 600, depending on the SU ranking of who did the initial review (if someone with a minimal profile did the review, results were negligible)
Last week, an article was posted, and got only a few stumbles. However, the same article worked through SU again last night and got well over 1000 stumbles! The article was not the kind that got a lot of thumbs-up, but the traffic came anyway.
My efforts now are going into a list of resources article, which according to blogging bloggers, are likely to get links and traffic. My fingers are crossed.
ReddyK,
Congratulations on your traffic and thanks a lot for sharing some actual numbers we can use for comparison.
I’ve subscribed to all the blogs of the participants in this experiment and will do my best to keep an eye on your new posts. Please feel free to come back and share your resources.
It’s much appreciated and very valuable.
ReddyK: Great news!
To All:
I received 376 visitor on January 26th alone (after that it came down very swiftly to the usual double digits) after I joined this experiment.
I have a small request. I am unable to stumble my own posts. Could the participants of this experiment, please help me and stumble my pages using the “ShareThis” button at the bottom of each post? I am very grateful for your help.
Thanks,
Desika
Slade - I would like to join your experiment on stumbling. I’ve already had you and Andrea added as friends and I’ve added Albert. I agree with both of your tips to check out their site and pages they’ve reviewed and send thank you’s.
Here’s my StumbleUpon address: http://plaintalk.stumbleupon.com/
I’ll stumble this post as well.
Thanks for this experiment. I hope you’ll keep us posted on how the results turn out.
My StumbleUpon address is http://patriciasingleto.stumbleupon.com/
Pat R & Patricia S –
Thanks for leaving your Stumble Profile links and for participating with everyone!
[...] found Slade’s last article, Stumbling Again — Traffic Experiment, extremely informative and illuminating, and it was the catalyst for the subsequent productive [...]
Greetings All, I count Andrea among my friends and I’d love to join this network and experiment.
http://tomvolkar.stumbleupon.com/
How do I actually add you guys? Is it under the Connect With Friends tab? I tried that and it didn’t work. Will some patient soul spell it out for me please? I read all these posts and didn’t see it.
I’ll be visiting your blogs and stumbling posts over the next couple of days.
I’m grateful.
Hey Tom,
Glad to have your participation. I’ve added you to my collection of friends. To do this I visited your Stumble Profile page (the link you left above).
Once you’re on someone’s profile page, look to the right-hand sidebar, you’ll see two buttons/links to “Add them as a friend” — one of these buttons is the second one down, just beneath the first green button; about half-way down the sidebar is another bright orange button “Add to friends.”
Either will work.
A one-way “add to friends” will list as a “fan” — when it’s reciprocated, it becomes a “friend.”
Right now, since I just added you, I will probably show up under your “friends” tab as a “fan.”
Tom - I’m glad you’re getting in on the stumbling fun!
ReddyK - any idea of how much of this traffic actually converted to subscribers? One of my conversations with Slade was whether Stumble traffic was “quality” or “quantity” traffic. Has your number of subscribers risen a lot?
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea,
Subscriber Conversion Indeed, this is my #1 metric for my blog’s performance. Can’t stress it enough. 800 people hitting the “page reload” — stumbling through to the next site — is NOT my idea of quality traffic.
Before I air more of my strict criticism about Conversion, here’s some good news from one of my blogging peers (who is NOT actively participating in this group experiment at this time — but I have been generating traffic for him through my own Stumbles):
So, that’s an encouraging, quantifiable result — some actual numbers.
I am not seeing comparable results. BUT, the conversion issue is partly my own fault — after redesigning, I have let some of my own conversion strategies slip and need to put those back in place before I can “blame” anything on the quality of the traffic. My Subscriber Incentives need to be back above-the-fold, to net as many of those quality stumblers that I’m letting slip. (Please know that I’m often guilty of not following my own advice. But I also like to have “control” periods to make a point of comparison. A couple of months with a strong Incentive missing from key locations does allow me to test the impact, without making assumptions…)
Once I can say that I’ve truly implemented all the Conversion Tactics I know to work, plus all the Stumbling Strategies you guys have suggested, then I will be evaluating two factors before I declare that it works:
The Workload (compared to other blog promotion activities) — Yes, reviewing/Stumbling articles is “minor,” but all the little on-going activities of managing a blog are small actions and they add up. Social Media in general is a serious time-stealer. After maintaining the client workload my blogs generate, and prioritizing conversations on my web space — my private email correspondence with readers is enormous — not to mention creating new posts with some regularity… That, in itself, is a full-time job.
Conversion to Subscribers — I honestly don’t see any competition in this area with the super-high quality conversion generated by participating in meaningful comments/conversations on blogs that share an audience with my own. The time invested in commenting (as well as Joint Ventures and Guest Blogging) is always high quality. I can’t say the same about Stumble traffic at all…
But, one more point — I believe the relationships with other Stumblers who also have blogs in this niche is the most promising part of this experiment. NOT the numbers, not the traffic — the opportunity to interact with other authors results in their trackbacking my articles, as well as offers of Interviews and other behind-the-screens project collaboration.
In my opinion, that’s where the meat is…
Hi again, I am back with a report on how SU has worked over the past 30 days.
6,332 visits to my site (via Google Analytics), with SU providing 374 of them.
1.72 pages per visit
1:05 time on site
90% new visitors
46% bounce rate
There were 5 specific spikes due to these referrals: 22 Jan-42, 28 Jan-26, 30 Jan-47, 4 Feb-64, and 6 Feb -51. According to Feedburner subs have gone from 580 on Saturday 12 Jan to 669 on Thursday 7 Feb, with a 30-day avg of 625, for 18,750 views of the feed (almost 3x the actual visits!!).
To give a little perspective, before we started the SU network here I had 481 subs on 7 Dec, 384 on 15 Nov, and 340 on 1 Oct. Unfortunately I do not have too accurate of data for GA during those periods for comparison.
So it is hard to say if SU is bringing subs. I need some more time, I think, and to work on more specific targeting and proper categorizing of the stumbles.
Stephen, thanks for sharing those numbers.
It’s very helpful to other people who are looking at their numbers to have a point of comparison.
Andrea and Slade,
StumbleUpon is all about quantity, and secondarily about quality. But in my case, I need the one to get the other. So far, as you both have mentioned, SU brings more people interested in our niche than Digg or Reddit, or any other social media resource that I have found.
Conversion to subscribers has increased, due to several factors. First, with more people viewing the pages, there is more of a possibility that this can happen. Second, for-seeing this possibility, I did three things to grab potential subscribers attention.
1. I increased the size of the RSS button, and made its colors more intense.
2. At the end of each post, I added a subsribe link.
3. I added the “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin to WordPress, which puts a notice to first and second time viewers (or as many as you choose) to consider subscribing.
Overall, subscription has increased 10+ percent. Which of these elements played the most part, I don’t know.
Thanks again for initiating this experiment.
Quick! Turn on your TVs! CNN is going to make a special announcement. 19 Exceptional Web Resources for Spiritually Minded People has exceeded 10,000 visitors in 8 days!
Well, maybe CNN isn’t going to cover it, after all. I thought it was interesting, though. I guess that betrays that our blog is still a small fish in a big pond.
ReddyK, I am one of the recent subscribers to your blog because of this experiment. I am really enjoying the articles. Have stumbled several of them already. This article reminded me that I need to be Stumbling more of those articles that I really like.
Let me explain where I’m coming from on Subscriber List Building, the Stumble Experiment, and the part of my conversation with Andrea that motivated this experiment:
As a Marketer and Marketing Consultant, Subscriber Conversion is one of my strengths. I’m not questioning StumbleUpon’s effect on conversion because I don’t have a large and growing list, I’m questioning it because I do have a large list, it’s my number one priority, and it was built entirely before I engaged in this experiment.
In December 2007, while in the middle of this experiment, I redesigned my templates and intentionally left my conversion strategy “handicapped” - as a point of comparison - I left out my Subscriber Incentive graphics - with the exception of the Free link in the navigation. (A much “softer” incentive).
Prior to this experiment, my daily rate of conversion - on Shift Your Spirits - was about 8 - 10 new subscribers per day. Without the strong incentive, that number has dropped to 3 or 4 new subs per day.
I attribute the biggest factor in the drop-off to be the removal of the Eye-catching Incentive. I agree, absolutely, with all ReddyK’s suggestions with the exception of one — Making your RSS Feed button bigger… No offense, but this is kind of a “So What?” All blogs have feeds - just because someone can subscribe is not a powerful enough incentive to do so.
Think about this metaphor - You want someone to take a ride with you. He wants to know why he should… Telling him “I have a passenger seat!” is not much incentive. Hanging a large sign on the passenger window that says “Hey, my car has a passenger seat!”… Why would that make anyone want to go along?
An incentive is “Hey, if you come with me, I’ll buy you lunch when we get there.” So, a comparable graphic or sign to hang on your car would be “Free Lunch if you ride in this car with me!”
Stumble traffic is like people wandering down the sidewalk — sometimes, a movie just let out, and there’s a crowd — are the people wandering by tempted to get in the car with you because you say “Hey, I have a passenger seat!” or “Hey, I’ll give you something you really want if you come along”?
See what I’m saying?
If you look at the header graphic, above the fold on Shift Your Spirits you’ll note that there’s a big chunk of empty above-the-fold real estate beneath the title/ tagline. That primo spot is reserved for the incentive graphic, which will link to the free subscriber “landing” page, and I fully expect that it will kick the rate of subs back up to the 10 - 12 per day range.
What I’m ultimately hoping is that I will have these Stumble Traffic numbers (without the incentive) to compare - and that I can judge the effectiveness of the two tools together.
A large school of fish flashing by is a moment - the question is where’s your net?
If you want to know, in detail, how I personally build my lists, I have published that as a tutorial.
Sorry for the infomercial, here, but I really have invested a LOT of time developing those strategies and getting them down where I can share them, not only with my clients, but with anyone who wants to know what works for me.
So, the background story on this experiment is that Andrea and I were talking shop, and there were many things that were working for her which I had dismissed, and vice versa. I wanted to authentically stick my head out of my bubble and make sure that what I’m advising others to do (or telling them to ignore) … that I’m not blindly playing teacher without testing my methods and attempting to explore, to try, and to learn from others…
Well, I’m totally with you, Slade, on offering subscriber incentives. I don’t do that on my blog - I focus on building my newsletter mailing list vs. my blog subscribers.
However, as part of my new strategy, I’ll be offering the same freebies on my blog as I do on my website - at least, I’ll be offering them far more prominently. Then I’ll see how new Stumble traffic really affects my overall subscribers.
I have to say, though, that my subscriber rate to my blog has been doing pretty well, and I notice a jump in numbers every time I get a wave of traffic from Stumble.
Blessings,
Andrea
Cool, Andrea, thanks for sharing!
I am definitely NOT knocking this experiment or planning on abandoning it — the participation that’s resulted from all these wonderful bloggers — that is absolutely priceless, and worth more, I think in the long run than anything — Relationship-building.
You inspired that and I’ve met so many new people because of it. There’s a lot of your suggestions I still need to practice - as well as practicing what I preach!
I’ll be curious to hear what results you have from making your free resources more prominent through the blog, as well as your main site/ newsletters.
Here’s what I’m anticipating — the Conversion-Incentive Strategies, super-powered by the influx of Stumble traffic. I need some combination of both, ultimately, so I think if we DO both, we can turn up the volume of the whole she-bang…
PS - I used to give away Free Services as my incentive — that was very successful, but I quickly outgrew the ability to offer that. It was a great way to get exposure to the services I now charge for, but I discovered that you can’t effectively “give away” the same thing you’re selling - DUH! (I know…)
One of my favorite marketing-related mantras is that there are no mistakes in marketing — only useful data about what doesn’t work.
Slade,
You make some excellent and informative points in your last comment. One question that comes to mind is how to frame the incentive for subscribing. Sure, underneath the post, there is “get more of this great stuff”, or such-like. (Content is all we offer on our blog, as with most.) But in the top RSS link area, what would you suggest?
By the way, I posted a Special Thanks to Stumblers short article about our recent traffic, and since most traffic is from Stumblers, subscription jumped about 10% in one day. Big deal, you might say, you’ve got less than 200 subscribers. But it is encouraging, none the less.
Reddy K,
Please let me congratulate you whole-heartedly on the results you’re getting — your willingness to share is indeed very encouraging and very helpful for everyone reading here!
And as always, do as I say, not as I do
Suggestions — If all you offer is content (articles) on your blog:
“All” implies that you’re not indeed creating wonderful, valuable content. “Just the obvious free articles” — that’s actually a lot of great stuff, if it was bound in a book, it would carry a price tag, but the value exists in and of itself, right?
Engaging Link Text - I still think you can do a lot with enticing Link Text in your Subscriber Call-to-Action — look at all the places where you invite your visitor to subscribe — the placement is effective, but what can you do to transform “Subscribe to this Feed” into an invitation that makes a promise.
Why should I subscribe? What will I get by subscribing? Identify that benefit, and then use commanding, active verbs or even couple it with a question of some kind “Want more _____ ? Subscribe to _____ for _____”
This brings up Mission Statement — maybe check out my basic template for identifying this language: Define Your Mission Statement in One Sentence
A Subscriber Landing Page — In addition to your “About” and “Archive” links in the main navigation bar, create a page specifically geared toward “selling” the benefits of subscribing.
Sell your posts/ articles/ feed with the same copywriting language that you might use on a product sales page. You are still selling your blog, even if it’s technically free — there’s a lot of free on the internet, and a lot of information overload. You’re ultimately trying to convince someone to pay attention to you — these days, you need to convince me why I should pay attention to you and not the millions of other similar offerings out there.
Why Subscribe? — You can use this simple link text — connected to your Subscriber Landing Page — near your other subscriber links, forms, feed icons, etc.
I’ve noted many people using this.
You might consider using Why Subscribe as the page title/ link in the navigation bar or — I hate to say it, but the word FREE in a Navigation bar does the trick. This is always one of the first few links a new visitor to my site dives for.
What’s Free on your site? Your great articles — Why would I not want to miss out, once I’ve discovered you?
Hope that gets your gears grinding…
Hmmm, wandered in late to the party, did I? Well, here I am now.
I am quite interested as I have been starting to work more with Stumbling lately, had a hiatus while the book I was writing ate me alive.
My page is at http://sundell.stumbleupon.com/public/ and I already added you (Slade) and Andrea as friends. Albert has been for a long time. I will work my way back up the list here in the comments and start stumbling and adding friends as I can each day.
i will try the methods described as some I have not used.
Thanks,
Lexi
Hey Lexi,
You’re not too late!
And we’re glad to have you — thanks for participating.
You guys/gals are wonderful!
I have added all of you who had left your StumbleUpon profile link as my friend. I am yet to follow all the StumbleUpon wisdom presented in this discussion here, as I have been busy redesigning my website for simplicity of navigation. I am in the process of rewriting my main page in order capture a stumbler’s attention better.
I will keep you all posted.
Thanks,
Desika
All, I am very grateful for the lessons. One thing that makes me nuts about all of the social media is there never seems to be a really good manual on how to use them for beginners. Is that part of their strategy to encourage greater use? These posts have made me smarter than they average bear regarding SU. Thank you all.
I have some questions for everyone. What is our agreement with one another regarding this experiment? Any suggestions? Is everybody still playing? Is the frequency and scope of our stumbling and reviewing up to each individual?
Slade, as the facilitator of this forum I’d love to hear your thoughts on the authenticity and ethics of stumbling.
Slade, Tom, and all,
Yesterday there was a great article on using SU by Skellie of Skelliwag.com posted on Darren’s Problogger. “How to Write Posts That Set StumbleUpon on Fire”
Tom, I have added everyone here that has given us their StumbleUpon address as friends and I, like you, am Stumbling articles like crazy each day. I subscribed to your blog and ReddyK - The Atma Jyoti Blog because I liked them when I went from here and clicked on your name to check out your blogs. I am going now to read the article that ReddyK suggested at Problogger. For me, the experiment has given me the awareness of how to use StumbleUpon, except I still haven’t figured out how to get the button on my site. I am not as computer technical as most of you. I am a little slower in learning what to me is all of the technical stuff involved in having a blog.
To Tom: I have added all of you who left their SU ids to my friends list and stumbling articles whenever I get some time. I agree that there is no manual, but ReddyK and Slade have done great service to all of us in writing articles and also pointing to articles by other authors about using SU. I have still not gotten used to all the features (or are they quirks?) of SU. I am still learning.
To ReddyK: Thanks for the article link at ProBlogger. I am going to read this.
To Patricia: I use a button from http://www.addthis.com. It is a free service and a single button pops up a window with many social bookmarking services. You can see it in action at the bottom of everyone of my posts.
Thanks,
Desika
Patricia,
Darlin, you don’t have the Feedburner Feedflare implemented on your blog to appear at the end of your posts.
The place in your Blogger Template where that piece of code needs to go is essentially the same location where AddThis or Stumble Buttons or Feedburner Flares all need to go…
Go into your Feedburner account,
>Optimize Tab
>Feed Flare
At the bottom of that screen, where you activate the service is a line that says “Get the HTML code to put FeedFlare on your site:” and there’s a drop down box.
Choose “for Blogger” and you will get a set of instructions for where that code needs to go.
If that kind of editing “freaks you out” a bit, perhaps one of us “techier” folk here can help you do that?
Anyone? Anyone? Can anyone help Patricia with a Blogger Template edit?
Patricia, I would need to schedule that, and honestly, it might be a week or so before I could get to it… But if you can’t get it to work yourself, and if no one can help you before I can get back to you, I will get back to you about this.
Tom,
The ethics of using it… Hmm — I will tell you this. I have committed to subscribing to and closely watching the blogs of the participants here. I am not for gaming the system, stumbling every article just because.
I am personally trying to remain as authentic as possible about the posts I choose to stumble/review (much the same ideals that I would use for commenting). I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m giving attention as honestly as possible, where I can say that I truly respond, as an audience member.
I am also lagging behind in implementing all the tips that I would ideally like to. And there never seems to be enough time to comment on all the posts that are deserving… My advice: Don’t review or comment on posts that don’t really resonate with you. That would dilute the energy of what makes it work in the first place, on a literal, technological level as well as a spiritual, ethical one. Do you agree?
Reddy K,
I don’t subscribe to Problogger anymore but I do pop over and check in with what’s going on over there once in awhile. Wouldn’t you know, the day I did so, was the day that post was up on the front page! I actually Stumbled it, but you beat me to sharing it here in the comments — thanks for linking to it.
Slade, I know you have been busy, busy with your schedule. That is why I haven’t asked you. Thanks for the information from you and Desika. I will see what I can do with what both of you told me. Thanks.
Slade thank you for the excellent reply to ReddyK on subscriber incentives. I intend to follow through on them.
I’m also grateful for your response to my authentic stumbling question. You wrote. “Don’t review or comment on posts that don’t really resonate with you. That would dilute the energy of what makes it work in the first place, on a literal, technological level as well as a spiritual, ethical one. Do you agree?”
Yes I do agree and that’s why I asked. I have visited every blog listed above with the intent purpose of reviewing all and some were just not to my taste. On a couple I kept searching in the archives because I wanted to see if I could find an article I would be eager to review. In some I did and in some I’ve yet to.
It’s my intention to continue reviewing and commenting according to what resonates. Thanks for the direction. I hope we all keep playing long enough to see how well the experiment worked.
That’s what I have been doing regarding stumbling. If an article resonates with me, I review it in as much detail as I can.
At Tom: You asked me to comment on how I sent you an instant message asking you to read one of my articles on SU. I was under the impression that everybody knew. So, I am answering it for everyone’s benefit. Note that I use Firefox as my browser. Firefox has a “StumbleUpon” plugin that adds an SU toolbar to the browser. You can get that plugin from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138 . You can tag, review, comment any blog/website using this toolbar. You can sign-in to the SU directly from the toolbar. The toolbar has a “Send to:” menu, which displays the ids of all your SU friends. Go the web page/blog post that you want your friends to review, then select a friend from “Send to:” menu item, type the message and hit send. That’s it!
Hope this helps.
-Desika
ReddyK, thanks man, that was an excellent Skellie SU article. For you SU pros I have a couple of questions.
If you click on send a message and nothing happens. Do you think that feature is truned off by the Stumbler? I don’t understand why a blogger who is encouraging communication with a readership would want that turned off. How do we effectively communicate to othr Stumblers?
Also is there a way to see from SU all the times that your blog was stumbled or reviewed? I haven’t stumbled on that yet.
Thanks very much.
Regarding the authenticity of promoting posts that you really feel strongly about — I’m very much aware that while some people may dig some of my more self-esteem/inspirational or technical/practical posts, they may not have the same reaction to more mystical/psychic subjects…
Some bloggers may be great creative forces, yet their niche or focus is simply not something you’re interested in at the present time. I feel that’s totally OKAY.
Sometimes, I form wonderful, productive relationships “behind the screens.” Generally, what works in marketing, works in marketing. There’s a lot to be learned from bloggers working in vastly different fields.
I think you know when you discover/connect with others who will impact you — you just click — Follow that.
Tom,
There are two ways to communicate with other Stumblers that I know of. One is, if you are visiting their profile, click the “send a message” button. If they have that feature turned off, you will get a message saying you don’t have permission to contact them, or such-like. I have had SU take ages before it opens that persons little email box, but have never had nothing happen. Try re-starting your browser?
The other is from the StumbleUpon browser bar, as Desika mentioned a few comments before. That sends the currently open page in the browser to the Friend (it only works for Friends) along with whatever message you fill in the message field.
To see who has reviewed and given a thumbs-up to your article, have the article open in your browser and click the comments button on the SU browser toolbar. That will take you to the review page for that article.
Hope this helps.
Slade,
I hope to be visiting your other blog in future, as press of work lightens. I think there are a lot of articles there that instruct and enlighten.
An update on my subscriber conversion:
As I talked about in an earlier comment on this post, I had to re-establish a missing piece of my list building strategies, especially in regards to retaining more StumbleUpon traffic.
I’ve talked a lot about subscriber incentive strategies and landing pages — especially in my List Building Tutorial.
I’ve re-introduced an above-the-fold subscriber offer on Shift Your Spirits — my free resources regarding “Contacting Your Spirit Guides.” This is the number one most desired motivation for visitors to my blog — it’s at the core of my article content and the basis for my professional intuitive readings.
Considering that Stumble visitors may spend only a fraction of time waiting for Shift Your Spirits to load, regardless of the individual post they are visiting, I wanted to make sure that my free resources — representing my pillar or flagship content — are highly visible upon page load, without a single click or scroll required to find it.
Placing that graphic/ link text in the header of each and every page on my site — in the banner/header — does indeed have an enormous impact.
The results:
Without that highly visible incentive, I was netting an average of 4 or 5 new subscribers per day.
With the incentive offer visible on a first glance, I immediately began netting an average of 12 new subscribers per day, with the same amount of traffic.
Conclusion — Stumble significantly increases raw traffic; the subscriber conversion is greatly enhanced by prioritizing this link to the subscriber landing page just beneath the the blog title.
Thanks for this piece of advice. I have to cogitate as to what to offer. But how do you make something available only to subscribers? As I have things set up with FeedBurner, it merely sends the most recent post, which anyone can see by viewing the Blog online.
On the topic of conversion, since the articles I have written about started sending me gobs of traffic (which continues to come flowing), and since I made the few minor changes to attract subscribers mentioned in earlier comments, subscribers have gone from 140 to 204 in about three weeks. Now when I implement your advice, I should really see results!
There are a few different WordPress plugins I prefer for creating Feed Signatures.
I use Feed Signatures and adapted Copyright plugins to present copyright information, text, and links that only appear on the feeds of my posts. Subscribers can scroll to the end of any of my posts in a newsreader or email to see links that do not appear on the “live” blog.
RSS Signature Plugin is the most low-tech of those that I’ve used.
StumbleUpon must be getting tired of me … has anyone else experienced this phenomenon:
I wrote an article, which was reviewed on Stumble five times. Normally, this results in a big traffic spike, right? Not this time! I got a lame 18 visitor referrals from StumbleUpon. Where the heck is my traffic?
Is anyone else experiencing this? In spite of reviews, you are not being Stumbled?
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea,
What’s the time frame — when do you think the dry spell started? I actually went from an average of 900+ per day Stumble visitors to only 16 today. I’m seeing a near total die-off within the last 3 days or so… I have no idea if it’s related or a coincidence.
Let me know if the spell breaks on your end…
Andrea and Slade,
I’m having the same problems. Two articles got reasonable reviews and thumbs-ups which before would have gotten a lot of traffic, but not now. Just a trickle.
I am having the same problem. On 26th and 27th traffic from SU fell to zero on 28th it became a trickle.
-Desika
I’m not yet at the technical level of the three of you who just posted. Where are you getting these numbers? Is it somewhere within feedburner?
Sorry I guess I should have had a baseline if I was going to experiment scientifically.
I’m using wordpress.com for now if that tells you anything.
Thanks, I’d appreciate any tips at all.
Tom
Guys,
I’m wondering if this might not even be a Feedburner thing — are you using Feedburner to find your visitor stats?
For the last two days, Feedburner shows 0 visitors to any of my blogs — which is literally impossible considering the number of comments I’ve approved, contact through my contact form, and people scheduling services with me… Zero visitors is not possible.
Last week Feedburner announced that they were working on some deeper layers of integration with Google’s system — there were a few days last week where my Google Reader stats disappeared.
My email subscriber list is still growing — so how could zero visitors be signing up?
My gut says wait 24 - 48 hours and see if the stats are back.
Does anyone have a theory that might be Stumble specific?
I don’t use Feedburner Stats - so that hasn’t been the problem!
Maybe Stumble doesn’t react when the same people stumble the same sites over and over again?
Just a thought …
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea and Everyone,
I don’t know how the stumble algorithms work, but I seem to recall from other social media sites that votes are devalued if the same small group of people keeps voting for sites of the same domain.
In that sense, it could be that Stumble doesn’t favor tightly knit groups of newcomers (such as the one this experiment is based around) stumbling each other’s stuff ad nauseam.
If an article is well received by a small cluster of fans it can create some initial momentum, but if the stumble community at large doesn’t feel strongly about it (i.e. not many votes from people outside the group) , then that momentum is lost. That would make sense, don’t you think? If these kind of mechanism weren’t in place at social media sites, it would be spammer heaven.
So, based on these assumptions, the goal would be diversifying stumbleupon contacts beyond those participating in this experiment. Each member who brings in some fresh blood benefits the entire group tremendously (due to the way the friends network functions). I’m not sure the explanation makes sense to everyone, but I don’t have much time to go into details now. Anyone thinks this makes sense?
Tom,
Your RSS is handled through Feedburner — can you not log into your Feedburner account and view your stats?
I think the 0 visitor stats in Feedburner is a separate issue, anyway…
Andrea, Vitor,
I agree with what you’ve both said about StumbleUpon — this is another reason why in an earlier comment I talked about being as authentic as possible about what you review, to keep that flexibility and organic quality alive…
I also explore and add a lot of posts and reviews outside this group — particularly, my more tech-oriented favorites.
I don’t see how we could be penalized indefinitely. It seems that it should work itself out…
Just another thought, here —
I suspect the linkage with the Problogger.net group may have tipped the scales.
“Just another thought, here —
I suspect the linkage with the Problogger.net group may have tipped the scales.”
Huh?
Not sure what you’re talking about, care to elaborate?
Vitor,
If you’ll look above in an earlier comment, Reddy K linked an article that appeared on Problogger. This post came out about two weeks ago, after our small group began this experiment…
I noted at that time that there was a HUGE wave of traffic within a few days to this post specifically. More traffic than I’ve ever seen. This seemed to correspond with tons of new Problogging Stumblers in mid February. There was a lot of “cross-pollination” last week with “How to Stumble Your Blogs To Death” style posts — of which, this post with its large comments and link after link after link to StumbleUpon profiles, got rolled into.
So, what I meant was: we started a little wave here, amongst ourselves, which was quickly consumed by a few other StumbleUpon tsunamis heading for the same shore… I can’t help but note the time-frames and the activity…
Hi All,
Interesting theories guys. I used Google Analytics’ Traffic Sources to find out what I reported–0 stumblers for 2 days.
What Vitor suggested “re: close knit community stumbling left and right” passed through my mind, I kind of agree with it. Also, problogger.net link theory is interesting.
-Desika
Update:
Shift Your Spirits started receiving StumbleUpon traffic again yesterday evening.
The whole week has been a little weak for me generally, but there are no total zeroes for any day. The traffic is mostly to more recent posts.
I just advised a marketing client last week about not watching stats with too narrow a focus. He spends a lot of time micro-analyzing his traffic to the point that it undermines his work flow.
I compared it to watching investments — look at bigger time frames and longer trends. I feel it applies to this issue as well.
Honestly, when I was “passive” about Stumble Upon, I basically ignored the spikes in traffic. I spent literally ZERO energy or attention on it. That didn’t keep it from coming.
I’m going to take my own advice and back off the microscope — there are plenty of greater priorities in my Big Picture that are clamoring for me to scrutinize them.
Hello again, I have been watching the comments (long life-span for a thread!) and wanted to jump back in. I experienced a massive spike yesterday, with 600+ hits on a page that is two weeks old! I grabbed some screen shots of the Google Analytics and FTP’d them to my website.
#1 http://hdbizblog.com/homepage_images/ga-snapshot.png shows incoming traffic for the week, going from an average of 250+ to 800 on Friday. (that other spike is from a tumblr link)
#2 http://hdbizblog.com/homepage_images/ga-sources1.png shows where they came from, StumbleUpon referral being 29% of the total hits for the week.
#3 http://hdbizblog.com/homepage_images/ga-src-su.png shows the total stats for the SU referral. You can see that 12 visitors spent 10 minutes on the site, which is pretty good! Also, while the % new visitors was way up (93% new vs. site avg 71%) the bounce-rate was down (47% vs. site avg 63%). Again, this shows good, qualified referrals.
12 of the referrals look like they were subscribers to the SU feed, and they stayed the longest and had the lowest bounce-rate of 33%.
The good news is that when I get a spike that looks like this, my subscriber count goes up, and stays up; my avg hits per day tends to go up a bit, then starts to slide as people subscribe or stop coming by.
I’d love to hear how you all interpret these figures.
One last thing, I have invited Clay Collins from http://thegrowinglife.com/ to join us. He has a cool new blog, check it out. I sent stumble requests to some of you, pass it on!
Hey Stephen!
It is indeed a popular thread. I think this thread actually wins the award for the most commented post I’ve personally hosted. Of course the collaboration — the conversation — the community is the meat. I think that’s VERY cool.
Thank you for sharing these statistics and screenshots.
Before looking at them in more detail, I have to tell you the thing that stands out most for me is the Stickiness — 10 minutes hanging out — that’s not just pretty good, that’s excellent!
I’ll look for Clay’s profile on Stumble!
Hi everyone. @Stephen mention this post and I decided to stop by and say hi. I’ve added everyone here (I think) as a friend or fan, and look forward to doing my part and helping out as I can. This is an interesting experiment; thank you for allowing me to participate :-).
My stumble upon page is http://TheGrowingLife.StumbleUpon.com
Warm regards,
Clay
Hey Clay!
Glad to have you join in. I’ve met a lot of new bloggers and discovered a lot of new sites as a result of this post.
Clay,
I added you also to my SU friend’s list as well. You have a nice blog.
-Desika
Hello everyone, Clay referred me here to make friends on stumble. I’ll do everything I can to help out. I’m glad that I can participate. If you want to any help with anything, you can visit my stumble page and send me a message.
http://timeistooshort.stumbleupon.com
My blog is at: http://jonathanmead.com
Look forward to interacting in this community. =)
Hi Everyone,
Clay Collins was kind enough to send me over here. This sounds like a great idea and, from reading some of the posts above, “fresh blood” seems to be welcome. I’d love to join up and have added everyone to my friends on SU.
This is my profile: http://witchqueen13.stumbleupon.com
Thanks also for the tips on how to use SU. I’ve given a lot of thumbs up, but now realize I need to add reviews.
I’m off now to subscribe to everyone’s feeds and tomorrow I’ll start stumbling.
@Slade - I, for one, will be stumbling your mystic posts.
Louise
Hi Friends,
My stumble upon ID is…
http://anmolmehta.stumbleupon.com/
How interesting indeed that I had just tuned my attention to SU as a traffic source, when buddy Desika pointed me over to this group. Thanks Desika!
I notice many of my friends here already, which is very cool. I will be adding the rest of you as well to my SU friends list and will be reviewing all your blogs, etc.
Please feel free to use the “Send To” feature to share yours and others work with me.
Hey Slade,
Thanks for fronting this experiment.
Cheers,
Anmol
Hey Anmol,
Glad to have helped and welcome to the group here.
-Desika
Anmol,
You’re welcome! Thanks for participating. I hope it leads you to some great networking opportunities with other spiritual bloggers as it as me.
Slade, thanks for starting this group. It’s helped me make some great new connections. =)
Also, welcome Anmol! =)
Hi Everyone,
I have added all of you to my SU friends. I am currently trying the “Send To” feature from the tool bar to share articles with all of you (which shows up a red number on your toolbar when it arrives).
I got a few requests to check out some articles from some of you, and I enjoyed the process (and the articles too :-).
If anyone prefers to be emailed instead about worthy articles, please let me know.
Best,
Anmol
Question for the experts.
Since we recently started this experiment. Which so far looks promising, does anyone have any experience with older articles which were SU before and being re-energized, vs. newer articles going into SU for the first time?
(Maybe we need an email group
Thanks,
Anmol
Anmol,
I’ve noticed that with older articles (that have been previously stumbled) it takes a lot more stumbles/reviews for it to have an impact on traffic. The longer it’s been, the harder it is.
If it’s an old article that hasn’t been submitted/stumbled it will have a greater chance of receiving traffic.
Basically it works like this number of thumbs up + number of reviews
Thanks for these ideas. My SU name is calexb.
Alex Blackwell
Anmol,
Good question about older articles. In my total, overall, general experience blogging, my older posts require a lot of extra “help” to gain exposure.
Although I currently refrain from stumbling my own posts (to avoid “gaming the system”), I did initially add some of my favorite older posts into Stumble’s database to see if I could get some additional traffic to a few gems at the bottom of the blog. I also asked a few people in the network who are active in commenting and stumbling my posts to look into my archives and review some of my older posts that they particularly liked.
I agree with Jonathan’s statement that newer and more recently discovered posts seem to get a flurry of traffic when they are first introduced.
I’ve found that some of the best ways to get those older posts to float back to the surface of everybody’s attention is through more traditional “Best of” and “Most Popular” lists in my sidebar. I also have a page for New Readers that highlights some of the better/most popular posts, regardless of age.
But the attention, traffic, activity - period - seems to clump around the most recent material.
Alex,
Thanks for your SU profile name — I am already a subscriber to your blog, and have added you to my friends network as well.
Hey Slade… I’m cruising your site today, looking at some of your posts. I liked this one. I notice that you are not particularly active on SU. Honestly, as much as I’ve read about blogging, and watched other bloggers behavior, it sure strikes me that to really win at the social media game you have to write “social media posts” if you know what I mean. Lists, lots of “how to”, etc. Not that lists are bad, or how-to articles are bad (in fact, they are very, very helpful to readers). But you almost have to shift your content to enticing the social media crowd. And a lot of spiritually oriented articles just don’t fit that profile.
It seems to me that if one has patience, if one interact with one’s audience, if one WRITES good content, then the ultimate source of good traffic, sustainable traffic, is the search engine. I’ve notice that many successful bloggers report that over time their traffic from search engines grows and grows vs social media. What really brings readers in the long haul is Google. And the secret is content, content, content. IMHO.
What we are after is not traffic, but targeted traffic. People that want to “buy” whatever we are selling. It could be RSS subscribers, email subscribers, coaching clients, like minded souls, info product purchasers, whatever. But sheer volume doesn’t equal “sales.” Targeted traffic = sales.
Okay, I’m starting to ramble. All that to say, “I’m social media skeptical” at least as far as TRYING to make my site grow via social media. I would rather focus on great content and making connections with amazing people. I suspect that, in the end, that will be what pays off well. Whatever “pays off” may mean.
Tom,
I am seriously skeptical about social media — which is of course my whole reason for being open-minded and engaging in this experiment.
I absolutely agree with you about the bottom-line goals of writing and engaging with your audience.
Now that it’s been some months experimenting with StumbleUpon, I have to share some of MY experience:
Ironically, I received 100 even 1000 times the traffic from StumbleUpon before I actively engaged with it or tried to “work” it.
In my experience, the absolute adverse is true — “working” social media and “trying” to network produced the opposite results.
In my experience, the “best practices” that many have offered here may indeed work for them, but the additional work load and activity is almost entirely counter-productive to my productivity.
I do use StumbleUpon in a very genuine, authentic way — I use it to review and record what I REALLY want to.
This not necessarily include reviewing posts that are sent to me “please review this.” Not that there is anything at all “wrong” with those posts, many of them are excellent, but the vast majority of them are NOT within my niche, my personal reading interests, nor do they necessarily represent my audience.
A LOT of personal development bloggers have very respectfully and with the best intentions asked me to engage with them in a way that is really not authentic — just for example, I do not read, aspire to, or hunger for Productivity and Time Management exercises or concepts. And so while there is a lot of good content in these areas, which is perfect for the audience seeking that type of information… I am not a member of that community or that audience.
I don’t know a good way to explain this without perhaps sounding like I’m being a snob, or exclusive, or judgmental… I’m just being totally honest.
What works for me, in obvious addition to producing content, is prioritizing my relationship with readers, corresponding with them individually as much as possible through comments and email… I put a lot of time, effort, and attention into making myself available to both my audience and my colleagues — the vast majority of that interaction is free, not just to clients.
Depending on my workload at a given time, my comments on other people’s blogs “suffers” — that is one area that I would work to improve long before participating in social media or any kind of schemes or strategies.
What works for me in blogging, building my business, my exposure online, etc is actually VERY simple. My advice to anyone who wants it — strip away everything “extra” and do what you do — do it well, do it consistently, do it often (but be careful, be realistic, err on the side of a smaller workload, be wise about how you define a “full schedule” — make your goals less than you can potentially produce — you need room in your schedule to expand for other projects and workload).
As long as you see growth, you’re growing. Slow and steady is just fine by me…
Hey Slade,
Love the comments above. I keep getting a clearer and clearer: write first, produce good content, establish connections with other bloggers and my readers, and play with social media on the side and as time allows. Playing the social media game seems somewhat pointless. I’m increasingly moving away from it. I think SU is fun at times, I like connecting with people, but trying to generate stumbles just doesn’t seem to be where it is at.
Thanks for your ongoing thoughts….. Tom
Tom,
The interesting (perhaps ironic?) thing about our last few comments — you and I literally met via StumbleUpon!
So, clearly, there are great networking benefits, for which I’m very grateful. But the best networking (in my experience) both in life and online occurs in its own sweet time and is usually about quality over quantity.
I suppose the most significant connections compared to their points of origin seem infinitely magical.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that my audience, my clients, my colleagues, my friends — my truest relationships — are not “numbers games” I pursue like contests. I’ve often noticed a similarity in the way people market themselves, whether it’s personal dating or business. I realize from this conversation that this is definitely true for me.
To me, social media like StumbleUpon is one more wonderful additional path — I do not require it to become a superhighway.
Hello, again, Slade.
The number of responses to your article shows the interest people have in Social Media: Is the hype true? Does it work? Is it a scam? Which is more important, quantity or quality of visitors?
The discussion has done much to educate me and your other readers, and the experiment has been a bit of fun, besides. While numbers can be valuable from a PR standpoint, I agree that the quality of the visitor is paramount, that is, the content has to reach readers who will resonate with the content offered.
It seems SU has stumbled
to the fact that people will try to leverage the system to their benefit, as has changed its algorithms to account for that. Gone are the days of skyrocketing hits from SU, and slow and steady now seems to be the name of the game. For now I am content to try and publish the Abbot’s exceptional articles, and let chips fall where they may. Time does not allow for the extensive commenting and pushing of articles that successful blogging sometimes requires.
Thanks for your great articles, and allowing us to participate in this illuminating experiment.
ReddyK,
Thanks for weighing in again with your own experience — it does sound like we’re all on the same page… It is extremely helpful to be able to compare notes in this way.
Yes, our networking experiment was an amazing success when you consider the size of the discussion in these comments — wow!
I’m really proud to host such honest, hype-free internet marketing dialogs. Thank you for your collaboration!
[...] blogger, veteran Stumbler, and guest author Reddy Kilowatt continues our group discussion about using StumbleUpon in a coalition like-minded web [...]