Friday 30 October 2015

StumbleUpon: The Social Media Underdog [INFOGRAPHIC]

Do you believe in your content? Do you want free traffic from social media? Do you want direct traffic to your website or blog?
If the answer to all of the above three questions were an astounding ‘YES’ then StumbleUpon is your best bet.
In big social media sites like Twitter & Facebook, you are competing for people’s attention. If the users see your updates they still have to click to view your content. In StumbleUpon the users are sent directly to your site. You are not competing for attention or clicks.
Beware, StumbleUpon does not boast the same user volume like the big boys but that should not discourage you from using it. With 30 million active monthly users - a small percentage of traffic is still huge. The social life of a Stumble & Pin can last for years unlike Twitter & Facebook where the attention span only lasts a mere 24 if not 48 hours.

Why Stumble?

  • The social network that delivers the highest traffic is (you guessed it) Facebook but did you know StumbleUpon is the 4th highest traffic driver?
     
  • Getting to the 1st page in Reddit can deliver some knockout traffic but the next day the traffic dries out. Did you know StumbleUpon can deliver 3 times more traffic than Reddit
     
  • StumbleUpon can deliver more traffic than Google+ & LinkedIn combined. Surely, that must be something.
     
  • StumbleUpon can bring in viral traffic like any social media but the overhead here is very less, which is worth the effort. The key to success is people have to like or vote for your content.
     
  • StumbleUpon also has a paid discovery which is super targeted. You can specify gender, age, country, interest or category and device type. The best part of the paid traffic is you can get ongoing free traffic even after the paid campaign is over.
Of course, StumbleUpon may not work very well for everyone; brands and influencers who have a huge Facebook and Twitter following might not need StumbleUpon traffic.
Here is an infographic which shows how to use StumbleUpon created by YourEscapeFrom9to5.com to get the best out of this social media underdog.

stumbleupon-image
Infographic Source: YourEscapeFrom9to5.com

One More Handy Tip

If you are submitting your post or page to StumbleUpon, don’t use the StumbleUpon share button as you will get a default category assigned based on the content which can be a bit of a hit and miss. For example, I had a post on SEO which was classified as Marketing although; this was not way off the mark. I could have gone to StumbleUpon and manually added the page and selected a more accurate category of ‘SEO’. Selecting the right category can make or break your post going viral.

Let’s Stumble, shall we?

StumbleUpon is like a life line especially for new bloggers and new websites – who else delivers free traffic to your door step for such little effort? You can either be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond; StumbleUpon allows you to be a big fish admittedly in a smaller pond but there is plenty of food for the king in the pond.