Using the social networking tool StumbleUpon is a great way to discovering interesting websites, to meet people who share similar interests and to dramatically increase traffic to one's own website.
Getting started with StumbleUpon is as easy as one, two:
- Join StumbleUpon and select your interests - you have 501 to choose from. Selecting your interests determines which pages StumbleUpon will show you. Choose a few for now, then add more later if you wish.
- Install the toolbar (available for Internet Explorer and Firefox, a workaround exists for Opera and Safari)
Now you are ready to begin stumbling!
Much can be done using StumbleUpon and the toolbar. Today's tip is to help you determine whether you are stumbling or "thumbing up" a particular website, such as Disaboom, too much. In this case, too much of one thing can be a bad thing.
Once you have your profile page set up and have stumbled a few pages (how to stumble will be covered in a future post), viewing My Favorites in the grid display provides thumbnails of pages you have stumbled. This is an easy way to see how many times you have stumbled pages from the same domain (e.g., from www.disaboom.com, even though they may be from different blogs on Disaboom). Over stumbling a domain can have a diminishing effect in terms of traffic, and can actually ban the domain and your account from StumbleUpon, which is a not what you want!
A good rule of thumb is one in twenty-five stumbles for the same domain or blog; some people say one in fifty to be safe. Looking at this screen shot of my own stumbles, I did not do Disaboom any favours with these stumbles. This is one why learning how to use StumbleUpon correctly is so important. Doing the wrong thing, despite good intentions, can have disastrous consequences. Save your stumbles for excellent posts!
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