Last week my blogging buddy Extreme John wrote a post about the power of StumbleUpon and how it could drive traffic to your blog. I have been thinking a lot about StumbleUpon and how I can integrate that into my social marketing strategy. I have also done a lot of thinking about how to best capture and hook the visitors that are coming via SU. We all know that SU users have short attention spans and it is very difficult to capture their attention and convert them into regular readers of your blog. I have come up with a list of important things you can do to have them come back to your blog again and again.
Blog Design
Some people will disagree with me on this, but I think the theme and design of your blog is the biggest factor in a visitor deciding to read on or not. If your blog is junky looking or filled with too many ads chances are you will turn of your visitors and they will just move on. I like to think of your blog design like a cover of a magazine. You may have great articles inside but if your cover sucks nobody will pick it off the shelf to read it.
Branding
This is similar to the design of your blog. The importance of branding is to leave a lasting impression and be memorable. Even if you do not get them to subscribe, if you brand your site well, they will remember it and might come back.
Content
I am sure everyone has heard the phrase “content is king” and I believe this is true. So know that your blog’s design has drawn them in, or at the very least, has not scared them away, it is essential that you impress with your content. Keep in mind that readers are interested in what is in it for them. If your content can help solve a problem or provide information or bring value in another way, chances are good that the person will want to subscribe and visit again. I think it is a good idea to use a related link plugin to keep them on your blog longer.
Give Something Away
People love free stuff and one way to convert a SU visitor is to prominently display a free offer. That way you will have them as a subscriber and they will receive your content whenever you update your blog. A good example of this can be found on Deneil Merritt’s blog.
Personal touch
You may want to consider adding a Greetings Box to your blog. There are some great plugins available that you can use to create a welcome message and include a link to your subscription feed. You can even personalize it to a point where the plugin can detect if the visitor is coming from SU and you can create a specific message to try and capture their attention. Right now I gave the greetings box at the end of my posts but I will be changing it and putting it back on the top. I will also be personalizing messages based on where my traffic is coming from.
Those are the top 5 ways that I can think of right now. I am hoping you can leave me a comment and help add some ideas. I would love to hear what you are doing to capture visitors from SU, or any new visitors for that matter.
Excellent post, I have been getting 2-3 visitors from SU per post, and almost no repeat visitors, I am going to implement some of these tips and see what happens.
I also have trouble getting people to Stumble it. I just added a new SU Widget, so I hope that will help. Any suggestions on increasing your Stumble numbers? I assume it's very similar, give them a call to action, and have good content.
Headlines do make a big difference. I like the paragraph about trying out different headlines to see which turns out to be the most appealing. I do the same thing when writing articles, just in a different way. I use Google trends to compare the most searched terms, that way I can write article titles that more people are looking for on average.
.-= jinnie@auto loan calculator´s last blog ..Car payment by the loan lenders =-.
its been really nice and i think its been good to use stumble on the sites in order to get the constant traffic. thanks for sharing such a nice information
great job dude but never use stumble in my posting so far, i will take this under my consideration . thanks for sharing
I have nice exoerience on SU. I was busy last month on how to drive traffic from SU as everybody say about it. After one month Research on SU I got that
1. The blog or website related to work at home make money online can not get much traffic from SU as every blog related to this category are like same, so SU visitor do not get any new things on those blog.
2. Another factor is the nice looking template. When I stumble on SU I get the blogs with very nice and attractive template. So for getting lots of traffic on SU our blog should have one nice template.
3. SU profile. We have to make our profile very interesting by putting nice picture and content, so that we can get review from other.
.-= work at home´s last blog ..work at home-Great list of get paid to write programs =-.
Perhaps I’ve not using stumble upon correctly because my account is not catching any visitors at all. My blog expresses my views on the automobile industry. Any advice?
.-= Autoalert´s last blog ..Subaru Hybrid Tourer Concept =-.
Stumble Upon is really a great social media.it helps to get a lot of traffic to your blog and yes you could make some new friends as well.
Good read, I just started getting better about making sure I include stumbleupon in my posting routine and now it is in my top 3 traffic sources.
Since I started and noticed this I am also stumblining everything. Even my old stuff.
.-= Jared P Little´s last blog ..Month 5 Internet Marketing Blog Business Recap and Review =-.
StumbleUpon is actually a great social media not only to drive consistent traffic to your blog but also you could make some new friends. It’s more like a community, and you do get to bond with people. I really liked all of the tips you mentioned in your article. Content is no doubt the king, and unless and until you have some great, unique content that provides value and meaning, then your visitors won’t stay long. By the way, stumblers do read the articles and spend time. That’s my experience.
As far as design is concerned, I like simplicity, but yes, content certainly matters.
this one is great.perfectly written.i will keep use of it.social media really works.
For get traffic from SU, first blog must have one attractive look for visitors and next the blog must have valuable content. I am on SU for last 3 month. SU is really very interesting site fro drive traffic.
Legitimate work at home jobs
.-= chandan saud´s last blog ..Social bookmark versus search engine [del.icio.us] =-.
yes i think social media plays an important role to get traffic.and its a great post. thanks.keep sharing.
I think I do a pretty good job at doing all the stuff you mention in this post. But no cigar with SU traffic.
Thanks for nice post!
While the above tips are all useful I know if I Stumble a blog it’s usually the content of a specific post that will hook me. Good design and giveaways might encourage an up vote by a stumbler it’s the content of you’re blog that will ultimately decide whether I add your feed to my already large subscription list!
this is just great. wonderfully described.its really a useful one. thanks for such wonderful idea.
If you want to convert traffic from StubleUpon and other sources I think the best method is to give something away to everyone who subscribes. Just as you wrote above – simple e-books are great for this.
.-= Stefan´s last blog ..Why You Constantly Fail to Get Things Done =-.
Yes It is a good idea to getting traffic on our blog. I will start this.
.-= Nick@SEO India´s last blog ..Off Page SEO =-.
I have just started to really use SU. I have been signed up with them for over a year now, It seems that I always would forget to use it to get some traffic.
I have been trying to remember to Stumble post whenever I enjoy them. It just seem so hard for me to get this traffic on a constant basis.
I think I do a pretty good job at doing all the stuff you mention in this post. But no cigar with SU traffic.
Thanks for this great post.
I specially drop on this blog post. I stumble your blog by SU. Well I like every post that inform about stumbleupon. Friend can you please inform you how can I get traffic from stumbleupon. My SU id is chandansaud
.-= chandan saud´s last blog ..Legitimate work at home jobs =-.
I always forget to use SU, it just sits there in my Firefox toolbar… but as far as I know, you’re not supposed to “stumble” your own posts too much, am I right? Otherwise you might get flagged and your stumbles will lose its value.
On another note – giving away free stuff, that might be difficult for some blogs… if you’re not really in a niche but more “general” blogging, what would you give away…?
I suppose one could just buy some stuff from one of those resell sites that allows you to resell or give away for free, and offer them as free ebooks/services for signing up to your mailing list.
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Movie Review: Fanboys (2008) – Kristen Bell, William Shatner, Seth Rogen =-.
I use stumble upon for my SEO Purposes and when i check the Google analytics i see that i get major traffic from stumbleupon than the other social media sites.But how do i know that from where in SU did i get lots of traffic..?
.-= Martin@Outsourcing´s last blog ..Why Silverlight in Web 2.0 ? =-.
I’m also using SU for getting traffics.
Thanks for nice post!
.-= Toan Nguyen Minh´s last blog ..Learn How to Make $12,704,367 in a Year =-.
I do believe that SU can bring you a lot of instant traffics to your blog but not for a long and quality one
.-= shraqs´s last blog ..Mozilla Releases Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 =-.
Smart, smart. Might as well do something to make those “one time Stumblers”, regular readers. I never thought of doing this. I haven’t been using Stumble Upon as much lately (because of my domain transfer), but will start using it regularly quite soon. I’ll definitely try to implement your idea.
.-= The Gooroo @ iBlogPlanet.com´s last blog ..How To Write Good Articles =-.
i think it helps a lot if you are friend with others and have a great relation plus you should have great contents or collections like i had twitter tips and icons.
.-= gautam hans´s last blog ..Optimizing Title For Search Engine Optimization in Blogger =-.
I love this! I have to things to thank you for now…
1) Thank you for including me in your post as always, you know I appreciate blogging with you.
2) Thank you for writing this, after some of the comments on my article I planned on writing something to offer some tips on catching Stumble traffic and putting it to use.
You saved me a ton of time, haha thank you. Not to mention you did a much more detailed job than I would have.
.-= Extreme John@ Blogging and Business CEO´s last blog ..10 Must Have WordPress Plugins for Newbie Bloggers =-.
Stumbleupon is actually a best social media medium for bloggers to generate traffic for their blog. I see many blogger who have lots of traffic coming from SU. I never realized that hing till now on my blog.
I think with the help of this article I could now certainly get more better SU traffic and make them regular readers.
.-= Typhoon´s last blog ..5 Best Sites to help you Make Money Online with Twitter =-.
I’ve been meaning to experiment with SU traffic since it first appeared, but I judge others by my own behaviour and I don’t think my content is “sticky” enough to encourage repeat visitors. I could be wrong, but I see so many people trying to market using social media where it’s not appropriate. If it’s a blog you’re promoting then that makes sense, but trying to drive traffic to an ecommerce site via SU just doesn’t seem worthwhile IMHO. Any thoughts?
Good post Dan! I tend to agree with Shadow about targeted traffic, but you can definitely hook some visitors with the points you made. As long as you are continually growing, no matter what the pace… I think trying things like SU and other social networks can only help.
.-= Doug Dillard´s last blog ..Free Private Label Rights =-.
I like to give stuff away for free and my downloads section has been increasing over time. At this stage I have over +750 files to be downloaded.
The other tips are also important.
.-= George Serradinho´s last blog ..Essential Blogging Tips – Part 1 =-.
Nice tips..But I don’t think you ever get target traffic which is very much essential..
.-= Shadow@Compute Live´s last blog ..Free Steam Games for all users =-.