Your wildest dreams will come true!
Are you a blogger? Are you using StumbleUpon? If not, you should be.
On Tuesday, Jeff Goins published a great write up on Why You Should Use StumbleUpon As a Marketing Tool. If you need some direction on how the site works, go there first.
Based on great conversation sparked in KC’s blog on Thursday, I realized that a lot of people either weren’t using StumbleUpon or didn’t really understand how it works. Let me just say that if you use it correctly, it will make your wildest dreams come true (Vote for Pedro).
In short, you get a StumbleUpon toolbar in your browser. You select topics of interest in your profile. Then you click the Stumble button and it takes you to sites that match your interests. If you enjoy the site, you can click the “I like it!” button in the toolbar. That then ranks the site higher and sends the link to other stumblers. You can imagine how a link can go viral pretty quickly with this system.
My thought is that we can get a community together to help each other get exposure. I’d like us all to share links to our profile so we can follow each other. We can then submit our blog posts to StumbleUpon. As we see each other’s sites, we help each other out by clicking the “I like it!” button. From my experience, it just takes a handful of them for a site to start spreading quickly. I’ve been doing it for awhile and I’ve gotten TONS of traffic.
Are you in? Then create a profile and add the link to the widget below. Your profile link should look like this:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/tonyjalicea/
Add your Twitter handle (or name if you’re not on Twitter) in the Link Title field and then add your StumbleUpon profile link to the URL field:
I plan to do a follow-up, in-depth post with tips on using the service.
If you don’t mind, please RT this and share this post with anyone you think would be interested in this community.
If you have any questions about StumbleUpon, share them in the comments. Also, feel free to share your site URL and the topics you decide to add to your StumbleUpon profile. Make some new friends!
Welcome to the StumbleUpon community!
This is a fantastic idea!!! Thanks for getting it started, Tony!
This is great Tony. Thanks for pulling this together!
I’m in.
What an excellent idea, Tony. Innovation often comes from simplicity!
messed up my URL the first time… fixed it
I’m really excited about this Tony! I look forward to your tutorial, as I really, really don’t understand SU. I’m also backing off of Twitter because I really just don’t have the time, except to Tweet out a some linky love when I can. Do you think the traffic from SU is different than the traffic you would get from Twitter-or do you know? My time is so limited online. Right now, I just want to do what is in my best interest.
I’ve found that the SU traffic isn’t as targeted as you get on Twitter but it definitely opens you up to a new audience.
I’m out of town this week but I hope to have a new post up on this in the next week or so. There’s a lot of good you can get out of this service but it’s typically like anything else…you get what you put into it. Still, even with a casual amount of use, I think it can be beneficial. Plus, doing it in community is always more fun!
love it…I’m in!
great idea!
Thanks Tony, I have wondered what it was but I am really slow to get in the game. I have never explored Stumbled upon nor even figured out how to get on Twitter. Thanks for your encouragement and I will list both now on my to do list. Thanks for the explanation to those of us who struggle to read instruction manuals!
Okay, I’ve signed up & installed the toolbar. Now if I can just get it to cooperate with TooManyTabs…
This is a great idea
Thanks Kyle. I already have a ton of information for a follow up post. There are definitely things we can do as a community to make this really take off.
On your SU page, you have your blog hyperlinked…how did you do that?
You have to use HTML. It’s the href tag. Do you know how to do that?
Nope. Is it easy to do/explain?
Sample:
<a href=”http://www.tonyjalicea.com”>Expect the Exceptional</a>
should come out as
Expect the Exceptional
Nikki, the quotes don’t work in the profile section in SU. Be sure to use the code Joe put above (with your information) without the quotes.
If it doesn’t allow quotes, then it’s not correct HTML. Most browsers have to deal with sloppy web page coding, so it’ll probably work without the quotes, unless you’ve got something unique in the URL.
That should be reported as a bug, though, to StumbleUpon.
Thanks for the help Joe!
I got your back, Nikki. Here’s a link:
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp
You need to add a sumbleupon button to your site brother. to your site brother.
I’m using the Digg Digg plugin and SU is only available with their floating ajax version. For some reason it stopped working on my site. I need to find another plugin to make it work.
I use Sexy Bookmarks (I think it may have another name too, but that’s how I found it)…you can do Digg and all kinds of other stuff with it too.
I used to use Sexy Bookmarks. I may have to go back to using it.
Sorry about my last comment. The format got all weird. Anyway, I’m in.
@ d s r e v i r
I s i gn e d up bu t m i st a ke n l y u s e d b y bl og li nk in s t ea d o f m y s tu mb l e up on li n k . T hi s co m me nt bo x s e em s go of y , t o o . U h o h .
I joined…. Never used Stumble Upon so it may take a while for me to get things going. Thanks for the opportunity to grow in the community.
Awesome. I signed up for SU after reading Jeff’s post, but had no idea what to do with it! I’m already looking forward to your follow up post, Tony.
One question – how did you get those links in your profile?
Thanks, Tony. This was the push I needed to finally start stumbling.
As you long as you don’t go telling people that I was the one that caused you to stumble.
Thanks for doing this Tony! Going through and following everyone here. And I’ll be better about remembering to like your pages.
Also, if you’re the first to like a page, be sure to leave a review. My understanding is that only the first like can review a page and if you don’t do that, it’s not available again.
I didn’t know that. I plan on doing a bunch more research and hopefully doing another post on this in the near future.
Thanks Tony for doing this. Awesome idea man!
Hey Tony, not sure if you can fix it or not, but Moe’s link (#6) isn’t working.
It should be http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/mvivas/
Thanks!
I noticed that too – thanks for fixing it Larry
Okay, Moe’s link is fixed now.
Thanks for blazing the trail, Tony. Kudos to Jeff too for bringing it up.
Up until now I really had no idea how to use StumbleUpon.
I’m glad you have taken the time to help get this SU community rolling!
I’ve been on StumbleUpon since it was an option to link at the end of all my blog articles – but to be honest – I’m confused at how it works – hopefully with more people that I know on there and being able to link to others will make it more clear
Thanks Tony!
Thanks for getting this setup Tony! (and for the shout out)
I was really surprised by the response over on Off the Cuff. It actually turned out to be my best day ever. I plan on writing a short follow up post linked to this one later this morning. Excited to see how this StumbeUpon community helps drive traffic and engaging conversation.
Thanks again!
Yeah, you found me the other day. I actually quit SU a long time ago, but recently reactivated it.
My stalking skills are unmatched.
Tony,
I’m sure Katie could tell us all about your stalking skills.
His stalking skills are only matched by his writing skills.
Indeed they are. #TWKS
I’m in. I had you already as a “friend”.
Tony,
Brilliant idea! I am so in.
You got it right. I figured we could name it our Twitter handle (if others want to follow us on Twitter) and the link is our actual StumbleUpon profile.
I just followed you!
Thanks for the link, Tony. Love this idea. Count me in.