Traffic is one of the most important things every blogger will need. Even though conversion is very important when it comes to getting results there won't be any conversion without traffic. Stumbleupon traffic isn't really the best traffic for a blogger due to the low conversion it results in and the 2 seconds the resulting visitors spend on a site. However, getting traffic from Stumbleupon has its own importance and before I continue I'll be giving you one or two major advantages of getting traffic from stumbleupon.
1. Social Proof: A major advantage of getting traffic from stumbleupon is that it is a great means of social proof. Some of us display our income reports, some of us partake in activities requiring us to submit the number of visitors we get and whether we like it or not, irrespective of the source of our traffic, having a huge traffic number makes an impression on our readers. Your readers will believe you know what you're saying if every single post you write goes viral on Stumbleupon. If you're also a blogger whose income depends on displaying ads on your blog advertisers will be interested in having your traffic numbers, and very few of them are concerned about the traffic source (as long as it is ethical and you're doing nothing to inflate it) so that boost in traffic from stumbleupon can make a great difference in how much money you will earn in one month.
2. Source of Encouragement: Another importance of getting traffic from Stumbleupon is that it is a source of encouragement, and believe me, great or not, not every one of your posts will go viral on stumbleupon so anytime one does you will be very happy because you believe it is great. I have written a lot of great posts on this blog but only my best posts go viral on stumbleupon. Also, if you're a blogger getting around 100 visitors to your blog everyday you will be so happy to get over 1000 visitors to your blog in one day as a result of a great post you wrote, even if that traffic is from stumbleupon. And the more encouragement you get, the more quality posts you will write and the more quality traffic and exposure you will get as time goes on.
3. Improvement in Rankings: Another great thing about social media traffic is that it can help you improve your rankings very fast. Even though traffic from Digg or Stumbleupon might be relatively low when it comes to conversion it is very important that you realize that Google is now determining how to rank websites based on these sites. If your article could make it to the Stumbleupon homepage or to the first page of your post category you will experience a significant boost in your ranks.
4. More Backlinks: Another important thing about having a post go viral on social media is that they result in a lot of backlinks. While stumbleupon might not be that strong compared to Digg or Delicious when it comes to backlinks it is really important that you know that every small piece helps. Having a highly successful article on Stumbleupon can result in a few backlinks that will eventually result in more quality traffic and overall improvement in your search engine rankings.
5. A Means of Testing Your Server: I recently upgraded my server to dedicated server but I don't know the full capacity yet because I haven't gotten enough traffic to "shake it". A lot of web hosting companies make claims that cannot be validated to their users about how great and reliable their service is only for a solid influx of traffic to bring the server down. Getting a lot of stumbleupon traffic can help you know how solid and reliable your server is so that you can make amends or upgrade to a better server before you get a traffic influx from a reliable source. I've seen people who getting only 700 visitors a day brought their server down, and the traffic was from great sources like twitter or a big blog in their niche, they would have avoided this had they gotten much traffic from a less reliable source to really know their server capability.
Before I Continue
I'm not a king of getting traffic from Stumbleupon and I've not been active on Stumbleupon for months now because I believe spending my time on it is a waste compared to spending it writing quality guest posts for other blogs or spending my time on some other reliable traffic strategies. But I'd also like you to know that I wouldn't just talk about what I know nothing of. Yes, I haven't gotten 100k visitors from Stumble but I believe everything has a starting point, I have gotten a few thousands of visitors from Stumbleupon (as shown by the images below) and I have examined a lot of highly successful stumbleupon posts so the tips in this post will both be from my experience and what all those posts have in common.
Image 1
Image 2
The Quality of Your Post Matters
I don't know if this is a coincidence but every single post I wrote and others I examined are long and detailed posts with over 2000 words and they are often some of the best posts on the blogs they were written for. I'm not trying to encourage writing long posts for the sake of getting stumbleupon traffic because I believe that is irrelevant, and brevity is a great thing every blogger and marketer should have. I'm really sure this post will be pretty long because it will make no sense if it is short and I'd also not be able to pass across everything I want to pass across to my readers. I'm not making it long intentionally, I'm just writing what is in my mind, I'm only writing what I learnt and the length is of little to no importance.
My point here is that every single posts I have seen go viral on Stumbleupon is packed with value. Stumbleupon readers won't just promote your posts because you have a lot of traffic, they will promote your posts because they are valuable. I know people with as low as 50 visitors a day that have written posts that have gotten thousands of visitors from stumbleupon. It doesn't matter how great your blog is or how many traffic you get daily you need quality posts to succeed on stumbleupon.
When it comes to quality post people have different "assumptions" and "definitions" and some people believe it is all about your content. So many things determine the effectiveness and quality of a post, and based on what I have seen from a lot of successful stumbleupon posts I will be giving you some tips to make sure your posts go viral on stumbleupon.
Have An Attractive Title: On average 8 out of 10 readers read your headline and 2 out of 10 read your post. I have seen a lot of great posts with bad titles, in fact, I have written some myself but the end result is that these posts don't get as much traffic as they deserve. The fact that 8 out of 10 people only read your headline and 2 out of 10 read your posts is talking about your blog loyal readers let alone people who hardly know you and are of the habit of visiting as much as 50 blogs a day from stumbleupon. Building a successful blog is about being very smart and having a great knowledge of some very important elements that determine how successful your blog and your blog posts will be.
And attractive title arouses curiosity in your readers, makes them feel comfortable and like they will be gaining something from your post, and in most cases tells a story. Believe me, I'm writing this from personal experience. I have been getting a lot of requests from my readers to be writing posts based on my experience but due to not being comfortable with this I haven't, I recently decided to write a more personal post based on my experience and I wrote a post titled My journey from a poor fatherless kid to a successful blogger. In less than 15 days this post has gotten over 800 views when the average number of views a post get on this blog in that duration is around 200-300 views. The reason for this has a lot to do with the headline, the headline tells a story, it makes people comfortable because by reading it they feel they are not the only one experiencing a problem and that as long a poor fatherless kid can experience success they also can, and the story arouses their curiosity. As a result it got hundreds of visitors from Facebook, hundreds of visitors from stumbleupon and visitors from many other sources.
It doesn't matter how great, practical or realistic your blog post is its success will be determined by its title.
It is Easy to Read, and Digest: One thing I noticed from every single post I analyzed when trying to write this post is that not a single one of them was improperly written. Every single post I analyzed was easy to scan, easy to digest and properly presented.
When it comes to writing successful blog posts, taking a few minutes to format your posts can go a long way to affect your success. Try using headlines, sub headlines, numbers, bullet points, blockquotes and some other important elements to help make your post easy to read for your readers. Yes, a lot of your readers love to scan your articles, if I were you, I wouldn't try to discourage this by making my posts difficult to read but I'd rather encourage it by making my posts easier to scan while easily passing my point across as early as possible.
Make Your Posts Easy to Share
Another very important aspect of writing blog posts that succeed on stumbleupon that many people overlook is the aspect of making their blog posts easy to share. A lot of people complain of not getting retweets for their blog posts yet they have no retweet button on their posts, some people ask why their posts are not going viral on stumbleupon yet they have no stumbleupon button on their posts. I've seen people with successful stumbleupon posts who have no stumbleupon button on their blog but they are few and they are the highly successful bloggers whose readers will go to any extent to share their posts. You have to increase your chances of success by making it easy for your readers to share your post. I will easily share a post that has a button that encourages sharing than go through the pain doing it manually: in fact, I don't think I've ever shared a post that didn't have a share button, if I love a post but there is no way to share it then I'll forget about it. Unfortunately, I'm not the only one who thinks and acts like this, most of your readers do and you can give them reasons to share your content by having attractive sharing buttons on your blog.
Make Effective Use of Call to Actions
There was one thing in common with every single post on this blog that went viral on stumbleupon, and that one thing was my call to action. In most of these posts I encouraged readers to share the post and in some I specifically told them to share it on stumbleupon, believe me, it worked!
Your call to action might determine whether your blog post will go viral on stumbleupon or not. It is not that your readers are doing that intentionally but a lot of them read your posts via their RSS feeds, some of them are used to reading posts they don't share on other blogs so it will take an effort from you to make them share your post. And that effort is going to be in the form of an encouragement.
Another thing is that you won't have any problems with people sharing your post if you give them your best so following the tips in this post will have a mark on your efforts to make your posts viral on stumbleupon.
The above are some tips on getting traffic to your blog from stumbleupon; please spread the word about this post by sharing it on stumbleupon and your favorite social sites.
Have you downloaded my free ebook (WEB TRAFFIC EXPLOSION)?Click here to download it now