I have recently learnt that StumbleUpon is a great tool for writers. Brian Halligan Darmesh Shah (authors of an audio book I am listening to called Inbound Marketing) describe StumbleUpon as a free social discovery site “helping you discover content that you might like”. It has over 7 million registered users and is well-known for showing you the best that is on the web.
I joined StumbleUpon last month but have not yet had a chance to check it out, so I thought I’d log in today and use this blog to tell you about my findings. Registration is quick and easy once set up, you can install the StumbleUpon toolbar and choose to view pages from hundreds of topics of interest such as writing, parenting, books and so on.
So, with my StumbleUpon toolbar ready, I took the following steps:
- I selected a topic – I used the drop down list on the tool bar (these are the topics I chose when I registered) – in this instance I selected ‘writing’.
- I clicked the Stumble! button – this is on the left hand side of the menu. It picks a site at random (according to the topic you selected) and it gives preference to popular ones.
- I viewed the page – the page that came up when I clicked Stumble was “80 journal writing prompts” which is on Tom Slatin’s writing photography and website design site. Great blog.
- I had the option to click ‘I like it’ or give it the thumbs down – this click gives either a positive or negative vote to that page. The more votes the page gets the more popular it becomes and therefore more traffic it gets.
- I had the option to share the page – there are buttons on there for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and also a button to share with other Stumblers.
Addtional tips
Inbound Marketing don’t recommend that you upload your own content – the purpose of StumbleUpon is to find interesting content and give a postive vote to things you like. Once your content is on there, more traffic will be driven to you as you become more popular.
Interesting fact
According to Crunch Base, StumbleUpon was once owned by ebay, but is now independently owned again.
Do you use StumbleUpon and find it useful?
Until tomorrow…
Sandra
Freelance writer
Please visit www.sandramadeira.com for more information on my services as a freelance writer as well as details of my book and other blogs.
This blog post forms part of My Writing Challenge. Don’t forget that you can subscribe to receive my daily blogs by email so that you don’t miss any. Just click ‘sign me up’ on the home page. Alternatively you can follow my blogs on Twitter @madeirasandra or my ‘Tips and Luxuries‘ Facebook page. Requests for future blogs (punctuation/grammar/writing tips) are always welcome.
Related articles
- StumbleUpon (ca346f11304.wordpress.com)
- StumbleUpon: Where Randomness meets Serendipity (servantofchaos.com)
- StumbleUpon! – StumbleUpon (itunes.apple.com)
- How to Target Traffic Using StumbleUpon (chrishoeller.wordpress.com)
My Writing Notebook 
WARNING: StumbleUpon is addictive. I discovered it in the summer but I do put it to good use. I have a weekly “site of the week” on my blog featuring websites that are useful for writers. I’ve found so much cool stuff on there.
Posted by procrastin8or | November 15, 2011, 11:43 pmHi Thanks for the comment and the warning. I must take a look at your site as well – it sounds interesting.
Posted by Sandra Madeira | November 16, 2011, 6:34 pmI absolutely love StumbleUpon! I haven’t downloaded it onto my new computer, partly because it was a total time trap when I was on my old one. I would start to stumble, just for five minutes before I started my real, productive work, and BOOM. Two hours later, I’m still stumbling. Dangerously addictive, but so much fun to travel to parts of the internet you never new existed!
Posted by courtneyryanne | November 16, 2011, 12:06 amSounds very exciting and I agree it looks like it can be a time trap. I only stumbled for a bit yesterday, but looking forward to going back there soon to make some new contacts.
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
Posted by Sandra Madeira | November 16, 2011, 6:28 pmThanks for sharing, I wasn’t aware of StumbleUpon, in my end of the world (Denmark) no one knows about the site, and it’s all new information to me. I will join as soon as this comment is done.
To @Procatin80r and @Coutneyryanne, I have noticed your warnings, and will be aware of the “trap”.
Posted by govertz56 | November 16, 2011, 4:06 amThank you for your comment. So, how long did you spend on StumbleUpon? Hope you’ve found some interesting content.
Sandra
Posted by Sandra Madeira | November 16, 2011, 6:24 pm