Should you start spending time on StumbleUpon now that reports claim it represents more than 50% of the social media traffic and has passed Facebook to the #1 spot?
Not really. Let’s take a second to understand if StumbleUpon can really send you more traffic, what kind of traffic and I’ll also give you 3 quick tips to help you increase traffic to your site.
What, you thought StumbleUpon was dead?
StumbleUpon is very much alive. In March 2011 Mashable reported 15 million users and new signups of around 500k per month. Those are huge numbers, how many services do you know that get half a million signups per month?
Also in March this year, while All Things Digital announced that SU was raising $17M they said that the discovery service was making 800 million content recommendations per month.
This week, both Mashable and Read Write Web announced that the service now represents 50%+ of the social media traffic.
The following chart shows how StumbleUpon have already passed Facebook as a social media traffic generator in the US.
But not globally although it shows a clear decreased for Facebook and a healthy increased for SU, as it’s shown in the next one.
But Not All Traffic Is Created Equally
What does this mean for your blog or site? We know quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality, specially on the web. Let me share with you what I see on my Google Analytics for SocialMouths.
- StumbleUpon has always been at least in the top 10 traffic sources for this blog but, in July 2011 it was actually the #3 position and has the #1 spot in referral sites. Facebook was the #5 traffic source and #2 referral site
- It represented 4.85% of the total visits last month against a 2.92% from Facebook
- 94.12% of the traffic are new visits while new visits from Facebook are only 36.27%
- And it has an extremely low average time per site of .29 seconds compared to a 1:09 from Facebook
But Wait!
Let’s be fair and get some perspective here. StumbleUpon is a Content Discovery Tool. People don’t really hang out there or focus on building relationships as they do on a social network. Perhaps we should look at it as, I don’t know… as a content discovery tool!
How different is it? a new visitor comes into your site and you have a split second to make a good impression, regardless if he/she is coming from organic traffic, Twitter or G+. The truth is that I did get a few new email subscriptions from it and a few months ago I worked for a client that “stumbled” into my site…
What Should You Do?
I do NOT suggest that you start spending your afternoons digging into it or hanging out there. I will not write a “10 steps to get traffic from StumbleUpon” list. I will only share with you the few things I do:
Just to make it clear, I do not spend any time on the site, as you would in Facebook for example.
Expand Your Net
Go on your account and use the “Find Friends” mechanism already offered by the site and connect with your already existing friends from Twitter and Facebook. You can also manually add people that you know from other platforms or search to see if you find some relevant people inside the platform.
Please do not get into a “number collecting mode” here or “what’s my following ratio” bullshit. Seriously.
Actually Use The Tool
I do not stumble at all and to be honest I don’t see myself doing it in the near future. But I do use StumbleUpon as a bookmarking tool. It’s easy, handy and I love that you get a visual with the thumbnails.
Add The Stumble Button To Your Blog
Make it easy for your readers to share the love. Add the StumbleUpon button to your blog.
I kick it up a notch by submitting my own content, that way my readers don’t have to go through the submission process and they can show me some sugar with only one click.
Triberr?
I haven’t seen anything official from Triberr but there are rumors about integrating with SU. It sounds interesting but we’ll see.
Over To You
What is your experience with StumbleUpon? If you’re a blogger, do you see action coming from the service? Or share your own ideas on how you handle it.
If you want to connect, here is my StumbleUpon profile.
Happy Stumbling!
