I’ve been using StumbleUpon to find new sites and to promote my websites. Once your post gets discovered on SU, you will immediately notice a spike in the number of visitors to your post. This happens often enough and before you know it, you’ll have developed regular readers. Of course you still have to provide them something good to read to keep them coming back.

If you had a post that has just been ‘Stumbled’ (you’ll know by the sudden increase in your viewership) you can check who’s been stumbling your post by clicking on the white bubble on the Stumble toolbar. Recently, I just realized what the ‘Send to’ button next to the white bubble on the SU toolbar is for. It means if you found a website or post you’re excited about, even if it’s your own, then you can send an alert to your SU friends to check it out. If they like it, more thumbs up for you. So it helps a lot if you have a network of friends on SU.

HOWEVER….
You knew that was coming, didn’t you

You can’t abuse the system either and just use it solely to promote your site. Some people have been doing this and I guess doing it A LOT. So StumbleUpon is now updating its algorithms to prevent some of these abuses according to this article: StumbleUpon Has Updated its Algorithms.

What does it mean for you who wants to promote your site?

1. You can’t discover your own site anymore. - Start making friends and get them to Stumble it for you
2. Stumble out of sequence from your friends - if you have a group of friends who are Stumbling each other’s site, don’t go down your list to Stumble. They are now looking for similar Stumbling patterns. This is one of those times when being random is a good thing.
3. Stumble other random sites - even if they don’t benefit you. This gives your stumbling habit some variety.

Some of the tips above, I usually do already anyway. Why? Because StumbleUpon is also a good source of blogging ideas. Don’t just use it to thumb up your posts and your friends’ posts. Use it when you have writer’s block and don’t know what to blog about. Sometimes we bloggers get stagnant visiting the same blogs on our blogroll all the time and we forget that the internet is expanding and growing every minute. There is always something new out there just waiting to be discovered. Click that Stumble! button and see what comes up. Thumb it down or Thumb it up, either way you’d have seen a new website you probably hadn’t visited before. And if you happen to Stumble across one of mine or one of your friends’ don’t forget to give us a Thumbs Up.

So if you haven’t already, download the toolbar and start Stumbling.

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