Quick Steps to Follow before Submitting Content To StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a great social site because it features a diverse crowd that spans hundreds of topics and thousands of tags.  StumbleUpon can work well for ANY site and shouldn’t be overlooked in any social media strategies.  This is a quick list that you can reference before submitting (called “discovering” on the site) anything to StumbleUpon:

• Use Proper Tags
  Tagging allows for you to label your content for consumption by others.  If other users are a fan of “web-design” and you use that tag, they will have a much higher probability to getting found on StumbleUpon.  The tags page shows tags that are recently hot and most popular all time.
• Use Multiple Tags
  By leveraging as many different tags, you can give your content a much higher chance of getting traffic and momentum through the various different types of users.

  For instance, an infographic about how much NFL players make per year could be popular with the tags:

football, sports, NFL, salaries, wealth

If you have a StumbleAds account, you can also view the number of users who are subscribed to different categories.  Using this, you can make sure to include a few of the tags with large subscribers!

• Submit It to the Proper Topic
  Many times users may see a topic that has a large following or is extremely popular and they select that thinking it will lead to the most exposure.  Not the case.  If submitting to incorrect categories, you will most likely receive fewer positive votes and more negative votes.  Use the drop down menu if none of the standard categories work for you.

• Leverage Popular Friends
  Having an existing following can greatly help your chances in getting stories popular.  On StumbleUpon people can “subscribe” to your stumbles, which means that your discoveries will have a good chance of showing up for them. Talk to anyone in your network and see if you know any users with a good deal of subscribers in a field that is targeted in certain categories.  If you have a good relationship with them, see if they would be interested in discovering your content for you to help give you a boost!

• Share with your Friends
  You can use the “share” function to send your stories directly to your friends.  This new method allows you to hit all of your friends with your message.  Hover over the thumbnail of an article that you have recently thumbed and a share button should appear:
  By sharing this story you can pick and chose who to send it to (or you can send to all).  Recipients will be notified that they have a new item to be stumbled:

  

• Don’t Spam
  Like any social site, spamming the site by submitting Digg/Reddit links, using incorrect categories or sharing every story will be frowned upon.  Be a good user and add value to the community.  If you aren’t adding value,  you probably won’t see much coming back to your campaigns either.
  

• Use StumbleUpon Groups
  Sign up for relevant StumbleUpon groups that are already popular.  A detailed list of groups can be found here and the most popular groups can be found here.  Many times these groups have active discussions where you can talk to fellow members and moderators.  Moderators can also post links to sites so make friends with them!  Group activity has been declining sharply since its inception, but it is always better to try every avenue possible.

And that is it!  To me, one of the most important things with StumbleUpon is to make sure you are having fun.  The SU audience is very friendly, helpful and insightful, so enjoy yourself and do your best to join the community!

Have any other tips or tricks for “discovering” stories on StumbleUpon?  Feel free to share in the comments!  And also, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow us on Twitter!