Another StumbleUpon Swell
14 December 07“Sometimes it’s the simplest posts that you do that seem to get the best reactions from readers.” A quote from ‘How to Surf Blog Traffic Tsunamis’ by Problogger
Photo by Brian Boulos
I posted a [meant to be] humorous article about a simple tech hack for simplifying the remote control. A week after posting it, a reader bookmarked it on SU which led to a nice swell of continuous traffic. The post was well received for the most part. Most found it amusing, although some felt it insulted their intelligence.
The traffic lasted for a good two weeks, and reached its peak last week Friday. Although the numbers are dwindling, I’m still receiving a few hundred visitors from SU because of that single post. Here are my stats from Google Analytics for StumbleUpon referral traffic:
Nov.28-Dec.9
The funny thing about it is it’s an off-topic and rather simple post. Because of that factor it had more relevance to non-bloggers, which I believe is partially why the SU swell lasted for so long. I had my first taste of a StumbleUpon traffic wave a few weeks ago for an article about posting consistency which didn’t do nearly as well.
Combining Social Media Powers
SU, when used in conjunction with other social media sites, can be a powerful traffic generator. Sites specifically for blogging, along with StumbleUpon are a good mixture to experiment with social media marketing.
Social Media Traffic
Although I haven’t received a substantial traffic increase from direct referrals from blogging-specific social sites, the networking benefits far outweigh that element. If your article is found on Sphinn, Blogging Zoom, or perhaps even Digg, it could then be thumbed up on SU for an additional amount of traffic and exposure.
What to do with the Traffic Swell
It’s not very wise to just sit back and enjoy the social media traffic ride. Blogging Tip: A good idea would be to take advantage of the swell of traffic by coming up with more quality and relevant content to attempt to gain loyal readership.
This post was partially inspired from Problogger’s article that I quoted earlier. It’s an article I wish I read a few weeks earlier. If you haven’t yet read it, consider doing so. Mr. Rowse listed a few ‘take-home lessons’ from his ‘traffic tsunami’ experience. Here are a few lessons , in my own words, that I’ve learned that are similar to his list:
- Publicity and criticism go hand-in-hand. Take the good with the bad, dust the dirt off your shoulder, and carry on
- Light and entertaining posts often do well on social sites such as SU. Many people enjoy the occasional fluff, so not every post has to be on a serious note.
- Traffic swells are awesome to ride, but they will soon dissipate so work towards creating content that readers may find worthy of another thumbs up.
Has anyone else experienced similar traffic swells lately?
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9 Responses to “Another StumbleUpon Swell”
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I had a wicked good surge a while back for one of my posts and I’m still getting good SU traffic from it now. I managed to catch the live hits on video, I put it up as a post on my blog.
I think more and more people are seeing the sharks fin traffic signature of SU on their google stats too. long live SU!
I’m kind of new to social media having started up my blog just in November. I have to say that StumbleUpon is by far the greatest for traffic of any site. In just a month since I started I have over 1000 a day coming to the site ( 50% -75%) usually from StumbleUpon, and with single days that rival your own hot days.
Have you found it that these people don’t really do much more than read the article, even the ones that Stumble it to perpetuate the whole process?
@Michael
I have just discovered your site earthfrisk.com about a week or two ago when I was searching through my list of backlinks in Google Webmaster. It turns out that some users have bookmarked my site (thank you, by the way, to all who have voted for Fresh Geeks over at EarthFrisk). It looks great so far, and I’ll be exploring it more.
As for SU, the non-bloggers were just interested in that one article and didn’t really have a deeper look into my blog.
I’ve had a few bloggers discover my site from SU and they come around every so often. I haven’t really done any networking or relationship forming with them just yet.
And then there are some that are just interested in finding another stumble buddy to ask to check out some of their posts to see if it’s ’stumble worthy’…which I really don’t mind.
I too have had some of my posts stumbled and it has served me well.
Of course, I’m all over the place anyway with my personal blog - so who knows..
@Jeff
Isn’t SU great? The great thing about personal blogs is you get to be all over the place.
I have had a few of my articles stumbled but nothing lasting.
I don’t think finance is a good sell
I find when I ramble about nothing in particular, I get the most comments
People just want to relate.
@mariam
Yes, exactly. It’s often the simple, relative, and universal subjects that do well on social sites.
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