Wise Startup Blog

For those of you who have used Stumbleupon, you already know how great it is. For those of you who have yet to install Stumbleupon, do so now.

“StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests. Whether it’s a web page, photo or video, our personalized recommendation engine learns what you like, and brings you more.”

Tripled My Traffic

Write to the News

Looking at the graph above, that is how you should plan out your Stumbleupon pushes. You get a big boost, and hopefully your content can keep the users coming back again and again.

Now when writing content, you should write to what’s current in the news. Talk about the Presidential candidates’ resumes, or the Apple MobileMe gaffe or Google Chrome.

With Stumbleupon users, you only get a couple of seconds to convince them to ‘thumbs up’ your page, so writing about a topic they already have heard about recently can really help your stickiness.

Judge a Book By its Cover

The old adage, “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” definitely does not apply to Stumbleupon. Your title tells the reader everything they need to know about your story, so you better ensure its compelling and captivating, and invites the user to continue reading on.

Journalists know better than others that you need to leave your readers with a cliffhanger, so when writing your story, try to craft a title that entices users to scroll down just a little, and if they do, they’ll reward you with a ‘thumbs up’.

Often times I write a number of different titles until I find one that sticks. Don’t worry about constantly re-writing the title, the extra time will definitely pay off.

Write About Stumbleupon

Just like on Digg, Stumble users LOVE to read more about Stumbleupon and how great it is. In your articles, highlight how to drive more traffic to Stumbleupon or the quirks of the system, how to get banned by Stumbleupon, that you’ve reached the “end of the Internet,” you get the idea…

Stumble, Stumble, Stumble

The final point I’ll cover is your participation in the system.

Don’t expect to reap the benefits of huge Stumbleupon traffic drives if you’re not using the system in return. Try to spend a couple of minutes stumbling and reviewing sites on a daily basis.

I don’t know the exact math on these things, but I have seen better results since I started using the system more and more.

Let us know what has worked for you in driving Stumble traffic in the comments.