I am not very fond of using social bookmarking to promote my blog. I think people often forget that blogging is social networking, but get overly caught up in different sites to build traffic, like Digg and many others. My favorite is Stumbleupon. What most people don’t realize is how much traffic a single stumble can bring. Because of how the Stumbleupon algorithm works, it is fairly common to receive massive quantities of traffic from only one person stumbling you at the right time. Every now and then you get that lottery stumble, which can generate thousands of visitors in just a few hours.

On May 19th, my great blogging buddy Marzie – the Genie Princess stumbled my homepage (thanks Marzie!). I had reached around 80 visitors that day, until that magical stumble! A few hours later, I noticed I was up to 674 readers and 969 page views in under an hour – that was quite an explosion of traffic. I ended up with almost a thousand visitors before I went to sleep. Many of those visitors left comments and viewed more than one article, which was fantastic. You don’t always get such an explosion of traffic, but every now and then, you do. It’s freaking great when it happens.

I wrote an article about how to use Stumble correctly: Stumble Upon: A Cool Ethical Approach with a few solid tips and a few great links you should check out. Here are a few more:

  1. Don’t stumble your own articles – a TOS violation
  2. Don’t trade stumbles with people – a TOS violation
  3. Don’t ask to be stumbled – a TOS violation
  4. Try to review what you stumble – many people don’t bother. I explain how in my link above.
  5. Use it often, and it will increase your chances of being stumbled
  6. Let people know you’ve stumbled them in a post comment
  7. Make sure you review every time you stumble

All these tips are basic, but if you violate Stumbleupon’s terms of service, they will drop your account. I know many people this has happened to. It’s a great way to support your fellow bloggers. Many people use social networks only to gain things for themselves, they rarely do things only for others. This is what is wrong with society as well as in blogging. I use Stumbleupon everyday because I know how powerful it is. I stumble people’s homepages, and also when I see a really good post. Just keep the Stumbleupon toolbar open, and use it liberally. If you use the stumble tool bar, take a look at who stumbled your site. You do that by clicking the little white balloon while looking at a particular page. The ethical and honest way to use it, is to stumble lots of people and hopefully you’ll get stumbled too – not because you’ve asked (hey I’ve asked before but I won’t anymore), but because someone chose to on their own.

Sometimes I wish I had a different approach to blogging, but I am happy with my methodology. I have written many Bobby’s Batch posts where I link to my fellow blogger’s fine posts. In my opinion, it is the best way to help people out. If blogging worked by such ethical and kind giving, the blogosphere would be a better place. My blog is rarely found in Google searches landing on my homepage. With Google searches, my individual blog posts are found, which is what I want. It is the content that matters, not the homepage. However, I am trying to change my views on many things in blogging, be much more positive and less critical of what other people do.:smile:

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