StumbleUpon Primer for Bloggers, Part 2 http://su.pr/2bq9tC
Santa Claus will review your blog posts. Leave it to him.
Keep your faith in him, put out milk and cookies, and don’t review your own blog posts. They need a review on them to get liked and shared, and seen by Stumblers – the majority of which are people who don’t already know you (which is a darn exciting prospect, as I see it)! I often hear the StumbleUpon’s TOS mentioned when people suggest that you do not review your own blog posts. Please peruse the TOS yourself, and pay special attention to sections 3.3 and 4.1. Looks okay as for my read of it (and the rest of the TOS). However, I have heard that some SU users find their accounts “limited” if they are sharing only their own content. Having spoken with several long-time users of SU, I’m told that only the worst offenders find their accounts limited (sharing, following, etc.).
If you use one or more blog rings, content-sharing promotion systems or clubs, such as a blog circle or Triberr, etc., where perhaps you have your blogger connections’ new content, and maybe even an easy means of Stumble-liking or reviewing fellow bloggers’ posts right in front of you, see what happens when you do so. Stumble-review your own post, and also go through your blog circle, etc. and SU-like your supporting bloggers’ latest posts. Now, open StumbleUpon, Profile > Shares and note how your one review of your post is in with a slew of all those other bloggers’ posts that you liked. You are golden. In my case, as of this writing, because I aim to be supportive to the many bloggers who do so for me, I see that I have “liked” (includes SU-reviews) over 1,200 pages. Roughly fifty of those are my own content (from my blog), LinkedIn Group, etc. I am not worried about getting “dinged” by StumbleUpon as a rampant self-promoter.
StumbleUpon Discovery Reviews: they take time, but they direct your page’s SU SEO.
As such, the Discovery (first) Review should really be done by the article’s author.
StumbleUpon allows you to add as many tags as you like, but actually uses the first five you provide. These, multiplied by the number of likes you have on the page, once reviewed, increase the likelihood that your page will appear “randomly” before Stumblers who are Stumbling their followed topics. As such, do you want to leave your post unreviewed, and thus, waiting for what is termed the Discovery Review for Santa Claus, me, or someone else who might just condemn your piece to the uncategorized tag-less wasteland and thus, nearly invisible to Stumblers (until a second review is, if it ever is, added (as often as pigs fly) – with a category) – or do you want to categorize the post yourself and select widely-followed SU topics to tag the post with? Google search “hot SU tags,” after looking at the “Explore Box,” which suggests acceptable StumbleUpon topics from words and phrases that you input:
The Explore Box in StumbleUpon: it leads you to acceptable tags based on words/phrases you provide.
Discover Yourself
(why you’d want the author to write the SU discovery-review)
A SU-review takes time to complete, whether poorly or well, and if you use a blog-sharing system that makes it a breeze to SU-like already SU-reviewed posts, you will find less people skipping you post entirely and SU-liking – if it already has that review on it. Triberr members should know what I mean – from what they see in their “Tri bal Stream.” “Submit” next to the SU icon presents us with a dilemma: do I do that Discovery Review for you and “take a shot” at defining your post’s category and tags or do I skip it. When there is a number, even ’1′ next to the SU icon, I know that it is just three clicks to like and move on.
StumbleUpon Shares: it isn’t a UX goof that you have many boxes to tick
<- That’s me, Sharing @Ross_Quintana‘s latest “How to Hug a Blogger
I suggest adding a message that might ply people to actually go to the page – since we tend to get a good number of them in our “Received Shares” (a pull-down choice, when you are in “Shares”: Profile > Shares > Received Shares.)
Also, you need to manually tick a box next to each of your connections’ names, which is time-consuming. This is meant to reduce “blasts” of self-promotion to all possible contacts by those *rare* users who would be prone to doing so.
Share with care
“Most Shared” seems fairly worthless as a tab on your share box. I choose who to share to (roughly 1-2 times/week, no more) from “All Contacts.” Once you have the comment written and boxes ticked, considering what you are sending to which connection (for relevancy, please), click that “Send” button just once. Nothing seems to happen, but if you open a separate browser and go to StumbleUpon > Profile > Shares you should find that you have, indeed, sent your page to the intended. Please don’t repeat my mistake of finding nothing happening and clicking the Send button a couple more times. (Yes, I got calls… and learned that I have quite patient and forgiving friends.)
For Part 1 of my StumbleUpon Primer for Bloggers, http://su.pr/6YH5AP http://ping.fm/bCNcU
