Sphinn - 28 Tips To Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar

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28 Tips To Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar

Went Hot: April 25, 2008 - 7:09 pm
Posted By: Lyndon 169 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://blog.hubspot.com)
Category: Bookmarking

StumbleUpon can be a great asset for your online marketing strategy. Here are 28 tips to take you to SU heaven.

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from dharmesh 169 days ago #

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#13 is a great tip: Learn to say "no". Don't stumble everything that your friends and colleagues send your way.

from Tinu 169 days ago #

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Very true.

from DoshDosh 168 days ago #

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"Having more friends and fans means your stumbles will be seen by more people. Stumbleupon allows you to friend only 200 people, so make sure each one you friend, friends you back."

I don't really see the reasoning behind this tip. I think there's too much of a marketing emphasis on mutual friends, this is not necessary at all if you're looking to use SU to build a brand or market your site/s.

If you're talking about dialog, most of the active SU users I know hardly use the send-to feature (the only feature-based benefit of being mutual friends) and communication lines are still open via SU's internal mailbox.

If you're talking about having your stumbles seen by more people, its really about increasing your fanbase, irregardless of mutual friendship. Stumble visibility is fans not friends.

You befriend users with shared interests because you want to be recommended their stumbles when you click on the toolbar: to remove them because they don't friend you back does not make sense.

from dharmesh 168 days ago #

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Maki: You make a good point -- that visibility of content is a function of fans -- not mutual friends.

However, there might be an argument that "fans" are more likely to remain fans if you are mutual friends -- and there's that 200 limit there, so you can only do this for so many people. So, although unfriending folks that don't friend you back might be extreme, there is a logical case for it because of the limit.

Personally, I just become a fan of folks whose content I like (and not necessarily those who friend me back).

On a related note, I wish there were somewhat standard terms for this whole friend/fan/mutual-friend/stalker theme. Would make it easier to talk about.

from DoshDosh 168 days ago #

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However, there might be an argument that "fans" are more likely to remain fans if you are mutual friends.

And these are probably not the friends worth having. With the size of StumbleUpon's userbase, you don't need this focus on exclusively having mutual friends. It's such a limited way of looking at things.

Friend those whose stumbles you like to make sure you get served up the best information.

It's like subscribing to a blog: Would you only subscribe to someone who subscribes to your blog?

Friend network strategies are a little different on other social websites. But honestly, if you want to be a social media superstar on a service like Stumbleupon, the no. of mutual friends is the last thing you want to sweat about.

Evangelizing the service and driving interested traffic to your profile is far more important.

from dharmesh 168 days ago #

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Maki: I'm convinced. The analogy to blog subscriptions is what got me.

Thanks, as always, for the insightful discussions. I'm a big fan of yours.

from Lyndon 168 days ago #

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"It's like subscribing to a blog: Would you only subscribe to someone who subscribes to your blog?"

I think that's stretching an analogy too far, subscribing to a blog is a completely different dynamic to fiending on stumbleupon.

There are many reasons you do not want to have someone in your friend list who doesn't friend you back. It's not a quesiton of "sweating" it, if it serves no purpose having them as a friend what's the point?

Of course if you are interested in their posts friend them, but you want to be getting into the position of people friending you, being a follower all the time means you are not that influential.

The article doesn't mention the "send-to feature" as it's pretty useless.

People judge you on how many friends and fans you have, if out of 200 of the people you friend a low percentage friend you back, to me that says you don't know what you are talking about and that effects your brand.

I wouldn't say that this is that big a deal though, but something that should be monitored, if no one is friending you bac, something is seriously wrong.

from JasonBartholme 168 days ago #

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Great article guys. I love SU and all the traffic it can send.

from pc4media 168 days ago #

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I find that SU doesn't send much traffic that converts into leads/sales. Anyone else have this experience?

If used right, it does send a crapload of traffic. And I'm sure that has good implications beyond leads and sales. But... if I'm going to spend my time somewhere, I'm not sure it's going to be at SU.

from DoshDosh 167 days ago #

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There are many reasons you do not want to have someone in your friend list who doesn't friend you back. It's not a quesiton of "sweating" it, if it serves no purpose having them as a friend what's the point?

And these reasons are? It is 'sweating' it when you're meticulously checking/rechecking to see if all your friends are mutual on SU. There is a point to being friends (getting served up their stumbled pages) but there is no real solid advantage for mutual friending. And I'm talking purely in the context of online marketing through SU (which is the point of this post)

Of course if you are interested in their posts friend them, but you want to be getting into the position of people friending you, being a follower all the time means you are not that influential.

Not entirely true. Influence does not increase or decrease if you are following many users or not. If that were the case, we would all have a influence ceiling of 200 for SU.

We all know stumble visibility is the fanbase, I've mentioned that in a previous comment. I guess I'm trying to say you don't need mutual friending to build a fanbase or influence.

It depends on how well you market your brand through the social service. I've never conscientously practiced mutual friending (in fact I don't even have 200 friends right now, never did.) but I have over 1,200 fans on SU.

It's all about evangelism, active usage and driving targeted traffic to the profile.

People judge you on how many friends and fans you have, if out of 200 of the people you friend a low percentage friend you back, to me that says you don't know what you are talking about and that effects your brand.

I disagree with that. How would that reflect on a person to say that they don't know what they are talking about? Perhaps this is how you use SU but I don't think many people even bother to click on all 200 profiles in your friends list to see if others have friended you back.

I know you're talking about the fan/friend ratio but since SU has a low limit of 200 friends, it's not a big deal. This is more apparent on services like Twitter, where user can be following tens of thousands with only hundreds following them back.

In fact, I could unfriend every mutual friend on SU right now and I doubt it'll reflect anything bad about my brand or if it'll mean that I don't know what I'm talking about. This article is about being a 'superstar' or a popular profile on SU for marketing purposes and I still maintain that mutual friending is not important at all. Personally, I have done quite well without that focus.