David Jeffries

If you haven't heard of StumbleUpon yet then go to their website, download the toolbar and check it out. This post assumes that you know what it's all about.

If you're a blogger there's a good chance you have seen the effects of being 'stumbled' which is pretty much a huge increase in traffic, comments, and RSS subscribers. If you look at the image, you will notice two distinct spikes that are the result of two posts being stumbled. These two stumbles have totaled over 10,000 unique visits in less than two days. How did I do it? Read on.

The first stumble

The first stumble was from the post, Some PHP Abilities You May Not Know About, which has so far brought in over 4,000 unique visitors.  Most StumbleUpon users are tech-savvy, so it's no surprise that this post got fairly popular quite quickly.  Lets highlight some other characteristics of this post.

• It's in a list format
• Shows real-world usage
• There is interesting information that can be reused by readers

The second stumble

The second stumble was from the post, A Stuck Pixel On My LG L226WTX, which was much more popular than the PHP post. This post hit 7,000 uniques on the day it was first on StumbleUpon.  This post was much more popular on SU than the other post because while SU users are tech-savvy, there are only so many interested in programming.  That's the thing about StumbleUpon, it matches people's likes to webpages really well.  So while there's quite a few people with "PHP" as one of their likes, there are way more with "computer," or "programming" as their likes (the two categories that most visitors had for the stuck pixel article).  Basically a category with a wider audience = higher chance of your site being viewed.  Now again, lets look at some of the things this post had.

• First hand experience
• Info that can help the reader
• Info worth saving for later reference

Reasons you will get stumbled

So by looking at the lessons learned from the two stumbles, we can determine the common factors, and find out a foolproof method to getting your website stumbled.  Here are my three tips for getting stumbled:

1. Use lists

People love lists.  They're easy to read, they convey a lot of information in a small format, and are easy to reference.  It's easier for a reader to scan to the part of the list they're interested in than to scan an article full of text digging for some piece of information.

2. Write information that is valuable enough to save

People want information that they can use.  In both cases, the PHP and the stuck pixel article, there was information that can be reused, and will be reused by readers.  If the post tells your audience how to do something they didn't know about, or how to do something better, they will like it much more as it affects them directly.

3.  Prove it

Show to the reader how the information can be useful to them.  Prove that what you're writing about actually works, and explain to the reader how they can recreate/reuse the information.  Use pictures, or examples so it at least looks like you know what you're talking about.  Try to stay away from lengthly descriptions, as large blocks of text can be hard to read and may bore your readers.  Just make your point, and move on.

It all comes down to good content

In the end, you have got to have excellent content, and you have to make the reader say to themselves, "cool, I like this!"  You need to have something that sets you apart from every other blog out there.  So use these tips, write some awesome content, and build some traffic!  Let me know your success with SU in the comments.