7 Tips to Improve Your Stumble Upon Experience
2008 has been the year that I have delved more into online social media apps. The two main reasons for this was curiosity and to connect with like-minded ‘internetty’ type people. I currently dabble with 5-6 Social Media apps daily - one of these is Stumble Upon.
What is Stumble Upon?
Stumble Upon is a social bookmarking online site that allows you to share websites with friends using the Stumble Upon browser toolbar. If you like a website you’re looking at, simply press the “Thumbs Up” button; if you don’t like it, “Thumbs Down”. If it’s exceptional or you’d like to add your opinion on the site for others to see, press the review button to leave a comment.
The name “Stumble Upon” is derived from the ability to Stumble through websites that are filtered via keywords/tags/categories that you have selected. For example, some of the categories that I have opted-in for are technology, science, internet and photography. So when I press the Stumble! button, it will show me websites that other people have bookmarked that are in these categories.
For me, this is more efficient than finding a website, then having to copy and paste into an email - with Stumble Upon I can do this all within a browser. It also provides the extra advantage of keeping a history of your favorite sites and sites that you liked.
The Benefits of Stumble Upon
I must say that the Stumble Upon experience has been very rewarding; I’ve connected up with similar minded people and discovered some amazing websites. It’s also given me an avenue to promote my own blogs a little too.
My Stumble Upon Statistics @ Aug 2008
Even though I signed up last year, I’ve only been actively using Stumble Upon for 3 months. My current stats of today are:
- Likes 1,920 pages
- Likes 94 videos
- Likes 136 photos
- Has 158 fans
- Received 40 reviews
The tally above is evidence that once you’ve started Stumbling it hard to stop! 
7 Tips for New Stumble Upon Users / Stumblers
I’ve asked a couple of my good Stumble friends to help me compile a list of tips for newbies. This list was created to make your Stumble Upon experience as rewarding and effective as possible from the onset.
1. Don’t spam others with your own website content: this advice was consistent amongst all my friends - nobody likes spam of any sort, regardless of how good it is. Keep promotion of your own site to at max 1 per day. Even this may cause others to block you so be careful.
2. Don’t just thumbs up your own website: people on Stumbe Upon are quite web savvy and can generally tell a person’s movitivations by what they bookmark/thumbs up. If people see a list of Stumbles with the same domain name, don’t expect to make a lot of friends or get fans fast. Stumble Upon is a community trying to build up a quality collection of website links and users - thumbing your own all the time is contrary to this.
3. Incorporate Stumble Upon into your Daily Website surfing routine: We all ues the web. Using Stumble Upon just makes the process more intelligent especially for keeping a repository of favorite sites. So when you find something you like or don’t like, make sure you Thumbs Up or Down and use the “Send to” feature to send to Stumbler friends. Before you know it, it’ll become automatic. I try to bookmark and thumbs up at least 10 per day.
4. Stumble through your friends favorites daily: If you’ve made some friends on Stumble, press the friends button then you’ll see that your Stumble Button will from that point just stumble through your friends favorites. Don’t forget to review the stuff you really like as well.
5. Make meaningful friendships: I must admit when I first joined SU, I was adding people like there was no tomorrow. I am now far more selective and only add people who genuinely want to be a friend, share similar tastes in websites and are active. This way I know that my Stumbles aren’t going into an abyss when I send cool links across.
Some great friends that I’ve made on Stumble Upon and people who’ve contributed to this post are:
- Dominic (http://domfosnz.stumbleupon.com)
- TopSurf (http://topsurf.stumbleupon.com)
- Lainie (http://lainiep.stumbleupon.com)
- Chris (http://u02cdh.stumbleupon.com)
- Abbiejoice (http://abbiejoice.stumbleupon.com)
Stumble through their pages and I guarantee you’ll see some interesting stuff!
Oh and Add Me if you haven’t already 
(mrgadgetoz.stumbleupon.com)
6. Nurture relationships on Stumble Upon: Once you’ve made a friend, don’t just leave them there alone! I recommend you send them a welcome message then look out for their new stumbles. Send stuff that you know that they will particularly be interested in and you’ll find in most cases they will reciprocate. I find another way to show you value someone’s contributions on Stumble Upon is to write a review on their Stumble Upon profile. It’s amazing how far a sentence or two can go. Try it.
7. Personalize your profile: Get a decent headshot or interesting photo to set you apart from the pack. Update your likes and add some information about yourself. This always makes someone’s Stumble Upon page more interesting. And of course, change up the color scheme to suit your style. We all know how interesting it is to stare at a default-white profile…NOT!
At the end of the day, remember that Stumble Upon is a community that seeks to gather a collection of quality websites. Align yourself with this cause and have fun!
Would love to hear if you have any more tips and advice. Please add your comment below
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10 Responses to “7 Tips to Improve Your Stumble Upon Experience”
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Sweet….I have been all the more active on SU after their makeover, the beta page makes you want to visit your profile..
And I added all of those people to my friends list ^_^
Solid article for us new-to-stumble people. And I never noticed the ’stumble friends fav’s button before, I’ll have to check it out.
Thanks!
Well I was going to give a thumbs up until I saw I wasn’t listed as a friend!
Nice post. Hope you cover how other social networking sites work.
Robbo
Great easy explanation, this will definatelly build stumblers
good post…just added you on stumbleupon friendlist…
Forget Traffic Exchanges.
Social bookmarking sites offers a greater efficiency of marketing, networking and exposure… plus, you get a more interesting experience.
Nice article! Question: I know that I’m getting more reviews than are reflected in my SU stats. Can I have anything done about that?
Thanks.
I love SU…definitely way better than Digg when it comes to pulling in sustainable traffic. These are very helpful tips for any beginners. Great post!
[...] Some great reviews such as by MrGadgetOz on tips for using StumbleUpon or try an ode to [...]
great review of stumble MrGadget some good tips.
Am still new to tagging, digging, stumbling….