StumbleUpon seems to be everyone’s favorite social media site these days. One of the reasons to love SU is its active community of users. As a part of that community, being a great “friend” to other users can enhance everyone’s experience with StumbleUpon. Here is a quick look at 10 ways to be a better friend to other users.
1. Add as friends those who actively stumble your submissions, stumble your pages, and/or those who have added you as a friend. Because of SU’s limit on the number of friends that you can have, you may not be able to add everyone that adds you, but you should at least make an effort to add those that help you in one way or another.
2. Visit the websites/blogs of your friends and stumble the good stuff. As a friend, you should ideally be eager to stumble the content of others, which of course will help them by sending visitors their way. I think we all appreciate friends that aren’t in it just for their own purposes. By looking out for your friends and being ready and willing to give them a hand (or a thumb in this case), you will show your friends that you truly want them to benefit.
3. Thumb up the pages sent to you by your friends (if the content is worthy). One of StumbleUpon’s unique features is its system of sharing content easily without involving email. Just by using the toolbar you can share and receive content. When your friends are sending something your way, be willing to give it a thumbs up if you like and appreciate the content. More than likely, others will return the favor when you share something with them.
4. Be an active user. As with other social media websites, StumbleUpon has a wide variety of activity from its users. Some people seem like they must be using SU 24 hours a day, while others only use the site on rare occasions. By being an active user you will obviously be more involved in the networking that is going on, and you can be more valuable to your friends. Especially with the limit of friends that can be added, no one wants to have friends that haven’t touched SU in months.
5. Share content with friends if you think they will appreciate it. StumbleUpon has an incredible audience of users that love to find high-quality content in their areas of interest. If you come across something that you think one of your friends would appreciate, why not share it with them? Sharing your own content is practiced by many StumbleUpon users and can be beneficial for everyone involved if you are sharing content that is appreciated by your friends.
6. Don’t go overboard with the share feature. One of the reasons I like SU’s share feature more than others is because it really doesn’t seem to be abused. I have no problem at all receiving content from friends, but with a large number of friends this could add up in a hurry if abused. Being a good friend does not involve sharing every post you publish on your blog with all of your friends.
7. Submit reveiws of other users. The SU review system is a great way to show friends that you care by writing something positive about them and adding a thumbs up. Everybody likes to have something nice said about them, so this is definitely a way to win the favor of your friends.
8. Tag submissions appropriately. StumbleUpon users are generally pretty considerate when compared to users of some other social media sites, but some of them can get very bothered if they think a submission is tagged inappropriately. StumbleUpon has many more tags than most other social media sites, so it forces users to be a bit more specific. By choosing tags carefully you will help users to find content that they like and you will help the owner of the content you submit by sending targeted visitors.
9. Follow the activities/stumbles of your friends. Every StumbleUpon user likes to see others getting involved with the content that they have submitted. By looking at what your friends have submitted you can find great content and you can also support the efforts of your friends.
10. Communicate with your friends through SU’s email system. One of the nice features of StumbleUpon is that you can easily send messages through the profile pages of other users. This is a great way to enhance the networking aspect of SU and to build the relationships that you make there.
Originally Published February 26th, 2008
Thanks for the link Steven, and for writing such a great and helpful article.
Hey Steven,
Great article. In particular, I realized that I haven’t been reviewing my SU friends enough. I can see that definitely being a great way to say thanks to people you really appreciate.
Keep up the great writing,
- Mason
There seems to be more to being an active Stubmler than just giving lots of thumbs ups.
I am really bad at Stumbling others stumbles unless the stumbles are sent to me. I am also trying to get better at doing reviews of other stumblers.
Tay,
You’re welcome. Thanks for commenting.
Mason,
Yes, I haven’t either. Writing this article inspired me and I did a bunch of reviews in the last few days, but still a long way to go.
Adam,
I agree, it’s a lot more than just using the thumbs up. I tend to forget about looking at friends’ stumbles most of the time, but when I do I find some good stuff.
I really like “Stumble favorites of friends” feature, especially when I only have a few minutes of procrastination. Since most of my SU friends have similar interests, it helps to quickly find something interesting.
My problem with the share feature isn’t that people are going overboard but they aren’t sharing enough. It’s easy enough to dismiss a share and I’ll probably give you a thumbs up, so go ahead and share something, people!
I especially like Stumble Favorites of Friends. Helps focus on stuff that is worth seeing. It’s also a good indicator if someone doesn’t have similar interests. If the same person points to too many things that I have no interest in, I will unfriend them, not because i don’t like them, but because they’re clogging up what’s otherwise a great tool for me.
Next I want to get better at my Stumble descriptions, and start adding graphics.
Stumble is really great. It seems to help newer blogs by sending some traffic as opposed to being an all or nothing type system. Sending to a friend is also very useful.
Dustin,
Yeah, I usually only get a few shared links each day.
Eric,
I think writing a review rather than cutting and pasting can help you to stand out a bit.
Tom,
Definitely. It’s about the only social media site that sends decent traffic without being all or nothing.
All good pieces of advice in your article. Think the tagging is very important. There was a really great news story today that tagged under “meteorology”. It would’ve probably picked up more interest had someone just taken the time to choose “news” instead.
Chris,
Thanks for your comment. I agree, tagging can play a role in how many people see the page.
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[...] to get, the people behind the traffic are often easily forgotten. So, read Steven’s “10 Ways to Be a Good StumbleUpon Friend” and next time one of your posts gets stumbled, remember that those stat numbers are actual [...]
Make friends at stumbleupon, stumble their blog, do not make stumble as a way to just make profits. Dont be selfish, make friends with everyone and you’ll see, an opportunity will come and dont forget to share it with your friends.
[...] you have nothing in common it’s really a pointless exercise. It’s far better to become StumbleUpon friends with people who share similar interests to you and try to make genuine lasting [...]
You mentioned good tagging. Which would be considered better tagging.
1)Choosing appropriate tags that stumble already has many sites about.
2)Coming up with new tags that are related to the site or choosing tags that have few other sites on it so the page stands out better
ADAC,
I think either approach would be acceptable as long as the tag is a good fit for the content. I typically use general tags because they seem to send a bit more traffic, but I think you bring up a good point that choosing a less common tag could make the page stand out more. However, from my experience, tags that aren’t very popular just don’t send much traffic.
I’m pretty new to this, but on my sites I”ve been using 2-3 general tags and then looking for related tags on pages with only a few other sites on it. Often I’ve found tag pages with a PR2-4.
While stumble does use the “NoFollow” I’ve also noticed that these tag pages show up in my Google webmaster tools, leading me to believe they do have value with Google.
[...] like StumbleUpon. My website gets many visits from there. But as many ( blahblahtech and traffikd ) I have an issue with the friends limit. Said briefly you can be fan of at most 200 people. After [...]
[...] flow in to posts that you published a year ago, but that’s not likely with social media. StumbleUpon is about the only social media site that will still send traffic months after a submission, but [...]
This is very well explained. Thanks. It is really helpful to have someone telling us how things work out.
Nice explaination! i totally lost to work it out. But now i manage it! thanks for the clear explain!
I registered on StumbleUpon but was never really active because I didn’t quite understand how the whole system works. You’re post made it clearer tho. thanks!