Feb 05

Using StumbleUpon: Top 5 User Guides

Beginner's Track, Social Media, Social Media Classroom 11 Comments »

picture credit to Xarj.net

StumbleUpon is one of those quiet, behind the scenes social networking sites that can drive an amazing amount of traffic to your site and help you build up some great relationships. I’ve known people who actually ended up getting jobs simply by connecting with the right people on the site.

If you’re new to StumbleUpon, it can be rather confusing. It isn’t nearly as straightforward as, say, Twitter, so you’ll need to make sure you understand what you’re doing if you want to really succeed there. Recent changes in some of the policies on the network have caused problems with many users, but overall, it’s still a very useful networking option.

I’ve scanned the internet for recent guides on how to use StumbleUpon successfully and these are the five best ones that I found. Whether you are new to the stumbling scene or have some experience under your belt but could use a little more help, these articles will be very useful. If you have any other great resources, I would love to hear about them!

1. StumbleUpon Etiquette Guide and Best Practices

From Techipedia, this is a very comprehensive article on how to behave yourself on StumbleUpon. Tamar shares her insights on how to be a good stumbler and not annoy everyone who befriends you. All of her points are excellent and everyone using StumbleUpon needs to read this article.

2. How to Get Traffic from StumbleUpon

Short and to the point, this article tells you precisely how to boost your traffic coming in from StumbleUpon. Some of the ideas are what you’ll hear anywhere, but there are a number that are quite useful. Unlike some articles, this one is quite succint, making it easy to read even when you’re short on time.

3. A Travel Blogger’s Guide to Using StumbleUpon

If you’re sick of reading about social networks on SEO blogs, this is a refreshing change! Adam is a young man interested in traveling, who wrote this post on not only how to start up with SU, but how to use it to promote your website, whatever that may be. There are some good, straightforward tips here that beginners and not-so-beginners can use.

4. 3 Essential Tricks to Do with StumbleUpon Toolbar

If you’re getting frustrated with StumbleUpon, this post offers some interesting insights into what you can do to make the entire process easier. There are just three tips, but these are good ones!

5. How to Get Started with StumbleUpon

This is a very long blog post, but well worth the read. Dave Saunders takes you through everything you need to know to get started and then some with this popular social media network. From signing in to changing your password and making friends, it’s all here! Be aware that this is a slightly older post, but I still feel it is a good one for beginners.

What are your tips for using StumbleUpon?

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Jan 07

101 Reasons to Blog

Beginner's Track, Community 32 Comments »

I’ve been preaching like crazy lately about the importance of owning your space, of managing your content and becoming your LandLORD. In other words, to focus on your own Blog. That’s all.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all others are great. But they’re not yours. In the quest of convincing my fellow consultants, business owners and entrepreneurs to create and invest on a blog, I would like to provide 101 reasons why. If you have blogged at all and feel it has helped you in any shape or form, please add your reasons in the comments here.  Today is my birthday! so may your reason(s) become my birthday gift :)   At the end, I’ll compile all the reasons in a Whrrl story.  I’ll start the list:

1) To show my areas of expertise
2) To express my opinion
3) To share knowledge
4) To improve my writing skills
5) To acquire new clients
6) To build communities of practice
7) To help others
8) To publish my ideas
9) To earn revenue
10) To own my space

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Aug 18

How to Increase Your Blog Traffic

Beginner's Track, Social Media Classroom 3 Comments »

It’s rare to find a blogger who doesn’t want more traffic to their blog. However, it’s not always easy to get people to show up on your site and many bloggers get frustrated quickly when they realize that after a month or more of writing, they still only have 30 hits a day.

The thing about blogs is that there are unlimited numbers of them. You need to really stand out to ensure traffic and it is going to take some hard work if you want to be a successful blogger. Are you ready to dig in and work for your traffic? Then here are some steps to follow.

1. Start with a great topic. If you are writing about the mating habits of the Peruvian Giant Centipede, you have a limit as to how many people will read your blog. That’s not to say narrow topics aren’t good, but try to pick one that not only interests you, but plenty of other people, as well.

2. Get into the forums. By going where your readers are, you’ll be able to interact with them. You can respond to other people’s questions and if you are leaving great responses and being helpful, you can bet they will want to read more about you. Just make sure you follow the rules for dropping links to your blog.

3. Yahoo! Answers. This is a fairly underused technique, but it can actually be very effective. If you go to Yahoo! Answers, you’ll be able to offer people some quality solutions to their problems, leaving your URL as the source. Anyone who reads your answer will be able to click through, but the real value lies in getting the status of Best Answer, which means you’ll gain a backlink. The answers are also search engine friendly, so drop in a few keywords as you answer the question.

4. Register with Technorati. It’s worth registering your blog with Technorati since this makes it easily searchable. This is not the biggest search engine for blogs and the rankings there may no longer be of utmost importance, but it can still bring you some pretty decent traffic.

5. Link to others. Many bloggers make the mistake of writing to other bloggers, asking for a link. This works occasionally, but mostly it will just get you branded as a begger. A far better way to go is to link to worthy blog posts . . . you can bet the blogger will notice that you’re talking about him or her. Often, they will reciprocate.

6. Guest blog for others. Even if you just write an extra four blog posts a month and get them onto other people’s blogs, you can gain large amounts of traffic. Pick blogs that are well known, but not extremely popular for the best results. You’ll get a bio line with a link back to your website, which people will click on if you’ve written a great post.

7. Blog about what people want. If you notice that a post on Twitter tactics recieved a big boost in traffic and was bookmarked, then you might want to blog on that topic or a similar one more often.

8. Keep it real. No one wants to read something that sounds like a robot spit it out, so let your real voice shine through. If you are funny, all the better! More people read blogs because of the person behind it than for the information only, so a combination of personality and information will gain you more traffic.

9. Start article marketing. Writing articles and submitting them to top article directories such as EzineArticles can be a very powerful method of bringing in traffic. It takes some time to really start working, but if you keep at it, you’ll see great rewards.

10. Create an online presence. It’s not enough to simply blog away in your own little corner of the web. You need to get out there and be active on social networks, forums and other people’s blogs. Establish your personality online and you will have plenty of people not only reading your blog, but bookmarking it and promoting it for you.

There are many ways to build up your blog traffic, but the key to just about all of them is persistence. It takes time and hard work to build up a quality blog with plenty of readers. If you’re willing to do the time, you’ll see results.

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