Five Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling

I previously wrote an extensive guide to StumbleUpon, which gave a thorough introduction to using StumbleUpon as a means to direct massive traffic towards your website.

The article was pretty well received and I’ve gotten several questions from bloggers over the past two months.

The question I was asked the most often, was how to build up your own StumbleUpon network of friends, who might help to stumble your blog posts or webpages whenever interesting articles were to appear.

Why would you want to build up your StumbleUpon network or profile? As mentioned in my previous post, the number of StumbleUpon users who stumble your webpages has an effect in how much traffic you will receive in the long run.

The other obvious benefit to having many friends is that your StumbleUpon experience will be enriched and more fulfilling. Sharing websites with friends through StumbleUpon is truly a fun way to interact with the world wide web.

As I will mention in detail later on, the altruistic sharing of websites is the best way to appreciate the full value of StumbleUpon and how it adds value to the experiences of other users.

Five Simple Ways to Grow your StumbleUpon Network

In response to the questions that I’ve received, I’ve listed the five main ways you can use to expand your StumbleUpon network of friends:

1. Be a StumbleUpon evangelist. Write a blog post or article about StumbleUpon and introduce StumbleUpon to your readers. You can also try recommending Stumble Upon to friends who have never used it before. Remember to let them know your StumbleUpon profile so they can add you as their first friend.




2. Connect with fellow bloggers who are also StumbleUpon users. If you recognize their avatars on StumbleUpon, send them a message and add them as a friend.

   Publish your StumbleUpon profile on your blog and start to consistently stumble the articles of bloggers you love.

   This will allow you to not only connect with the blogger in question, but also the readers of the same blog, who are very likely to be bloggers themselves.




3. Find StumbleUpon users with similar interests. When you thumbs up any article, click on the discussion bubble to see who else likes it. Add the users who have similar interests as your friends or send them a private message to say hi.




4. Practice Reciprocal Befriending. This involves adding someone as a friend in return for that user to add you as a friend. While this is a very fast way to build up a network of friends, it is purely a short-term method because StumbleUpon has a restriction on the number of friends you can add.

   250 is the maximum figure and obviously reciprocal befriending cannot move your network beyond this point. I also believe that users who befriend you naturally because of similar interests, instead of a reciprocal arrangement, are more likely to interact with you and your stumbles in the long run.




5. Be a very active StumbleUpon user. Stumble and submit webpages as much as you can. This is the natural way of building up a network of friends and is the best for longterm growth.

   Usually StumbleUpon users will see who has stumbled a similar article and some of them are likely to add you as a friend.

   This method might be a little slow, but I like it because this attracts StumbleUpon friends with similar interests. They might be likely to stumble the sites you stumble as well.

My Relationship with StumbleUpon so far..

I must confess that I initially started using StumbleUpon solely as a tool to drive traffic towards my websites. Motivated by the desire for sheer traffic, I’ve participated in reciprocal stumble exchanges, which were beneficial to some extent.

After writing my article, I’ve gradually started having a different perspective of StumbleUpon, largely because of my increasing usage of the stumble toolbar to casually surf the net.

I enjoyed discovering unique websites and personalities, particularly through the various Stumble categories and soon moved away from the notion that StumbleUpon was only an excellent social media traffic tool for webmasters.

I came to appreciate the various features of StumbleUpon and developed a deeper understanding of how StumbleUpon is a fairly important tool that should be used for the benefit not just oneself but others as well.

Altruistic Stumbling or Sharing the Power of StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon a tool that is incredibly powerful. Able to channel hundreds or thousands of real individuals to a website based on the simple approval of others, the potential of StumbleUpon is truly staggering if comprehended in full.

Stripped down to a minimal form, StumbleUpon is a vessel that can be used to support the creativity of others or preserve the value of certain websites which are truly useful to the general public.

There can really be no decree that is simpler than this: If you feel that a specific webpage or blog post is important and deserves to be seen or read by others, please stumble it.

There is no easier way to reward another blogger for his or her effort in writing that well researched article, the writer for composing that heart-felt story, the photographer for hours spent taking the perfect photo, the political enthusiast who offers a voice of opposition towards injustice and even the humble programmer or designer who gives away wonderfully useful Wordpress plugins and templates for free.

These concerted efforts on your part help to sustain and expand StumbleUpon’s inventory of websites and allows you to share with others what you have enjoyed. This is the true meaning of participating in a online social network where your editorial voice is counted.

Contributing to the Experiences of Others: Stumbling with Friends

We are all part of a cyberspace that is connected through hyperlinks, images and words which interactively feed off one another.

StumbleUpon mashes all these interconnected elements together and throws it out in the form of a webpage which appears before us whenever we press that 'Stumble‘ button.

This connection between you and that particular webpage was not born from nothing. It came from others who deemed the website worthy of future viewing.

In a similar fashion, you can very easily add value to the experiences of others by suggesting and stumbling websites which you fancy.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, this will naturally lead to a larger network of friends and fans, who will follow your stumbles because you are providing interesting and valuable content which enriches their online experience.

And so a final plea: If you ever come across an interesting website or brilliant blog post by another blogger, don’t hesitate to stumble it and share it with others. I’m sure that everyone would really appreciate your efforts.

I thought it’ll be fitting to put up a link to my StumbleUpon profile just in case any of you would like to track my stumbles.

If you’ve got one too, feel free to leave a comment with the URL linking to your profile, so we can all check it out and learn more about the sites you like. -)