How to Market Your Book with StumbleUpon Pt. 1

This is the first post of a two-part article on how to use StumbleUpon to market your book.  In the first part, I’m going to talk about what StumbleUpon is and how it can drive visitors to your site.  In the second part, I’ll talk about how to get people to “Stumble” your site naturally and how to convert visitors into book buyers (yeah, you knew there was a reason you were reading this article).

First off, StumbleUpon is one of the social bookmarking sites that has really taken off this past year.  Members click a “Stumble” button and are delivered to sites in the StumbleUpon database, and if a visitor gives a thumbs up to a new site, it’s then entered into the collection for other users to stumble upon (hence the name, eh?). 

Stumblers can Stumble (this is turning into a tongue twister) by category.  For example, if they choose Science Fiction, they’ll land on random sites that other folks have Stumbled and labeled as SciFi. 

You may be getting an inkling of how this can work to bring visitors to your site.  If someone Stumbles you, your site will enter into the StumbleUpon collection, and in the future, others will Stumble across it. 

Let’s break down how the program works from the user side and from the marketer side (AKA the person who is hoping to get free traffic from StumbleUpon).

How StumbleUpon Works from the User Perspective:

  1. You visit StumbleUpon and create an account.
  2. You download the toolbar, which then appears at the top of your browser for easy access.
  3. You set up your preferences, i.e. choose the categories of pages you’re interested in seeing when you click “Stumble.”
  4. You can rate the site you’re dropped off at with a thumbs up or thumbs down or even review the site.
  5. You can join groups with similar interests, Stumble other Stumblers, add friends, etc. etc.  The more people who review you, friend you, and thumbs up your home page, the more people that will be paying attention to what you’re Stumbling.  Friends may even send you links to cool pages to check out (and you can do the same for them).

How StumbleUpon Works (the Ideal Scenario) to Send Visitors Your Site

  1. A StumbleUpon user visits your site and gives it a thumbs up, a review, and tags it with the appropriate category labels (the right label is key, as this will bring you targeted Stumblers, people actively seeking sites in your niche).
  2. That Stumbler is popular and has many friends watching what he/she Stumbles, so they also visit your site.
  3. Many of them like what they see and give your site a thumbs up. 
  4. Since more people are thumbing up, reviewing, etc., your site will become more highly ranked in the StumbleUpon database, so more people will land on it when they choose to Stumble.  (If just one person without many contacts Stumbles your site, you’ll probably only get a few visitors, but if a big dog Stumbles it and lots of others follow suit, you can get hundreds or even thousands of free visitors a month in perpetuity).

That should give you an idea how StumbleUpon works.  If anything is murky here, you can also read the company’s official explanation on How StumbleUpon Works.  Of course, the best way to get a feel for the program is by signing up yourself.

In the next post, I’m going to cover how you as an author looking to promote your book can specifically use this tool to your advantage.  In the meantime, you may want to check out the following posts on other people’s blogs:

5 Tactics For Driving Traffic From StumbleUpon

How to Increase StumbleUpon Traffic

Go on to How to Market Your Book with StumbleUpon Pt. 2

August 1, 2007 | Filed Under Social Media 

Comments

Leave a Reply