It’s like the DaVinci Code, only it’s actually a mystery. The enigmatic nature of StumbleUpon tends to create people who use it religiously in the hope of those viral hits or people who abandon it entirely as a waste of time.
The biggest criticism I’ve heard about StumbleUpon is not about it’s inherent randomness but the fact that it’s traffic is not engaged. They flick on by, apparently. Hundreds of hits and no comments. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret about comments. Some blogs naturally lend themselves to comments. Like Woogsworld. That place is like comment heaven. Because it’s so funny and witty and inclusive and welcoming. And people want to be a part of that. And even if you have nothing to say, you probably want to say something anyway. Disqus helps this along, but it would be the same if Mrs Woog was using the freaking archaic blogger comment system.

But some blogs aren’t comment heaven. And only on certain pillar posts will you realise that there is a far larger community attached to the blog than you previously realised. I feel that way about my blog. I get alot of comments, which I LOVE. But far more people read than comment, and often I hear people say that they feel out of place commenting because they are not a blogger or they just don’t have time. But it doesn’t mean they aren’t engaged. It just means they aren’t always visible.

And some of the features of StumbleUpon do breed engagement. If people accept posts to be emailed to them, then you can directly email people who follow you posts that they think you will find interesting. When people do this right and do it respectfully, it is awesome. I actually look forward to every StumbleUpon email I receive from Jessica Gottlieb because she always shares fascinating stuff. Just like how the StumbelUpon toolbar gives you the option of sharing not just on StumbleUpon but on other social networks as well.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself.

First things first.

Sign Up. Sign up and create an actual profile – don’t scrimp in this area. The key to bigger traffic numbers is bigger followers. No one is going to follow you if you don’t look interesting. You wouldn’t be an egg on twitter so don’t be a sillouhette on StumbleUpon.

Start following people who interest you. And start sharing things that interest you. Not just your stuff. For every 1 post of yours you share you should be sharing 10 things from other people. I don’t always do this, but I should. Because it vastly improves your impact.

If you don’t download the StumbleUpon toolbar, you might as well not bother because the whole thing would be far too clunky to utilise. So do it.

If you want others to use the StumbleUpon toolbar as well, making it easier to thumbs up your posts and share on other networks you can use the StumbleUpon url shortener – su.pr which will also track clickthroughs and additional traffic you’ve been sent.

Certain categories are always going to do well – like things people really want – humour and bargains.

And after all of that, what are you left with? What’s the bottom line?

You are not going to see maximum impact by stumbling yourself, it’s much better if other people do it for you. But posts that I stumble can get an additional zero (yes, sometimes it’s zero) to 500 hits.

The problem with using su.pr as a shortener is that google analytics treats click throughs from su.pr (when you’ve shared on twitter and facebook) the same as organic StumbleUpon traffic so it’s hard for me to actually demonstrate how engaged/not engaged the stumbleupon traffic is. Which is why I’m thinking about ditching the shortener altogether.

In general su.pr and StumbleUpon traffic when lumped together do about 10% worse than the site average. So people stay on the page a little bit less and the bounce rate is a teensy bit higher. But that’s kind of to be expected when I’m sharing a post through facebook and twitter because people read the post and then go on their merry way.

Looking at a post that I got a whole lot of organic StumbleUpon traffic from it tells me a similar story. The stats are pretty average. Which means that StumbleUpon users are sticking around as long as anybody else. If I drill down to time spent on the page on any given day it tells me a very interesting story. It has days where there is zero time which basically means people are just flicking on by not looking at anything, and then there are a few peaks where all of a sudden the average time on the site is 7 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 30 minutes. Which says to me that sure there are a good proportion of people who flick through but every now and then I catch somebody’s surfing eye and they stick around. Which is my goal. To have people stick around long enough so I can lure them into my blogging web.

Is it worth it? Only if you have the time to put into it. And alot of people don’t have the time. But it also has other uses. Do what I do. If you want to be part of a social media network but you think gee I don’t have the time. Multi-task that social media network’s ass off. So if you are going to be on StumbleUpon use it as a bookmarking tool as well. Which you can then use to save all of the tasty bits of the internet you want to share on facebook or twitter. Don’t know what to write about or stuck for inspiration? Head over to StumbleUpon and stumble topics and see what pops up. You never know, given enough time it’s beautiful randomness might even grow on you.

P.S. Totally follow me on StumbleUpon.