I’m kind of excited to re-discover StumbleUpon. I tried it and used it almost religiously about 3 years ago… since then I must have forgot about it when I moved to Vista or something. Not sure.
Anyways, today, while re-signing up for StumbleUpon I noticed how much more they have to offer their users. They’ve created an ingenious web marketing avenue to advertise your site to targeted individuals.
Instant trust factor.
This is the ingenious part. People don’t have to see your ad and click on it like in AdWords or Facebook Ads.
The users of StumbleUpon click “Stumble!” on their toolbar and StumbleUpon sends them to a site that matches their interests. The service has already established a trust factor with its users, so by posting your own site you can capitilize on that trust.
Word to the wise
Be ready for an onslaught of “thumbs downs” if you haven’t done your homework on who your target audience really is or if your site is too “sales-y”. Make sure you are deliver value to the people who come to your site.
Use it for fun
- It learns about you - teach it what you like to see (kind of like last.fm does for music). It gets “smarter” as you give web pages thumbs up or thumbs down.
- Constant new content and great sites appear more frequently as they get more thumbs up. (I’ve been entirely impressed with the web sites I’ve discovered just this past week.)
- Send to a friend has never been easier when you find a site you just have to show them. Just click on the “Send to” button and go.
