StumbleUpon can be a great tool for driving traffic to your blog or website, the problem is it doesn’t stay long.
We talk about vanity stats a lot in social media marketing. You’ll find people all over the internet ready to rap your knuckles at the mere mention of the amount of followers or Likes you have. Yes, vanity stats are in most cases just that, we look at them and we feel good even though they offer no real value alone.
What’s the problem with StumbleUpon? Watch below To find out
I know all about vanity stats and I try and steer away from them but every now and then I’m dragged back in. This happened to me recently with StumbleUpon. I stopped posting links to my blog posts on social bookmarking site StumbleUpon years ago but somehow I fell off the wagon. As soon as I caught myself at it I stopped but it wasn’t until I looked at my Google analytics that I really remembered why.
If you haven’t used StumbleUpon as a visitor before I’d encourage you to do so. You’ll find lots of amazing content there. When you see something you like you may stop and browse for a moment but in most cases you stumble on to the next link, and the next, and the next. And that’s the problem.
Traffic arriving on my site from StumbleUpon was staying for 0.001 seconds. Long enough for them to glance at the page and click the stumble button. It was also bouncy, they arrived and left without a look at anywhere else on my site.
[Tweet “It’s easy to manufacture high statistics for your site with StumbleUpon but don’t get hooked on it.”]
It’s easy to manufacture high statistics for your site with StumbleUpon but don’t get hooked on it. The real traffic is the traffic that builds loyalty and sells. It’s worth taking a bit of time to look at your Google analytics, look at not just which sites drive the most traffic but how long people stay on your site when they arrive. Is it long enough to read your content? Do they look at more than one page?
Looking at my own stats I notice that Facebook is not just the biggest referrer, but the average time spent on pages from people who visit from Facebook is far higher than any other network. It’s clear I should be spending more time on Facebook, nurturing the community there and less time on sites like StumbleUpon.
So I pledge to avoid StumbleUpon, no matter how tempting it is to submit my links. Will you too?
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