StumbleUpon offers a unique way of searching for online content. Users here don’t need to search for snippets of information by logging on to any search engine. Instead, they just mark their list of preferences (called tagging) that clearly lists topics/themes that interest them. Thereafter, StumbleUpon itself creates a stream of the websites and the latest online content (blogs) that is available with respect to these preferences. This stream of websites is available to the user in a channel surfing mode and he/she is at liberty to click on any one of them.

Adding Yourself In StumbleUpon - Getting Started

Just download the StumbleUpon toolbar from its website. Check if your website is already listed there. If it isn’t, start tagging your website, yourself and start giving it positive reviews by clicking the ‘Thumbs Up’ sign. You can repeat this exercise and ask a few of your friends and family members to do the same. This will help to get your website enlisted within the StumbleUpon database. Once your website is listed, the database will automatically include it in its streams for users who have marked preferences similar to your website’s theme/content. This essentially means that once your website is part of StumbleUpon, you are almost guaranteed a certain number of online visitors.

Increasing Traffic

Stumble Upon is very efficient at directing loads of traffic towards your website. If your website is stumbled even once (i.e. is streamed within StumbleUpon), you will regularly start getting new visitors, every day. The StumbleUpon community has members from all over the world. This gives your site/blog a global audience. However, this traffic may also consist of some casual browsers. The reason lies in the way StumbleUpon functions — the stream it creates sometimes includes just the closest matches to the list of choices ticked by a user. Nonetheless, addition of volume to your site’s traffic is assured. Web traffic, even if it doesn’t include serious browsers helps in the following ways:

• With repeated visits, your site’s credibility is boosted. Search engines like Google assign a PageRank based upon calculations that include the density of visitors to a site, irrespective of the type of visitors
• Every time a few users click on your site that is being streamed in StumbleUpon, its chances of getting streamed again multiply exponentially

Sustaining StumbleUpon Traffic

Users of StumbleUpon don’t have much time to judge your website and usually make decisions with just a glance at your website. Therefore, it makes sense to present your website in such a way that browsers do ‘stumble’ on it and don’t choose some other site. This is the only way of guaranteeing that you will continue to benefit from StumbleUpon. Following are some basic tips to help you make your website ideal for StumbleUpon’s streaming:

• Avoid Ads: Browsers will have a glimpse of your site and make an instant decision. This restricted time span shouldn’t be shared with too many advertisements on your webpages.
• Design-centric: Your site has to literally capture the browser’s attention. This is best done by using graphic modes of display such as images, photos and related web-based art forms. 
• Offer Subscriptions: Your website/blog should immediately prompt the visitors to sign-up for RSS Feeds, Newsletters or Free subscriptions.

Besides this, make sure that your site has a warm and friendly way of welcoming the visitors. Highlight any sort of freebies that you might be offering — this is an easy trick to make visitors click on your site, even if its content/theme isn’t an exact match.

Twitter is a social messaging/networking platform that has gained an iconic status in the online community in a very short time. There are new members being added to it, every few hours. Twitter’s appeal lies in its ability to promote communication among its members and visitors. There are some simple ways through which you too can use Twitter to increase the traffic on your site.

Getting Connected

Twitter enlists thousands of members belonging to various fields of interest. Members have the freedom of submitting their respective URLs, which are highlighted under their usernames. Whenever, something significant or interesting happens, one Twitter member communicates it to the other via the usual web interface or IMs and SMS. You too can do the same. When you do this, some of the members searching for that piece of information are bound to click on your listed URL — ensuring that your website’s theme gets circulated.

Making Followers

Twitter has been hailed as a breakthrough social media site for one particular reason — it promotes healthy interaction among people and the most commonly-used tool for this purpose is creating tweets (posts).
   

• Make your posts interesting and most importantly — make them relevant and give them a personal perspective. Make sure that your don’t just copy paste content from the web.  Once you have gained the reputation of posting tweets that always invite responses, your fan base will gradually increase.
• Twitter members are connected in such a way that even if you have an above-average reputation, you will be highlighted. This directly adds to your website’s traffic. Sometimes you will have to reciprocate the favor. So don’t turn down opportunities for visiting sites/blogs of other members, try promoting them too. This is how Twitter works — reciprocating isn’t a choice.
• Developing a network on Twitter isn’t an overnight exercise. It takes time but the benefits surpass the efforts. Ensure that you develop a sense of bonding with your followers and keep in touch with them. Remember — every Twitter member is likely to promote your site/blog to at least five other browsers.

Using Twitterfeed

You can use unique tools like the ‘Twitterfeed’ that is capable of automatically posting small snippets of information related to the theme of your website or even ‘teasers’ from recently updated content or reviews/blogs posted on your site to Twitter every few hours. This means that every few hours, you are guaranteed of engaging the attention of at least a few hundred people and some of them are bound to visit your site.

Staying Updated (feedreader)

You have the choice of enlisting yourself for following various online publications that provide their content for free. There is a Twitter option (feedreader) wherein — every time there is some addition on these sites, Twitter will send a small RSS feed. This can be used for continuously getting new ideas for creating contemporary content on your site/blog. The RSS feeds can be personalized in your Twitter ‘feedreader’ and you can seek reference from as many websites you want.

Invite Traffic With Tweet-Out

Once you start networking with people with similar mindsets and begin making some online friends, try asking for some personal favors. Let us assume that your site is sports-centric and you have a fellow Twitter member who deals in sports-based nutrition. Now, you can request him/her to insert a link of your website in his/her tweets, which will bring in some online visitors towards you without compromising on his/her web traffic.

Additional Benefits

Twitter can even help you to improve your website. There many experts related to website promotion and designing that are a part of the Twitter family (some of them are permanently listed in ‘twittersphere’). You can request them to review your site and send their recommendations. This way you can benefit for free!