Back in the day to find cool stuff you just “surfed the Internet.”. You randomly searched, clicked, clicked, go back, searched… It was actually a bit of work to surf and find good stuff. The most popular posts and images were passed around in mass emails which quickly became annoying.

Now, you can just Stumble.

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is a social sharing service that offers a great way to share content with the masses and “surf” easier with a few clicks of a button.

How does StumbleUpon work?

When a person (stumbler) enjoys a post, they “stumble it” by submitting it via the post’s Stumble button or by “thumbs up” on their StumbleUpon toolbar. The first person to do this “discovers” the post for StumbleUpon. They are asked what category it fits in, if it’s safe for work, and an optional review.

If you really like a post, I recommend reviewing it as it seems more likely others will find it.

Once discovered the post goes into a queue to be submitted to StumbleUpon. It will decide if the post is accepted or not. If not, it just sits there with 1-0 views (depressing). If it goes into the database, then someone “random stumbling” may see it pop up. The more people thumbs up a post that pops up randomly, the better it does and EVEN MORE people see it!

You can also share with your Stumble followers.

Like… this video is hilarious and it’s something I’d stumble under humor and music.  Now just replace “Shufflin’” with “Stumblin’” and you can stumble to the beat!

Get Your Random Stumble On!

When someone is flipping through lots of sites that pop up when hitting the Stumble button on the toolbar (or in their account), that’s what I call random stumbling. The only sites that should pop up are ones submitted by other users. Occasionally it says I discovered a post I thumb up which is wonky. But, it’s a nice, easy way to randomly find content across the web. You can sort by interests too. I can’t think of a better way to find random content to just trip over. (That said, the new SU is wonky and buggy but I can’t login half the time anymore!)

StumbleUpon is my top traffic referrer.  I get surprised at some of the posts that do well and bummed when others I thought would do well just… don’t.  You don’t need to go out of your way to use SU, but if you are an active user and you have readers that are active users… then it will help bring new eyes to your site.  It’s another tool in the ol’ blogger tool belt!

About Darcy

Darcy Zalewski is a married, stay-at-home mom who is discovering her greener side, starting with advocating for cloth diapering. When she's not changing diapers or singing the Itsy Bitsy Spider, she can be found at Tales From the Nursery, where she shares tales of motherhood as well as product reviews, or at ShePromotes, a resource for blogger support.

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