Facebook, StumbleUpon Rock Your World!
I am glad that I didn’t follow through on my decision last year to close my StumbleUpon account. I was getting tired of SU, finding myself particularly annoyed with certain network changes that seemed to limit my ability to connect with people through this popular bookmarking service.
In addition, SU appeared to be going the way of Reddit—gamed and controlled by nasty people whose idea of free speech is to hurl invectives at other users. Cowards!
But I stayed on and have no regrets with my decision. I certainly don’t use SU as frequently as I once did, but I have also found that most of the cowardly users have now been contained. Life is good and, if a March 2010 StatCounter GlobalStats survey of top social media sites is accurate, then sticking with SU was a good decision on my part.
Yes, SU rocks your world if you use it: only Facebook outperforms it in sending traffic your way.
According to Stat Counter, Facebook is credited with racking up 48 percent of all social media hits, but SU is a strong second as it adds 25 percent to that mix. And Twitter? Not as important as some might think, generating just 10 percent of all hits. YouTube, Reddit, Digg and MySpace round out the next four spots, offering small amounts of traffic in comparison.
SU has never been a dud when it comes to social media—far from it. As recently as June 2009, SU was ahead of Facebook, but the world’s most popular social networking site soon soared while SU began to slip. Recent traffic reports reveal that Facebook has lost some of its steam while SU has recaptured what it had lost, but in all likelihood it will remain Facebook first, StumbleUpon second, with everyone else a distant third or beyond.
One of my chief reasons for staying with SU is that I was connected with so many people through this service. As I contemplated dropping SU, I realized that I would be saying good-bye to a significant number of people I followed and who followed me.
There really wasn’t a reasonable alternative: I don’t use Facebook all that much and Twitter just doesn’t offer the scale of the others. Besides, my traffic stats continued to rise thanks to SU interaction, bringing visitors and new customers my way.
Every social media/networking site has its benefits and faults but Facebook, with more than 400 million users and StumbleUpon, with its nifty bookmarking arrangement, capture more than two-thirds of all social media hits.
Looks like I’ll have to rethink my Facebook strategy next!
Tags: Digg, Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, social networking, StumbleUpon, Twitter, YouTube
Social Media | Matthew C. Keegan, 29 Apr 10
19 Comments
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By LD Jackson, April 29, 2010 @ 6:12 am
I have found that SU can send a lot of traffic my way, but when I start digging into the meat of the stats, most of that traffic stays on my blog for less than a minute. Also, very few comments come from those visits.
LD Jackson´s last blog ..President Obama slams Arizona immigration law
By McLaughlin, April 29, 2010 @ 7:51 am
2 comments:
First, I came here through the email from stumbleupon, proving SU does work. One thing that people have to be careful of is the article title – I only follow a link if the title calls out to me.
Second, love the stat site. What sort of shocked me is looking at the country or region specific data. I live in France and FaceBook sends something like 85% of the traffic. No shock there. In North America, FaceBook is second to StumbleUpon – and that did shock me.
By Matthew C. Keegan, April 29, 2010 @ 7:57 am
@Larry — I guess people find that social media sites offer differing levels of help to them. Are you sharing your SU finds and stumbling other pages too? That seems to help: sharing other pages can increase the visibility of your own.
@McLaughlin — I’m glad that my title caught your attention. That’s something I work on before hitting the publish button. Those figures you share about France surprises me. I had no idea that Facebook was so strong there. SU being strongest in the US does surprise me too. Then again, it seems to be dominated by American users.
By McLaughlin, April 29, 2010 @ 7:58 am
Second note, I can’t go back and add this to my comment:
I tweeted the blog post and my Twitter feed goes to FaceBook. SU/FB/Tweet, the magic trio.
I didn’t see your Digg or Reddit buttons, what’s up with that?
By Matthew C. Keegan, April 29, 2010 @ 8:02 am
@McLaughlin — I apologize for the hassles. I’m working on the admin panel right now because I’m having problems with one or more plugins. Thus, the other buttons have disappeared for now.
Thank you for your other work; I saw your tweet earlier. Much appreciated!
By LD Jackson, April 29, 2010 @ 8:27 am
Matt,
It’s not that I am not getting visits, but the visits that come from SU do not seem to evolve into comments on the blog. It is almost as if they are hitting the page and going right on by, without actually reading the content.
By Matthew C. Keegan, April 29, 2010 @ 10:18 am
Well, don’t give up on SU. Even the quick moving traffic helps raise your search engine visibility, bringing to you visitors who otherwise might not find your site. Something or someone is bound to stick around because of that.
By Lillie Ammann, April 29, 2010 @ 10:47 am
Matt,
I confess I’m inept at social media and don’t do much with SU or Facebook and am not even on Twitter. However, I see in my stats that Stumbleupon is my third best source of traffic, after Google and direct traffic. If I were active at SU, I can see that it would bring even more traffic. However, my blog is a hobby, and promoting it is not a major priority with me. If my blog were monetized, I would definitely do more.
Lillie Ammann´s last blog ..Freelance Rates – Part 1: Determining Your Worth as a Freelancer
By Anthony Kirlew, April 29, 2010 @ 11:16 am
Matt, I agree that SU used to produce much better results in terms of traffic, but I also believe that it is due to to it’s “su.pr” feature that it continues to do well as it allows you to post to Twitter and Facebook at the same time.
~ Anthony
By Matthew C. Keegan, April 29, 2010 @ 11:21 am
@Lillie: Agreed! In your case, the value (or need) of SU, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites is small. I wish I was in that position, but I have to play the game.
@Anthony: Bingo! I was waiting for someone to mention SU.pr. I purposefully left that information out even though I use it frequently. Certainly the two work to drive Stumble traffic ever higher.
By LD Jackson, April 29, 2010 @ 12:09 pm
Matt,
I had not thought of the traffic from SU driving my search engine visibility higher. I will have to keep that in mind.
LD Jackson´s last blog ..Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on immigration law – Video
By Dominique, April 29, 2010 @ 12:19 pm
I have come back around lately as well. One change that I love is the share button! Love that. I can choose a multiple of people to send a page to at one time which makes it so easy. I wish we had the ability to categorize our friends so if I was sending out something political, I would go to the politics folder, etc. Be that as it may, I still love the share button.
I have also discovered a way around SU ghosting. I added the sharaholic button and when SU has ghosted someone, I find I can still stumble their stuff through the sharaholic button! Nice.
I have also discovered, that the shares from my ‘friends’ are more in tuned with my likes and I an no longer so overwhelmed with shares. I think one day I had over 600! No joke. I almost cried it took so long to go through all of them and clear them out.
All in all, I like the new changes. I agree with you.
BTW, I never thought about our visibility increasing as our posts are stumbled more often. That’s a great point as well.
Well, now I am off to send this viral! he he
Dominique´s last blog ..I’ve waited for a lifetime for this moment
By Matthew C. Keegan, April 30, 2010 @ 4:38 am
Thank you for your comment, Dominique. And thank you for being a faithful reader.
Regarding blog visibility being raised when pages are stumbled, look at it this way: when you work the stumble button–meaning your stumbling through page after page–those pages stumbled count as hits. More importantly, any page stumbled has now been exposed to a fresh set of eyes, people who may stop long enough, read what you have to say, leave a comment, subscribe to your blog and more. What a great way to draw people in. But you can only snag them if your content rocks and it has been submitted to SU.
By SBA, May 6, 2010 @ 8:45 pm
Like you some of us are being dragged into FaceBook. The number of friend suggestions and requests are on the increase. I don’t really like FB but then I didn’t like Twitter 6 months ago! I always used SU and have found good friends and excellent articles. I don’t get the traffic you do, but then you are a mega-stumblr! It’s a shame but we do have to ‘choose’ where to spend our limited social media time.
SBA´s last blog ..Tutorial: Creating A Facebook Page For Your Blog
By Matthew C. Keegan, May 6, 2010 @ 8:47 pm
Mega stumbler? Is that my legacy? LOL. Yes, I get the same feeling regarding some of these other sites. They are a blessing and a curse. You have to spend/invest some time with them or risk getting tossed to the side. What a world!
By Steven, May 7, 2010 @ 8:30 am
I need to revisit SU, especially give the possibility to drive search engine ranking.
By Dave, May 14, 2010 @ 5:17 pm
I agree with LD Jackson. I get a lot of traffic from SU, but they’re not converters. Most of those that I send over from Facebook tend to subscribe and stick around to view a few pages.
Dave´s last blog ..Arizona SEO Experts Against Racism