Traffic is what all Internet Marketers are after. Though to be more precise, we are after targeted traffic, not just any old traffic. Targeted traffic means they are interested in what we have to offer and are therefore more likely to buy, signup or otherwise participate in our website.
Many marketers spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours building traffic to their websites. In some cases, the cost of traffic generation far exceeds the meagre income made from the site itself.
Aside from the usual traffic generation methods, there are other Web 2.0 techniques you can use to increase your traffic.
One site in particular stands out with its ability to generate vast amounts of traffic very quickly.
This site is Stumbleupon.com. It is a site that has a great following and offers something for people who are bored at work or at home. The basic premise is that you find a site you think is interesting (you Stumbled Upon it) and submit it to Stumbleupon.
Visitors to Stumbleupon can look through the sites other people have found. They can vote to say they like a site, which gets it more views, or say they don’t like it, which gets them less views.
In many ways, Stumbleupon appeals to that voyeuristic, reality TV mindset. People can see what other people are doing and vote – something which is becoming ingrained into out culture.
In order for your site to do well on Stumbleupon it must be the kind of site that people will want to pass on and recommend. Sales letters don’t tend to do very well, but controversial or contrarian articles do. Anything that is cute, funny or entertaining will do well.
This can be an article, a video, or anything of a similar ilk. It must be something that has social appeal to your niche. You may have to think about how you can spin your content in order to give it wide ranging appeal. It can be done though, and will get you traffic.
You can Stumbleupon your site yourself, but it is better to get someone else to do the original Stumbleupon for you. This could be a friend, family or an outsourcer. They will need a set of space separated tags plus a description and to know which category you want it placed in.
Once it has been Stumbleuponed, you need to get other people to say they like it through the Stumbleupon website. This will help to kickstart the viral effect. If you can, put a link to Stumbleupon on your website to make it easy for your visitors to say they like it.
A well written article with wide social appeal can get thousands of visitors in a single day from Stumbleupon. It is a very powerful site that you, as a marketer, must be using. With the traffic potential from this site, you are missing out on valuable backlinks and massive amounts of traffic if you are not using it.
Joshua Shoemaker
joshshoemaker.com
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