When running a Stumble Upon advertising campaign, good feedback is a very important factor to consider.  This is important  for a number of reason.  The first is the obvious reason that you should want your message to be as well received as possible.  If someone likes your message they will more likely take the action you want them to take.  This, however, is not the only reason that seeking feedback is important. 

The way stumble upon works is that feedback ratings are taking from users, mixed with the number of new posts that user submits, and that user gets a ranking.  The ranking of a user determines the weight of their thumb.  A new user with a low ranking may thumbs up a post with little effect or possibility of someone new seeing it.  A top stumbler can thumbs up a post which will be guaranteed to be seen by 100+ people because of their weight.  If more people like your post, the more chances you have to land a top stumbler who will hopefully add a thumbs up and carry the piece even further increasing the viral effect of StumbleUpon.  As a side note, it is very important to keep up with a good stumble upon account and use it regularly to increase the weigh of your own thumbs up.  That is a very simple way to push the content of a campaign a little bit further.  Which, as with good feedback from other users, gives you more bang for your marketing dollar.  It is possible, if not common, to see StumbleUpon yield 7-8 times the visitors than were expect.

How can you get good feedback on an article?  The first and obvious way is to make the content as good as possible, make it shine.  Since a relatively few number of people will actually give a thumbs up, every thumbs up counts.  The other major way to get good feedback is to target the right category, and do some testing between categories.  If you have a funny picture, it might be tempting to categorize that picture in “Photography”.  Big mistake.  The photography category is one of the hardest categories to get good feedback from.  This category contains some very amazing work, and is very difficult to get good feedback even for professional photographers.  Often times, good but not great works will get a thumbs down since the bar for quality is set extremely high.  However, the “Humor” category is probably one of the easiest.  If it is mildly funny, someone might give it a thumbs up, but they are  less likely to give it a thumbs down, which can limit the number of people who see the content.  The best bet is to try a little bit of traffic in a couple of different categories, then pick the one that has the most positive ratings and stick with that. 

Mike Palmer
Analyst

This is a little piece of advice for the people who don’t promote themselves.  If you have good content, and you know it, it is ok to promote yourself some.  There  are numerous people out there who seem to feel like promoting themselves is wrong.  This is not the case,  it is perfectly  fine as long as you don’t cross that line into “shameless self-promotion”.  As long as you aren’t the person who introduces themselves and begins pushing their stuff  without regard for tact or decorum, you’re fine to do a little promotion.   It is all about the conversation.  It is perfectly fine, if in the course of a conversation, be it online, in person, or wherever, to tell someone else about what you are doing or what you are excited about. 

So how do you apply this to marketing or traffic driving?  Go ahead, take the first step and digg your own content.  Give your article a Thumbs Up in StumbleUpon.  It is MUCH more difficult to get an outside person to give the first digg  or thumb than the second.  It requires much more work to describe the article, select a category, verify the entry, and finally submit it than just rating it.  By adding the first one, you are giving your approval, saying you like the content (which hopefully you do since it is yours) and adding a “face” to the piece.  You could also think of it as asking for feedback so that you can improve you content.  Getting the initial momentum will place the piece in front of a few people, and hopefully, if the content is good enough, approve it so that others can pass it on further.   

Here is an example of someone trying too hard to promote their stuff, and coming across as shameless self promotion.  This is at the top of many of their articles:

Hey, Stumbler! Don’t forget to look around before hitting the Stumble! button again
http://www.holycool.net/2008/03/gun-egg-fryers.html

I looked around, it wasn’t that interesting.  Since I gave them the benefit of the doubt and was let down they got a thumbs down instead of just moving on.  In addition, this tactic is a little misguided.  A ThumbsUp is more valuable than the two or three pageviews you will get from a new visit because  a positive review will put the article in front of more people.  It is the difference between three  pageviews, or six more new visitors (and however many pageviews they visit). So, it would be more beneficial to say something like:

If you liked this post, don’t forget to digg it or give it a thumbs up. Thanks.

The reminders and mild self-promotions work, you just have to let people decide what they like.  Don’t be afraid if people don’t like it that just means you need to change something, and try again.  Eventually something will take off.

By Mike Palmer
Analyst

If you are trying to drive impressions for your website through some sort of social media campaign, StumbleUpon is a good place to start.

The key is to understand how people use StumbleUpon.

It is a directory of websites, so if you are listed, eventually someone will find you. But the problem is that if the community doesn’t like your page, then the traffic slows to it. Thus we encounter both the value and the risk of social marketing.

If people don’t like our message, it is not going to get spread around.

One thing we have found to be successful, are Traffic Trails.

Traffic Trails are designed to ‘capture’ an otherwise nonchalant Stumble Upon user, get them to follow an easy-to-understand path, and finally get them to do something.

Sort of like watching TV, surfers who encounter a Traffic Trail, become engaged and responsive, based on the content.

The end result is a strong rating on Stumble Upon, and, lots of great traffic.

-Jalali