StumbleUpon is a great service for discovering new sites and to promote your own. It is by far the easiest social networking site to use, every blogger should have his or her own account.

StumbleUpon is at its heart a search engine. However, unlike Google and Yahoo, StumbleUpon allows its users to “channel surf” the web, based upon the users personal interests. The user will be randomly redirected to a site which corresponds to his or her interests. The user can then choose to tag the website and/or to give it a thumbs up or down.

By utilizing the bookmark tool extension, StumbleUpon users can even submit every website they come across that they like, and share it with their friends.

Why you should use StumbleUpon

All bloggers want exposure for their newly written blog article. StumbleUpon allows you to get that site out in the open for everyone to see. This allows you to:

1. Generate rapid exposure to your site.
2. Establish a reader base quickly and with ease.
3. Gain numerous backlinks from StumbleUpon visitors with websites.

Once your site is Stumbled, it will usually start to receive visitors right away.

Different kind of traffic

One thing to keep in mind is that the average StumbleUpon user is not like the normal user you might get to your blog or site. When a user performs a search through Google, that user is very specific in what he or she wants. StumbleUpon is on the other side of the spectrum – the users goes from website to website which may only be very loosely connected. He or she doesn’t necessarily have to know what they want – hence the word “channel surfing”.

Visitors generated from StumbleUpon are usually:

• Diverse. Visitors can come from practically all over the world and have different interests and goals – within a specific frame of course.
• No ads-lovers. They don’t click on your ads – they go to the next website!
• Design-oriented. The sites that the visitors ends up making a stop at is usually the one with an eye-catching design.

Repeat visitors

The very nature of StumbleUpon allows for quick access and quick escape. People will decide within seconds if your web site is worth looking through and sharing. So, how do you actually make people come back for more?

The visitors of StumbleUpon are generally attracted to unique concept, good design and interesting content, in that order. Make sure that all these elements are present, don’t forget to neglect even one of them.

Here are some further points to help you:

• Easy subscribing option. The option to subscribe to your feed should be prominent on your site. Encourage people to use it! Perhaps even include a welcoming message to new visitors and allows different methods for subscribing.
• Signature links. Allow people to share your blog article using mail and the biggest social networks out there. AND of course, a subscribing option.
• Fancy effects. This may sound a bit shallow but make use of those jQuery effects. Make people go in awe after visiting your site. The first impression is more important than ever on StumbleUpon.
• Proof-read your content. Make sure that every single article on your web site is of the highest quality. This includes spelling as well as facts. Double-check your sources!

So there you have it! Now, go out and stumble into the world!

More articles:

http://www.sitesketch101.com/dont-trip-when-you-can-stumbleupon
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/09/26/building-your-blog-with-stumbleupon/