Posted by on March 9th, 2010 View Comments
Posted in Miscellaneous |
Man is inherently a discoverer — a truth that many social media networks attempt to exploit, but only a chosen few like StumbleUpon effectively optimize. As an 8-yr old site it boasts 234,000,000 inbound links, 1,100,000 monthly visitors according to Quantcast, an Alexa rating of 362, and a (so far) indomitable reputation as a top social bookmarking site.
What it basically does is bring the spotlight on quality websites based on the formation of a collaborative opinion with the help of its users. Its more than 8 million users can add sites they just happen to find and recommend it under one of the around 500 topics used by StumbleUpon. Also, items with the lowest/oldest ratings are regularly removed to maintain its image as the go-to place for the moment’s best of the web.
From the online marketer’s point of view, it is indeed a social discovery site. What a lot people don’t know though, is that it can reserve a certain number of daily page views for the right price. Web publishers participate in this cleverly designed ad network for a minimum $0.05/StumbleUpon user who visits.
It may be best employed for brand or campaign awareness rather than that of a sales tool. So, does being a high-traffic site translate to being an effective source of new visitors for the bookmarked sites? Well, according to several experimental studies such as the one by www.social-media-optimization.com it does, especially in comparison with the other social media sites. What is even more convincing is the observation that SU users being in “discovery mode” tend to explore the destination website rather than other sites where they leave after the landing page. This behavior leads to its potential for improvement as a direct e-commerce driver.
