An Analysis of Posts Loved By StumbleUpon Users

Posted on November 28, 2007 - Filed Under Social Networks

After a series of stumbles, I thought it would be interesting to list down the articles in my blog that have been popular with StumbleUpon users in descending order, and to give a brief analysis of these posts for a look back. While I have read in other blogs how a “stumbled” article brought in thousands of visitors with an average of 1 page view, it was encouraging to see that though the number of visitors from StumbleUpon were small for my popular articles, their average page views were closer to 2 per visitor.

Summary of StumbleUpon Visitor Statistics

Article	SU Visits	Av Page / SU Visitor	Av Page / Direct	Av Page / Others
StumbleUpon Sent Me 149 Readers in One Day	350	1.69	2.25	3.7
Your Link Investment Strategy: What’s Your Link ROI?	144	1.88	1	1.73
Writing Great Content for Your Blog	149	1.77	7	7
Commenting is Not Only About Traffic	72	2.03	12	1.3
Integrated Offline and Online Marketing	70	1.76	1	2
A Blogger’s Dictionary: 25 Terms You Cannot Live Without	22	1.84	2.83	2.5

StumbleUpon Sent Me 149 Readers in One Day was my second post to get stumbled, and presented a self analysis of my post for “Writing Great Content for Your Blog” whereby I called out the factors that earned the stumble. In it, I applied the same factors that I called out as having made the first article popular with StumbleUpon users. It was published on Nov 6, and got 12 Stumble votes.

Your Link Investment Strategy: What’s Your Link ROI? is the latest article to get stumbled, and though the first spike was not as large as other stumbles, it has a long tail end and has been consistently bringing new visitors to my site since it got stumbled, slowly rising from second last position to second rank for the most number of StumbleUpon visitors. This article also brought in the highest number of subscribers.

Writing Great Content for Your Blog. This article started out with me wanting to write my first “great” article for my blog. As I sat there asking what could I write that would make an impact, I thought why not write about HOW to write that great article? So I ended up writing on key tips that I have used to advice friends and colleagues on generating articles that are readable and impacting. This post was published on Nov 1, and earned me my very first stumble with 1 review and 6 votes on Nov 3.

Commenting is Not Only About Traffic was written as a reaction to the foray of articles on how commentating on other blogs can gain you traffic when there was so much more to commentating. It was published on Nov 7 and got stumbled simultaneously with “StumbleUpon Sent Me 149 Readers in One Day” with 1 review and 3 votes.

Integrated Online and Offline Marketing for Money Making Blogs was an article I wrote about the importance of marketing your blog offline as well as online, with a number of ways that you can do so. It earned me 1 stumble with 1 review.

A Blogger’s Dictionary: 25 Terms You Cannot Live Without interestingly was published on Nov 10, but only elicited a traffic spike on Nov 18. A chit sheet of 25 terms for the beginning blogger with elaboration and use of the terms, it earned me 1 review, 2 Stumble votes and 3 diggs.

Tips Learned from Successful Stumbling

It was an interesting look back for me as all the articles that got stumbled were of different topics. However, there were some principles that I drew from the look back that gave insight to what made an article popular, particularly to StumbleUpon users.

A Well Written Descriptive Title Attracts the Right Audience. If you look at my titles, you will find them descriptive in nature, and that is no accident. I could have given clever attractive titles such as:

StumbleUpon Readers Love Great Content!
The Secret Story of Links Told by Google Sitemap
How Not To Publish A Blog That Sucks
The Number 1 Invisible Enemy to Traffic (Poor Content)
What Caroline Middlebrook Isn’t Telling You (Of course, this is a misleading title as Caroline didn’t say that commenting is ONLY about traffic. Read her comment for the article)
Is Your Traffic Suffering From A Closet Blogger Syndrome?
How to Graduate As A Blogger With Your Vocabulary

This is not an attempt to impress you with my copywriting skills (though I would not claim that I am great at copywriting) but to demonstrate to you that we may be sabotaging ourselves with our own ingenuity. The alternative titles I have given here is in the same order as my popular posts, and I dare say are “juicier” and more enticing to the reader. However, they do not tell the person reading your titles what your article is all about. While these titles may earn you more StumbleUpon traffic, there is also a higher chance that your article will not be what the reader is interested in, leading to shorter time spent on your blog and the “curse of the 1 page reader”.

While the titles I give to my posts may not rank high in the attraction factor, they are primarily descriptive, and are a summary of what my articles are about. Targeted keywords are also thoughtfully inserted so that readers can find content relevant to what they are looking for. As a result, my overall average number of pageviews per visitor for my blog is a healthy 2.25 (for a relatively new blog!).

The “Discovery Post” is Irresistible. When I wrote the post on Your Link Investment Strategy: What’s Your Link ROI?, I honestly did not know whether a post on links would be well received with readers. I mean how exciting is a post that talks about links?? People who read posts on link building are probably looking to improve their SEO stats by building a link campaign. However, I had made a discovery with Google Sitemap that thrilled me to bits, being the geek that I am, and as I had not seen any post on this discovery of mine, I decided to write about it out of sheer excitement.

I wanted readers to experience the same thrill that I had, so I brought them down a “discovery path” by revealing what I learned step by step, enabling the same excitement and suspense to build in them the same way that it did with me. Interestingly enough, this article is the only one that has consistently brought me a handful of StumbleUpon visitors over a longer period of time though it did receive a negative review (misled by my PageRank graphic and initial paragraphs) and did not produce the highest traffic spike. This post has slowly crawled from the second last popular post to the second most popular post since the time it was stumbled until now. I am waiting to see if the traffic it is bringing in will surpass that of my most popular post “StumbleUpon Sent Me 149 Readers in One Day” over time, though that might be a while.

Articles on “How Tos” and “Tips” Are Generally Popular. “Writing Great Content for Your Blog” is an example of a Tips post, with each tip being the subheading of a paragraph that elaborates on the use and benefits of the tip. While factors such as clarity and reader engagement were important, the main reason why the post was successful was that it was a good “Tips” post. Another example of a “Tips” post that quickly became popular was Nate Whitehill’s post on 23 Things I’ve Learned After 7 Months and 500 RSS Subscribers. However, there are hundreds and thousands of such posts. The only way to stand out is to create tips that you have personally learned yourself because even if it is the same tips offered by other blogs, it is a different list with a different angle, and different reaction to why you found something useful.

Take A Different Stand, Even if It Is Unpopular. This type of posts take courage, especially if you are taking a different stance from a popular blog or what everyone is doing / saying. When Caroline Middlebrook popularized the strategy of commenting as a way to building traffic to your blog, I loved it. For a beginning blogger with no clout in Digg or any other social networks, commenting was the only way to get myself noticed. However, I soon got frustrated as people literally elbowed each other to be a top commentator at A-list blogs but were not willing to take the trouble to leave comments on my blog simply because I had no traffic to usher to them. I was keen to see comments come in not because it made my blog look good, but because I was sincerely interested in the thoughts and opinions of my readers on what I had written. It was like I was talking to a wall day after day of blogging and putting my thoughts out there. So I decided to write a post on Commenting is Not Only About Traffic, as an outlet for my frustration, and to educate other bloggers out there that their comments could impact and shape the development of a blog. And there is no greater generosity than that. The cool thing about this post was that it got endorsed by Caroline herself by stumbling the article.

List Posts Are Overrated. I spent a lot of time creating the post A Blogger’s Dictionary: 25 Terms You Cannot Live Without as I wanted to see if I could get a post dugg to the front page of Digg, and list posts seemed to have a high rate of success. However, halfway through I realized that it was not front page Digg material, but completed it anyway. It was a post I wished I could have read when I first installed Wordpress and struggled with learning the terminology and technology behind these particular terms. I spent about 2 days creating it in the evenings after work, and a lot of time went into researching some of the more technical terms for accuracy. Writing the post was also harder work than usual. In addition, not all the terms in the list are going to be useful to everyone, and probably only a few of them would be perceived as useful to different readers. Unless you are aiming to get a major traffic wave from Digg and know exactly how to do it, list posts are an extremely time-consuming and tedious type of article to be publishing.

Social Network Users Love Articles About Their Network. The sub-heading is self-explanatory and is a reiteration of what other bloggers have said. As fact of proof, the article that earned me the greatest traffic spike from StumbleUpon, was an article about the traffic I gained from StumbleUpon.

And there you have the 6 lessons on the type of articles that StumbleUpon users love. Do you have other types of articles that have been popular with StumbleUpon users?

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Comments

4 Responses to “An Analysis of Posts Loved By StumbleUpon Users”

Ben Barden on November 28th, 2007 8:13 am

Hi Ivy,

Great post! Writing about StumbleUpon has worked for me, as well as tips and tutorials.

It’s interesting to read what you have to say about list posts. I recall reading another blog where the author swore by them, which made me wonder what was so good about them.

The “Take a different stand” is of particular interest to me. I’ve seen plenty of blogs where it seems the author is just following everyone else like sheep. Being different is what makes a person stand out.

Ivy on November 28th, 2007 9:18 am

Thanks Ben!

List posts do not work for all people. I have seen some great ones, but to be honest after the 10th or 15th item on the list, I lose interest. Out of the 100 items I will probably remember only a couple on the list. They could earn you that digg - but people and subscribers stay because of the other posts on your site that provide great information.

As for the “Take a different stand” post, it’s being different not for the sake of being different, but pointing out the hype. I have seen comments on popular blogs where people are just rushing in to agree with the article, when a lot of the content in the article have been written by somebody else out there already. That is why I particularly love Skellie’s blog - because she is asking for her audience to have their own opinions. Her comment boards are beginning to look more like forums!