9 BIGGEST MISTAKES PEOPLE MAKE ON STUMBLE UPON

Stumble Upon is a great place to find and promote awesome content. Besides, the community is great (well, for the most part). Still, daily people make mistakes which they may never think of as mistakes, but in fact they are mistakes. And they affect how others perceive you. So, below are 9 of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make on stumble upon.

NO IMAGE OF THEMSELVES

This is the first thing people use to identify you and if it’s not something recognizable (or even non existent for that matter), people will be turned off from viewing your profile and exploring the idea of being your friend or stumbling pages you’ve liked. Hell, I even just figured this out myself and changed my profile picture to make sure I don’t fall into this category any more.

NO INFORMATION IN THE ABOUT SECTION

Right after the image, this is what most people look at next. This section doesn’t need to be a full bio of your whole life story, but let them know your name, what you do and any other tid-bits of information that will set you apart from the other stumblers out there.

SENDING LINKS TO FRIENDS WITH NO ACTUAL COMMENT

How many times have you got the little pop up from your stumble upon tool bar that says “____ has sent you this page”? I’ve got this message a million times and I hate it as I’m sure the rest of you do too. How hard is it to at least write a quick thank you message and copy/paste it to everyone you’re sending the page to?

STUMBLING ONLY YOUR OWN ARTICLES

This will not only keep people from interacting with you but it can also get you banned. Stumbleupon is about being SOCIAL so please do not treat it as another place to spam your own content like we’ve all seen happen to Myspace and other social media sites.

ONLY GIVING THUMBS UP AND NOT REVIEWING

I don’t know if there’s any issue with stumble upon itself for doing this, but I know that when I see a page get 30+ thumbs up but only 1-2 reviews, it sends a red flag to me that the content might not be the best in the world and that the original stumbler just got a lot of friends to give it thumbs up. Try to review as many as possible.

Quick tip: highlight a part of the article and click the review bubble in your stumble upon toolbar and it will automatically put that text into your review box.

NOT BEING MUTUAL FRIENDS WITH OTHER STUMBLERS

So you’ve got messages that 100 people have added you as a friend on stumble upon but you don’t know what to do next? ADD THEM BACK! Again, stumble upon is a social place and adding someone as a friend is the least you can do to show them that you’re human and increase your chances of gaining positive attention. Hell, I even got a couple web design deals through stumble upon just by adding friends back and talking with them.

MASS ADDING FRIENDS BUT ONLY SENDING THEM SPAM

Another fault that is similar to sending links to friends with no actual comment. Whatever you do, do not believe that mass adding friends is going to gain you popularity within the community and push your content to the forefront. It just won’t happen. People hate spam, and if you’ve got 1,000 friends but no mutual friends, other stumblers are going to get the hint and avoid you like the plague.

STUMBLING WITHOUT CONSISTENCY

If you’re trying to build a name for yourself and trying to build up your brand awareness, why would you neglect one of the most powerful things you can do on stumble upon? Consistent stumbling! Even if its only 10 stumbles per day, they add up over time and they let people know that you’re human, you’re around and you’re seeing what is out there.

ONLY STUMBLING PRE-STUMBLED ARTICLES

You should be out there finding and discovering new articles for stumble upon. Add to the community with some value that YOU find instead of just clicking and stumbling articles that other people have already found and shown on stumble upon.