At least as far as Social Networking goes. It is of course possible to add friends in all of the major social networking sites, and while it’s good to build up your networks, the immediate benefits to your blog are few, certainly in terms of decent, targeted traffic.

However, making friends in Stumble has instant results with clear benefits to you, your friends, and to your blogs. Why? Because whenever you click ‘I like it!’ on a page, all of your friends with similar interests will also receive that page, and likewise you will receive their Stumbles. This means that if you can build up a large group of friends with similar interests, your Stumbles will have more ‘legs’ and be seen by more people enabling them to spread further and gain more traffic. Equally, every time you click the ‘Stumble’ button you are going to receive more, interesting stumbles from a group of like minded people.

Find Friends

So should you just go crazy and add a couple of hundred friends of the first people you come across? Of course not, first you need to build your network of people with similar interests. The easiest way is through Stumble itself. Click Stumble and see what comes up. Did you like it? If so, remember to click thumbs up or down as this will build your preferences within Stumble. If you did like it, look along your SU toolbar, and you will see the Stumbler who first found the page: In the example below, it was K from Shankri-La.

Click on their name, and you will be taken to their Stumble page, where you can read about them, see all their recent Stumbles and get a feel for what they’re like. If you like what you see, and share some similar interests:

As I do with Anita from Say Not To Crack, then just add them as a friend. You will now receive their stumbles, and if they then add you back, they will receive yours. Continue to check out the Stumblers as you go, and you will soon be able to begin to build a network: Most will add you back as they notice, but to attract their attention you can review them as a Stumbler, or send them a message through the system. I personally am not a fan of being hassled for a return add (from people I’ve never heard of before, at least), but flattery always gets results

Other ways to find like-minded Stumblers can be to advertise your Stumble ID, on your blog for example, or just ask bloggers that you like what their ID is - most will tell you quite happily.

What Next?

So now you’ve built you network, you can just Stumble every post you’ve ever written, and just watch the traffic roll in, right? Well, the short term effects of such an action would probably be spectacular, but just as quickly you’ll find your friends leaving you, more ‘thumbs down’ on your Stumbles, and SU also has mechanisms in place for disregarding your stumbles if you overdo it on one domain - any domain - in a non-specified period. So what’s the point?

The point is that Stumble Upon resists ‘gaming’ in a very clever, organic way, but rewards correct use with a stream of interesting reads, or interested readers, depending on whether you’re the giver or the receiver. It’s always nice to give somebody a Stumble, and then later return to their site to find they’ve had 10,000 hits and a lot of new readers out of it, and Stumble is also a great tool for bursting Writers Block, by giving you a new idea to write about. You can narrow down the field of your stumbles, simply by using the drop-down menus from the toolbar to Stumble by category, friends or 1 particular friend, or even just by a free text search.

Self-Love

Should you stumble yourself? The jury’s out on this one, though personally I wouldn’t over do it. Maybe if you wrote something you feel is good a while ago, but it never received any attention, you could give it a boost, but people who Stumble their own stuff constantly get ignored pretty quickly. But if you’ve got a big network of like minded friends, and you’re stumbling interesting sites for them, they will check out your profile, and they will find your blog (if you’ve added the URL to your personal details-hint!) and you may just get a Stumble back….

Stumble Upon Is Best

Stumble is quite simply my favourite web tool, for it’s ease of use, and the way it brings me new sites I’d never find any other way. I always try to Stumble new sites or posts I find, both to pass on cool stuff to my friends, and also because of the traffic boost that everyone loves to receive.

If you want to know more about Stumble Upon, have a read of my original guide to being a good stumbler (which was itself stumbled over 10,000 times) or Maki’s colossally comprehensive guide to Stumble Upon. Don’t forget to add me as a friend