Stumble Upon Redux: Proper Categories & Tags

In my last Stumble Upon article I made a general guide to Stumble Upon for Beginner and Advanced Users. After doing some research and running into some reoccuring issues I have decided to go a little further with what I am learning about Stumble Upon.

My last article talked about how you can generate traffic to your blog if you network with a lot of people and help promote their stuff. They are likely to return the favorite. The more your face shows up around Stumble Upon the more exposure you and your website get. Here is a quick list of where I left off in the last article…

1. Add friends who like the same content you do.
2. Subscribe to their favorites.
3. Review their Stumble Upon profile.
4. Stumble AND review lots of content, especially in your niche.
5. Don’t promote your own stuff.
6. Get noticed.
7. Have fun!

Now here is where we can all be better stumblers. It comes down to proper Categories and Tags. The #1 problem I see with Stumble Upon right now is that people put things in the wrong topic areas (categories). Let me explain…

When you are the first one to stumble a site, it asks for you to review it. It is a good idea to do it and do it properly for two reasons.

1. When you are the first one to review a site that gets popular Stumble Upon gives you credit and makes your profile that much more powerful. By powerful I mean the stuff you stumble gets noticed more and more. Your stumbles start getting better ratings and closer to the top of the pack. This helps you out if you want to become a power user. It also helps the person’s site you reviewed because they get more visits. It is a win-win all around.

2. Doing it properly means putting it in the right topic and tag. Many people don’t realize that there is a huge list in the drop down menu called “other” that they can select from. Out of laziness or not knowing they click one of the topics that is prominent. (The top 20 or so ones you see listed before other in the topics.) Once again, proper tagging and categorisation helps both your own Stumble Upon profile and the site you are rating.

I first noticed that most of my articles were being stumbled with the topic “Writing”. This is fine and all but they should be stumbled with the topic “self-improvement” which is in the drop down menu. My recent blog carnival got submitted with the topic “weight loss”. I don’t blame the user who did it and I actually appreciate them taking the time to do it, but it doesn’t help the cause of getting that page noticed. Once again, it should be in the topic self-improvement.

Finally my last Stumble Upon article was submitted under writing. And once again, in the drop down menu, there is a topic called “Stumble Upon” that it should have been submitted under. Please submit this article under “Stumble Upon” if you discover it. 🙂

Why does all this matter?

1. Nobody will visit the articles if they are miscategorized. A person looking for a weight loss article will not click on my Carnival for Personal Development.
2. If you constantly are lazy and miscategorize stuff then Stumble Upon will give no power to your user profile. And if you submit more of your own stuff instead of a large variety of sites it definitely WILL NOT get noticed.
3. These things are in place to keep people from abusing the system. Unfortunately a lot of great articles don’t get noticed because they have the wrong topic, category, and tags.

What can you do about this?

1. If you discover something, take the time to review it and properly put it in the right topic. Stumble Upon will reward you for this practice.
2. Have 3-5 topic areas that you review a lot. Stumble Upon will start seeing you as an authority in those areas and will give you more power in those areas. For instance, I stumble a lot in Blogs, Business, Finance, Self-Improvement, and Writing. (I wish I could stumble more in health, but I never seem to be able to find much good stuff. So send it my way!)
3. If the article is broad give it lots of tags. This will help people find it when they are searching for relevant information. Stumble Upon’s search engine is pretty powerful. You should try it if you haven’t used it already.
4. If you find an article that has a wrong topic simply send the person who discovered it a polite message asking them to change it. If that doesn’t work don’t be afraid to report it and change it to the correct topic. (Reporting is not as bad as it sounds.)

You know, I could go on and on about ways to use Stumble Upon, but please do us all a favor and do things right by putting articles in the right category and tagging them correctly. This makes a bigger difference then you know. Also, for anyone who wants to discuss Stumble Upon in more depth please message me at my stumble upon profile. http://jeremymday.stumbleupon.com/

Oh one last thing… If you get to be the first cool person to discover this please put it in the topic “Stumble Upon” in the drop down menu for topics. Use tags Stumble Upon, Stumbler. Thanks! 😉

Cheers,

Jeremy