Incorporating StumbleUpon into social media strategies

When most entrepreneurs think of social media marketing, they think of using Facebook or Twitter to promote their products and services. The reasoning is sound – Facebook has more than 500 million members while Twitter is set to cross the 200 million mark any day now, representing a huge prospective audience available to brands.

One social site that many brands don’t incorporate into their social media marketing campaigns is StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon will take users to random websites based on their likes and interests. If users “StumbleUpon” a website that they think is valuable, they can recommend it to others, which boosts the chances it will be displayed. As the official website explains, using StumbleUpon is like channel surfing through the internet.

According to recent statistics from StatCounter, StumbleUpon is quickly growing more popular. The social site accounts for 43 percent of all social media referral traffic – a number greater then even Facebook, which accounts for 38 percent of the share.

Many businesses struggle to reach what they consider to be qualified customers. If they know the type of consumer they are trying to reach and offer valuable or insightful information on their website, StumbleUpon can be an effective tool for reaching relevant audiences.

StumblingUpon Success

Several brands have incorporated StumbleUpon into their social media strategies, and some have seen huge results. For example, Mint.com – a personal finance service website – has eliminated search from its online marketing mix entirely because of the results it has achieved with StumbleUpon.

The website regularly posts informative content, such as videos and how-to guides, and then submits them to StumbleUpon, using both organic and paid strategies. StumbleUpon is the ideal platform for Mint.com, as the website is targeting younger consumers in the 25-year-old demographic.

Compared to the return on investment of other internet platforms, StumbleUpon is providing vastly better results, says Stew Langille, Mint.com’s vice president of marketing.

“We had a specific goal to target cost-per-acquisition,” he says. “The advertising drives people on StumbleUpon to view organic content, which we want the community to pick up and share.”

Since Mint.com began leveraging StumbleUpon, it has averaged more than 180,000 visits a month from the site. Some areas of the site in particular get a tremendous amount of attention from StumbleUpon users. For example, Mint.com launched a Wedding Budget Checklist in April that has received 80 percent positive ratings, and averages 5,000 page views per month. Meanwhile, the home page has averaged nearly 15,000 views a month.

Stumbling while on the go

StumbleUpon will only become more popular in the future. As MediaPost reports, the social site recently released a mobile application that enables consumers to find new websites from their phones, as well as downloadable applications.

Now that it’s available to a mobile audience, StumbleUpon may become even more effective for reaching consumers. According to comScore, accessing social networks is one of the most common activities among smartphone users. In November, 23.5 percent of all smartphone owners browsed social networks or visited blogs from their devices, which marked a 1 percent growth from August 2010. Additionally, 35.3 percent used mobile web browsers, indicating an interest in surfing the web from mobile devices.

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